There’s much more toing and froing, such is typical of the turbulent politics of the time, including the famous story of how a penitent King Henri IV had to wait in the snow outside Matilda’s fortress at Canossa, with she and the pope inside, to see if his excommunication would be lifted. Gregory was deposed, despite Matilda’s best efforts. It looked like she’d be left with a few mountain-top strongholds. But she wanted more.
So for the first time Matilda successfully led her forces into battle, in guerrilla tactics that were to become her trademark: on July 2, 1084, she attacked a relaxed Lombard army at dawn, and utterly routed it (after, admittedly the full force, that she could never have taken on, had gone.
But Gregory was captive, deposed, and a week after he died, on June 1, 10085, , Henry IV issued an act depriving Matilda of lands she held and giving them to the man her husband had designated his heir. The Normans, who for reasons of their own were still supporting the Gregorian reforms, were happy to make an alliance - indeed they sent Robert, duke of Normandy, the oldest son the Conqueror, to seek her hand, but there were important points on which their interests differed.
But she was pushing on with Gregory’s reforms, supporting bishops and priests who backed them, and funding a pamphlet war over Gregory’s memory. But it was again a military victory that was to really ensure her fame, continued fortune, and have other far-reaching effects on northern Italy. It was at Canossa, in October, 1092. King Henry Iv, raging at her resistance, brought his great force before it. But he didn’t know the mountains, and nor did his men, and when a cloud descended suddenly on them so too did Matilda and her forces; panic and confusion did the rest. And this was the effective end of Henri’s kingship - Matilda had effectively dethroned the most powerful monarch in Europe.
Spike has done fine work in recovering Matilda as a historical actor in her own right - but that’s not to say that this isn’t a text, and in interpretation, without some gaping flaws. First, and most seriously, Spike assumes that Matilda did all of this for lurve, pure lurve… which for a concept that didn’t take such a form until the Romantics, and wasn’t even developed at all by the troubadours until after Matilda’s death. That is one very large ahistorical stretch. If, however, one was to assume that Matilda’s motivation was to win power and influence, and not least control over her own life and fate, a motivation that we know has resounded through the ages among both men and women. And it’s also not much of a stretch to think that in this highly religious age, Matilda genuinely believed in the reforms that she championed.
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