Il perdono del papa. Canossa nella recente storiografia

Over the last hundred years, historiography has been engaged in a serious criticism of the myth that was created over time around the events that occurred in Canossa at the end of January 1077. While in the Germanic area the humiliation of the sovereign was underlined and the encounter between Gregory VII and Henry IV in the castle of Matilde has been interpreted predominantly as a sure turning point for the Western society as a whole and in the relationship between Church and State, other scholars have instead preferred to focus their attention on how the penance of the king was conducted and on the action of the pontiff who, acting as a priest in the presence of the excommunicated and repenting king, merely exercised his forgiveness and reinstated him in the communion of the Church, leaving aside in the meantime the issue of the suspension of the royal functions.