It is probable that, while Henry’s penance was performed in the castle courts beneath the rock, his reception by the Pope, and all that subsequently happened, took place in the citadel itself.  But of this we have no positive information.  Indeed the silence of the chronicles as to the topography of Canossa is peculiarly unfortunate for lovers of the picturesque in historic detail, now that there is no possibility of tracing the outlines of the ancient building.  Had the author of the ‘Vita Mathildis’ (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have been more explicit on these points; and much that is vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.’s penance before Becket’s shrine at Canterbury, might now be clear.

Very little remains to be told about Canossa.  During the same year, 1077, Matilda made the celebrated donation of her fiefs to Holy Church.  This was accepted by Gregory in the name of S. Peter, and it was confirmed by a second deed during the pontificate of Urban IV. in 1102.  Though Matilda subsequently married Guelfo d’Este, son of the Duke of Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him; nor was there any heir to a marriage ridiculous by reason of disparity of age, the bridegroom being but eighteen, while the bride was forty-three in the year of her second nuptials.  During one of Henry’s descents into Italy, he made an unsuccessful attack upon Canossa, assailing it at the head of a considerable force one October morning in 1092.  Matilda’s biographer informs us that the mists of autumn veiled his beloved fortress from the eyes of the beleaguerers.  They had not even the satisfaction of beholding the unvanquished citadel; and, what was more, the banner of the Emperor was seized and dedicated as a trophy in the Church of S. Apollonio.  In the following year the Countess opened her gates of Canossa to an illustrious fugitive, Adelaide, the wife of her old foeman, Henry, who had escaped with difficulty from the insults and the cruelty of her husband.  After Henry’s death, his son, the Emperor Henry V., paid Matilda a visit in her castle of Bianello, addressed her by the name of mother, and conferred upon her the vice-regency of Liguria.  At the age of sixty-nine she died, in 1115, at Bondeno de’ Roncori, and was buried, not among her kinsmen at Canossa, but in an abbey of S. Benedict near Mantua.  With her expired the main line of the noble house she represented; though Canossa, now made a fief of the Empire in spite of Matilda’s donation, was given to a family which claimed descent from Bonifazio’s brother Conrad—­a young man killed in the battle of Coviolo.  This family, in its turn, was extinguished in the year 1570; but a junior branch still exists at Verona.  It will be remembered that Michelangelo Buonarroti claimed kinship with the Count of Canossa; and a letter from the Count is extant acknowledging the validity of his pretension.