Sydney
7 September 2003
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Tasmania accused
on same-sex adoption and ‘marriage’
Refugee
kids freed, but for how long?
Matter
of perspective
Archbishop
honours Year 12 students
Treasured
Gospels from Holy Island
Own
faith is vital to dialogue – cardinal
Marist
laity unity move
$50,000
for Susan’s pilgrimage
Good
Shepherds find green pastures
Upgraded
Bulls go into bat against their demons
Editorial:
A parallel universe?
Letters:
Age of consent
Conversation:
Prof Friedhelm Mennekes, parish priest and art lecturer - Space for art in a sacred
space
Why
the world is the way it is
1500
reasons to be proud of his school
Brothers
died on mission to save their leader
‘Don’t
forget your people back home’
Pius
XII – Hitler, the Holocaust and ‘Canossa’
On
‘going to Canossa’
Laity,
clergy share the pastoral load
Pell
embraces Cardinal's vision for Sydney Synod
Kylie
on line to help kids
Engadine
sisters in Columban art show
On ‘going to Canossa’
Canossa (pictured) was a castle in Northern Italy belonging to Countess Matilda of Tuscany, aunt of the German king, Henry IV, and supporter and friend of the reforming Pope Gregory VII, known as Hildebrand. In the winter of 1076–1077 the king of Germany was deposed and excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII because the king opposed the Pope’s decrees enforced by papal legates against simony [selling Church benefices] and clerics who were not living a celibate life.
After the Pope freed the Germans from their oath of allegiance to King Henry, his support dried up and his situation became desperate: no one would even talk to him – let alone feed or support him.
In February 1076 the shunned king crossed the Alps and appeared before the Castle at Canossa as a penitent, begging the Pope to lift the excommunication. He waited three days in the snow and on January 28, 1077, the Pope acceded to the pleas of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, and St Hugh, the Abbot of Cluny, and lifted the excommunication.
Since the Reformation this submission [whose terms he repudiated not long afterwards] of the king to the Pope at Canossa has been perceived as a humiliation of the royal power and has left a mark on the mythology of Germany reflected in Bismarck’s comment in 1872: “We will not go to Canossa.”