Matilda of Canossa & the Origins of the Renaissance by Michele K. Spike

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$14.99 ISBN 978-0-9885293-3-5

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Tomb of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany Basilica of St. Peter, The Vatican

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An Exhibition in Honor of the 900th Anniversary of her Death by Michèle K. Spike with a Foreword by W. Taylor Reveley, III, and an Introduction by Aaron H. De Groft with essays by Davison M. Douglas, Paolo Golinelli, Thomas J. McSweeney, and Linda K. Tesar Photographs by Elaine Poggi

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MATILDA OF CANOSSA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE RENAISSANCE The College of William & Mary President,W. Taylor Reveley III Provost, Michael Halleran, Ph.D. Museum Staff Aaron H. De Groft, Ph.D., Director & CEO John T. Spike, Ph.D., Assistant Director & Chief Curator Christina M. Carroll, Esq., Senior Associate Director: Institutional Advancement, PR & Outreach Thomas Barry, Security Anne Lee Foster, Assistant Registrar Kevin Gilliam, Building Management & Exhibitions Orine Holloway, Housekeeping Cindy Lucas, Assistant to the Director Adriano Marinazzo, Scholar in Residence Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D., Adjunct Curator of Native American Art Ursula McLaughlin-Miller, Special Project & Director of the Sadler Center/Muscarelle Annex Glenyss Nock, Security Melissa Parris, Head of Collections & ExhibitionManagement Amber Pfenning, Administrative Assistant Mary Grace Shore, Visitor Services Patrick Slebonick, Esq. Manager of Institutional Advancement Ernest Wright, Security Larry Wright, Chief of Security

David Libertson, W&M ’09 David Marshall, W&M ’94 Todd Mooradian, Ph.D. Sharon Muscarelle Janet M. Osborn, W&M ’85 Kathleen M. Ring Christine C. Rowland, W&M ’67 Jane Y. Spurling, W&M ’69 Ray C. Stoner, Esq., W&M ’71 JD All rights reserved Produced by the Muscarelle Museum of Art MATILDA OF CANOSSA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE RENAISSANCE Exhibition dates: Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary February 7—April 19, 2015 © 2015 Muscarelle Museum of Art The College of William & Mary All rights reserved.

Produced by the Muscarelle Museum of Art Board of Trustees Jill M. Lord, Ph.D., W&M ’94 – Chair Kathleen D. Durdin, W&M ’77 – Vice-Chair Robert S. Roberson, W&M ’73 MBA – Secretary J. Robert Mooney, W&M ’66 – Treasurer Mari Ann Banks Polly S. Bartlett, W&M ’62, ’89 MAED P. Gray Bowditch, W&M ’09 JD Barbara Bowers, W&M ’65 TJ Cardwell David Crank, W&M ’82 Ann J. Critchfield, W&M ’66 Joseph French Carrie Garland, W&M ’90 Thomas Gillman, W&M ’93 MBA Sarah O. Gunn, W&M ’87 MBA Betsy Hanlon, W&M ’76 Deborah Hewitt, Ph.D., W&M ’75 Jerry E. Howell Cynthia Jarboe, W&M ’77 Kevin Kelly, W&M ’86 Gordon S. Kray, W&M ’73

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Spike, Michèle K. Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance /Michèle K. Spike; introductions by Aaron De Groft and W. Taylor Reveley III; contributions by Davison M. Douglas, Linda K. Tesar, Thomas J. McSweeney and Paolo Golinelli Research assistance by Erica Wessling 160 pp.: 50 color ill.; 31 cm. ISBN 978-0-9885293-7-3 1. Matilda of Canossa, 1046 – 1115—Exhibitions. 2. Origins of the Renaissance—Exhibitions. 3. George Wythe and the Study of Roman Civil Law in Williamsburg 4. The Significance of the Corpus Iuris Civilis: Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of Justinian’s Body of Roman Law 5. The Afterlife of Matilda of Canossa 6. Jefferson›s Vision Fulfilled


Introduction and Acknowledgements MATILDA OF CANOSSA, one of the great leaders and women in world history, died 900 years ago at the age of sixty-nine. This anniversary in 2015 will be marked by a variety of celebrations in honor of Matilda whom the Italians call the Gran Contessa, including events at Modena, Bondeno, Reggiolo, San Benedetto Po, the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, and the Vatican. This exhibition, Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance, is the first monographic exhibition in the United States ever dedicated to Matilda and highlights the major events of her life and her legacy. Matilda and her influence directly laid important economic, religious, legal and cultural foundations for the Renaissance in art and architecture that occurred in the centuries after her death. Matilda’s enduring place in history was won in 1077 at the side of her ally Pope Gregory VII during the humiliation of the German king Henry IV at her castle of Canossa. Her alliance with Rome broke the feudal hold of Germany over northern Italy. At her death the history of the free Italian communes began. Matilda encouraged their emancipation by reviving the study of Justinian’s Digest of Roman civil laws. The University of Bologna dates its foundation to 1088 and Matilda’s invitation to the legal scholar, Irnerius, called the “light of law”, to teach the ancient Code and to train the men who would administrator the newly freed Italian towns. Matilda also united the towns in her territory by reviving travel along the ancient Roman routes. Today, over one hundred cathedrals, country churches and ospedali date their foundation or restoration to Matilda’s patronage. Her building program fit within a network intended to support travel as far as north as Canterbury and as far south as Jerusalem. This exhibition shows the importance of the study of Roman law to the development of law in the United States of America. Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, invited his professor, George Wythe, to teach law in Williamsburg. The Board of Visitors of the College established a law school on December 4, 1779 traditionally held as the foundation of the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. This fascinating history is recounted by Dean Douglas in his essay below. Wythe’s students, who included Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall, formed “a disproportionate share of Revolutionary statesmen that] dominated high offices in the new governments ...”. Jefferson and Wythe had various copies in both Latin and in English of Justinian’s Digest of Civil Laws in their personal libraries. Indeed, among the legal issues Jefferson discusses in his voluminous correspondences are his views of Justinian’s Code. Matilda’s legacy was esteemed during the Italian Renaissance, when the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti proudly claimed to be her direct descendant. The Barberini Pope Urban VIII commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sculpt her tomb in St Peter’s where it is found today and she is one of only three women buried in its nave. Bernini’s bronze bozzetto of Matilda of Canossa, today in the North Carolina Museum, is a highlight of the Muscarelle exhibition. We want to thank our Italian partners at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, most especially the Ambassador, Hon. Claudio Bisogniero, and Cultural Attaché, Renato Miracco. We are very gratified for the immense help of our other colleagues in Italy including: Don Albino Menegozzo, parrocco of San Benedetto Po, for his continuing courtesy and for his selfless dedication to the restoration of the church of San Benedetto Po, which suffered damage in the earthquake of May 2012. Professor Paolo Golinelli and his wife, Rita Severi; Matteo Al-Kalak, pro-archivista, Archivio Capitolare di Modena; Mons. John Azzopardi; Mario Bernabei at the Castello di Canossa; Francesca Boris, Archivio di Stato, Bologna; Marco Fabbrini, Biblioteca, Monastero San Salvatore a Monte Amiata; Maurizio Fontanili, former President of the Provincia di Mantova; Francesco Lauro; Luciano Mirandola, Sindaco of Nogara; Francesca Piccinini, Direttrice, Museo Civico D’Arte, Modena, and Cristina Stefani, Museo Civico d’Arte, Modena, Feliciano Paoli; Lorenzo Pongicuppi; Mons. Timothy Verdon; and Abbot Michael John Zielinski. We thank and acknowledge the archivists at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, Lucca, Milan, and Siena and the librarians at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze and the Laurentian Library, Florence, for their assistance in research and in supplying the documents. In particular, we would like to thank Elaine and Maurizio Poggi who have given generously of their time and innumerable talents. This exhibition could not have been accomplished without the enthusiastic encouragement of Helen Reveley. We have benefited from the expertise and partnership of our colleagues at the Wolf Law Library including Hank & Dixie Wolf whose donations to the Wolf Law Library have made it such a rich resource for scholars; James Heller, Director and Professor of Law, and Linda Tesar, Head, Technical Services, and Special Collections, who guided and assisted research on Justinian’s Code. We are indebted to our collaborators and contributors at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law and most especially Dean Davison M. Douglas,

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Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law; and Dean Ronald Rosenberg, Chancellor Professor of Law. We greatly appreciate the assistance of our friends at the Earl Gregg Swem Library and want to thank Carrie Lynn Cooper, Dean of University Libraries; Susan Riggs, Manuscripts and Rare Books Librarian; Jay Gaidmore, Marian and Alan McLeod Director of the Special Collections Research Center; and Jennie Davy, Burger Archives Specialist. Our talented staff does absolutely everything for our ambitious and dynamic museum and I wish to thank them for constantly moving forward, and in their good humor, for carrying a load and this includes John T. Spike, the Assistant Director and Chief Curator; Christina Carroll, Senior Associate Director: Institutional Advancement, PR & Outreach; Anne Lee Foster, Assistant Registrar; Kevin Gilliam, Building Management & Exhibitions; Orine Holloway, Housekeeping; Cindy Lucas, Assistant to the Director; Danielle MorettiLangholtz, Ph.D., Adjunct Curator of Native American Art; Ursula McLaughlin-Miller, Special Project & Director of the Sadler Center/Muscarelle Annex Melissa Parris, Head of Collections & Exhibition Management; Amber Pfenning, Administrative Assistant; Mary Grace Shore, Visitor Services; Patrick Slebonick, Manager of Institutional Advancement; Larry Wright, Chief of Security; Ernest Wright, Thomas Barry and Glenyss Nock, Security. The Muscarelle Museum of Art enjoys wonderful support of the College of William & Mary and our President W. Taylor Reveley III; Provost Michael R. Halleran; Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Sam Jones; and Rector of the Board of Visitors Todd A. Stottlemyer; and our Muscarelle Museum of Art Foundation Board of Directors, Jill M. Lord, Ph.D., Chair, Kathleen D. Durdin, Vice-Chair, Robert S. Roberson, Secretary, J. Robert Mooney, Treasurer, Mari Ann Banks, Polly S. Bartlett, P. Gray Bowditch, Barbara Bowers, TJ Cardwell, David Crank, Ann J. Critchfield, Joseph French, Carrie Garland, Thomas Gillman, Sarah O. Gunn, Betsy Hanlon, Deborah Hewitt, Ph.D., Jerry E. Howell, Cynthia Jarboe, Kevin Kelly, Gordon S. Kray, David Libertson, David Marshall-Wythe, Todd Mooradian, PH.D., Sharon Muscarelle, Janet M. Osborn, Kathleen M. Ring, Christine C. Rowland, Jane Y. Spurling, Ray C. Stoner, Esq. This exhibition and catalogue on this ground-breaking exhibition would not have been possible without the dedicated years of research by our colleague Michèle K. Spike. A graduate of Boston University School of Law and a member of the New York State Bar, she practiced international corporate law and is currently an adjunct Professor at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at The College of William & Mary. Since the late 1980s she has lived in Florence, and has contributed to many not-for-profit activities. As a member of the Standing Commission on Anglican and International Peace with Justice Concerns of the Episcopal Church (USA), Spike participated in a delegation to Palestine and Israel. She also participated at the Fiftieth Session of the Commission on the Status of Woman at the United Nations in New York and the Global Woman’s Action Network for Children in Amman, Jordan. More recently, she is known for her biography, Tuscan Countess: The Life and Extraordinary Times of Matilda of Canossa, published in 2004, and in Italian translation in 2007. Her research on Matilda’s architectural legacy, Writ in Stone: The ‘One Hundred Churches’ of the Gran Contessa, Matilda of Canossa, will be published in connection with the 900th anniversary year. Spike was assisted by our greatest assets at our Museum and College, our student curatorial assistants Erica Wessling, William, & Mary Law School, Class of 2015 who helped with the entries for books that were lent by the Wolf Law Library and Thomas Sandbrink, William & Mary Law School, Class of 2017 who assisted with the Latin translations. We thank all of them so very much. Aaron H. De Groft, Ph.D. Director & CEO Muscarelle Museum of Art Muscarelle Museum of Art Foundation

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Matilda of Canossa with Anselmo d’Aosta, MS 289, f.1, ca. 1160, Admont, Stiftsbibliothek.

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FOREWORD Occasionally mortals of seminal influence on human affairs fade into the mists of history. Memory is done no favors as the centuries roll by. Nor is a mortal easily remembered who does great deeds “while a woman” in an era of rampant male hegemony. Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance, the most recent of the Muscarelle Museum of Art amazing run of exhibitions in recent years, celebrates such a mortal, Matilda, on the 900th anniversary of her death. The exhibition also shines a welcome light on another such mortal, George Wythe of Virginia. It is marvelous to see these two protean figures brought back to memory in the venerable precincts of The College of William & Mary. Michèle K. Spike, a lawyer, biographer, and law professor, has studied Matilda in great depth and written about her in compelling fashion. The idea for Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance, came to Michèle while teaching at William & Mary Law School. This bears some explanation. The law school at William & Mary is the oldest in the United States and one of the first in the Englishspeaking world. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson, while Governor of Virginia and a member of William & Mary’s Board of Visitors, persuaded the board to create a law school at his alma mater and then recruited his own law professor and beloved friend, George Wythe, to breathe life into the new enterprise. Wythe breathed life, brilliantly. It was his concept and Jefferson’s that the new school train lawyers devoted to the larger good, who would be instrumental in the success of the fledgling republic. We speak of them today as “citizen lawyers,” and we need them in our time, acutely, just as the country always has. Among William & Mary’s first law students was John Marshall, later the great Chief Justice of the United States. Indeed, George Wythe taught law and the obligation of public service to a striking number of the leaders of our Revolutionary and Early National Eras. Wythe, and through him Jefferson, was well versed in Roman law, in particular the Justinian Code. They found it a vital source when thinking about how law in the new State of Virginia and United States of America should evolve, even as English common law provided the dominant stream. Michèle Spike quickly realized that Matilda and Wythe were kindred forces, separated though they were by seven hundred years. Michèle also saw that Wythe owned much to Matilda, though he was surely oblivious of his debt (for lack of Michèle’s biography). It was Matilda who founded the world’s first law school at Bologna in 1088, just as Wythe did almost 700 years later in America. It was she who had the scholar Irnerius revive from the Dark Ages the study of Roman civil law, as compiled by the Emperor Justinian. That revival made the Justinian Code available to Wythe in his day and to us in ours in the Wolf Law Library at William & Mary, which has painstakingly through the years reconstructed Wythe’s personal collection of the crucial texts on Roman civil law. The library is lending these books to the exhibition, including the early Renaissance edition of Justinian’s Digest, published in Florence in 1553. And it was Matilda who saw the need for a law school at Bologna to train Italians to serve their own polities after she freed them from the Holy Roman Emperor, King Henry IV, who was much more a feudal German despot than anything resembling a Roman Emperor. Thus, though it may be a hair of a stretch, we might say Matilda led the way for Wythe and Jefferson in seeing the need for citizen lawyers and providing a school to train them. Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance stems from close collaboration between William & Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art and its Marshall-Wythe School of Law. This is their first joint venture. It would be hard to imagine a more seemly or promising one.

W. Taylor Reveley, III, President, The College of William & Mary John Stewart Bryan Professor of Jurisprudence

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View of Mantua where Matilda was born in 1046

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Contents 5

Introduction and Acknowledgements

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Foreword

Essays on the Legacy of Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of Roman Law

17 Matilda of Canossa: Honoring the 900th Anniversary of Her Death by Michèle K. Spike 21

The Significance of the Corpus Juris Civilis: Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of Roman Law by Thomas J. McSweeney and Michèle Spike 31 The Afterlife of Matilda of Canossa (1115-2015) by Paolo Golinelli 37

Jefferson’s Vision Fulfilled by Davison M. Douglas

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George Wythe and the Study of Roman Civil Law in Williamsburg by Linda K. Tesar

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Illustrated Chronology of the Life of Matilda of Canossa

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The Revival of Roman law in Florence and in Virginia

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Bibliography

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Photo credits

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Contributors to the Catalogue

Davison M. Douglas, Dean and Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe

School of Law, The College of William & Mary

Paolo Golinelli, Professor of Medieval History, University of Verona; translator of

Donizone’s Vita Mathildis from Latin into Italian and author of more than ten books and innumerable articles on the life and times of Matilda of Canossa

Thomas J. McSweeney, Assistant Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, The

College of William & Mary

W. Taylor Reveley, III, President, The College of William & Mary, John Stewart Bryan

Professor of Jurisprudence, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, The College of William & Mary

Michèle K. Spike, Adjunct Professor of Law, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, The

College of William & Mary; author of Tuscan Countess: The Life and Extraordinary Times of Matilda of Canossa, published 2004 in English, 2007 in Italian. Her book, Writ in Stone: The ‘One Hundred Churches’ of the Gran Contessa, Matilda of Canossa will be published in conjunction with the 900th anniversary in 2015.

Linda Tesar, Head of Technical Services and Special Collections at Wolf Law Library,

The College of William & Mary

Lenders to the Exhibition Archivio Capitolare di Modena, Archdiocese Modena-Nonantola Muscarelle Museum of Art, The College of William & Mary North Carolina Museum of Art Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, The College of William & Mary John and Michèle Spike Wolf Law Library, Rare Books Collection, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, The College of William & Mary

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Monastery of San Benedetto Po, where Matilda was buried in 1115

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Essays on the Legacy of Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of Roman Law

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Rotunda of San Lorenzo, Mantua, built at the desire of the Countess Matilda, 1081

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Matilda of Canossa: Honoring the 900th Anniversary of her death by Michèle K. Spike

This exhibition honors Matilda of Canossa on the 900th anniversary of her death at sixty-nine years of age on July 24, 1115. The 2015 anniversary year will be marked by a variety of celebrations throughout northern Italy in honor of Matilda whom the Italians call the Gran Contessa. This exhibition will highlight the major events of Matilda’s life and her legacy which directly laid the economic, religious, legal and cultural foundations for the Renaissance in art and architecture that occurred in the centuries after her death. Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance is organized in two sections. The first section is an Illustrated Chronology of Matilda’s life, beginning with her birth in Mantua in 1046 as the daughter of a feudal lord and ending with her death near San Benedetto Po in 1115 as the leader of the movement to free Italy from the control of the German Emperor. The second section unfolds over a panorama of several centuries, beginning with the transformation of Europe caused by Matilda’s request to revive the study of Emperor Justinians’s corpus of Roman law enacted five centuries earlier, c. 533 A.D. The second section concludes with letters by and to Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) commenting on the same laws of the Emperor Justinian as they might apply to the newly freed American colonies. In some respects this Renaissance and modern gallery will resemble a library, containing as it does many precious volumes of Justinian’s laws that were in the personal libraries of Jefferson and his law professor, George Wythe. Included in this group is the first publication of Justinian’s Digest, edited by Lelio Torelli, in Florence in 1553. Presiding at the center of these great books is the bronze statuette of the Countess Matilda by Gian Lorenzo Bernini which was in cast 1635 in conjunction with the transfer of her body from its tomb in San Benedetto Po to the monument that still stands in the Basilica of St. Peter’s, Rome. When Matilda was born, Europe was in a dark age in which relatively little was accomplished in the fields of art and architecture, science and philosophy. During her lifetime, in about the year 1100, according to Sir Kenneth Clark, the world experienced a burst of energy, of hope, of confidence, and of “creative fervor.” It took a leap forward that was unthinkable under ordinary circumstances of the time. Clark attributes that burst of energy to the triumph of the Church, not the Church as a repository of Christian truth, but as a power, Ecclesia, sitting like an empress on her throne. Matilda’s life coincided exactly with the period historians call the “Investiture Conflict,” which was part of a larger movement variously called the Gregorian reform or papal revolution. In the biographical section of this exhibit, Matilda’s participation in these and other historical events will be demonstrated according to a chronology of pivotal years that will also constitute an outline of two very special relationships: first, her devotion to her mother, Beatrice, from whom she learned about governance, and second, with Pope Gregory VII, from whom she absorbed a vision of a greater church, and therefore world, than currently existed.

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Without descending into further details covered below, suffice it to say, that the title of this exhibition, Matilda of Canossa and the Origins of the Renaissance, makes a bold claim, particularly for a woman whose name is virtually unknown in the United States. Matilda’s patronage of writers and miniaturists, architects and sculptors, lawyers and notaries, was unique among the nobility of Europe at her time. Her military victories, as we shall see, established the reforms of her deceased friend Pope Gregory VII, and created the opening that allowed her to invite Wernerius to renew the study of the laws of the Emperor Justinian, thereby providing legal training for those men who were to administer her lands after her death. Not entitled by feudal law to inherit her father’s territories, Matilda reverted to a law that would give women a voice in a world where they had none. Donizone called her docta, “learned,” no casual compliment for a medieval woman. Anselmo d’Aosta, Archbishop of Canterbury, dedicated his Orationes sive meditationes (Prayers and Meditations) to Matilda enclosing them in a letter of 1104; she gave him a manuscript in return. Matilda’s legacy continues to enrich us to this day. Her interest in and support for literacy and legal education makes The College of William & Mary the ideal location for this exhibition celebrating the 900th Anniversary of the death of the Gran Contessa.

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Santa Maria in Castello, Tarquinia, restored by the Countess Matilda, c. 1100

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Frontispiece, Corpus Iuris Civilis. Edited by Denis Godefroy, Amsterdam, 1663. Image courtesy of College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library

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The Significance of the Corpus Juris Civilis:

Matilda of Canossa and the Revival of of Roman Law by Thomas J. McSweeney and Michèle K. Spike

Roman law has had an undeniable influence on modern legal systems. About two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries that have civil-law systems, which proudly claim Roman law as their progenitor. The Anglo-American common law, which covers about another quarter of the world’s population, tends to think of itself as very English and immune to outside influences. But even the common law cannot deny the debt it owes to Roman law. Many of the legal categories that we think of as fundamental and universal—public and private, civil and criminal, property and contract—are actually Roman in origin. When we think of Roman law, we usually think of ancient figures like Cicero and ancient texts like the Twelve Tables, but the Roman law that has exerted such a powerful influence over the world’s legal systems is actually a much later Roman law. It has come down to us through compilations made in the sixth century, after the Western Roman Empire had fallen. These texts only became significant in Western Europe because of a renewed interest in the laws of Rome in eleventhcentury Italy which, as fate would have it, would launch Roman law onto the European scene. From the twelfth century onwards, Roman law was deeply embedded in European legal culture.

Justinian and the Revision of the Law Early in his reign, the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565) initiated a program to restore the law of the early Roman Empire. This legal restoration was part of a broader program of restoring the empire’s glory, which included plans to reconquer the Western empire from the Germanic tribes that had seized most of it in the previous century. He began by creating a commission in 528 to look through the imperial legislation of the last few centuries, to revise it where necessary, and to compile it “in a single book (codicem), under our blessed name.”1 When this text, called the Codex, was completed, Justinian commissioned a group of law professors to work through the “two thousand books and three million lines” of writing by the great jurists of the first through third centuries and to “present the diverse books of so many authors in a single volume.”2 The professors were to take the best of the opinions, change them where they were faulty, and arrange them all in a work of fifty books, which would be promulgated by the emperor and have the same authority as a legislative act. This work, completed in 533, was known as the Digest or Pandects. At the same time, Justinian promulgated a legal textbook, called the Institutes, meant for beginning law students. The Digest, the Institutes, and an updated version of the Codex, promulgated in 534, would collectively come to be known as the Corpus Iuris Civilis, or the body of civil law.3

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Teaching the Law: Matilda, Pepo, and Irnerius Justinian’s plans to reconquer the Western empire enjoyed very limited success and, within a short time, the empire had lost much of what it had regained. The Justinianic corpus therefore never really took hold in the Western part of the Roman Empire and had little influence in Western Europe between the sixth and the eleventh centuries.4 In the eleventh century something sparked an interest in Justinian’s corpus. Historians have described this event as the “big bang” both because of its enormous influence on European legal thought and because of the obscurity of the event itself.5 The reasons why people in Italy suddenly became interested in these texts, which had lain dormant for five hundred years, are murky. Scholars have posited reasons for the Roman-law revival as diverse as the commercial revolution that occurred in Northern Italy in the high middle ages, the political strife between the papacy and the German emperors, the increasing sophistication of Lombard law, and the rediscovery of the Digest.6 Whatever the reason for the revival, the rise of Roman law is inextricably bound with the rise of Europe’s first university, the University of Bologna, which was recognized by the end of the twelfth century as Christian Europe’s premiere center for legal study. People would travel from all over Europe to study with its legal luminaries, who established rock-star-like reputations that spanned the continent. Thomas Becket, the famous archbishop of Canterbury and martyr-saint of the late twelfth century, was sent to Bologna to study law early in his career.7 By 1174 there were enough English students there to dedicate an altar to him in one of Bologna’s churches.8 These foreign students took their learning back to their home countries, and Bologna’s teaching would become the model for Roman-law teaching throughout Europe. But as significant as the University of Bologna would become, we know very little of its founding. We have no contemporary accounts of the beginnings of the teaching of Roman law at Bologna. What we do have are later written accounts of the history of the university. In the middle of the thirteenth century, when a teacher at Bologna named Odofredus lectured to his students on the history of the university, he identified a man named Irnerius (who appears to have called himself Warnerius or Guarnerius) as the “light of the law” who established Roman law studies in the city in the first decades of the twelfth century and another man named Pepo as Irnerius’ teacher.9 Scholars have traditionally taken Odofredus and other chroniclers of the university at their word and have credited Pepo and Irnerius with everything from rearranging the Digest, to writing extensive glosses on Justinian’s texts, to developing the scholastic method for teaching law. There has been some skepticism recently about their role in establishing Roman-law studies at Bologna and the truth is we have no direct, contemporary evidence that either of these men taught law at Bologna.10 It is likely that these two men did something to make them worthy of memory, however. Pepo’s contemporaries associated him with Roman law. In a record of a March 1076 case, dated at BorgoMarturi in south Tuscany, the notary listed him as a legis doctor (teacher of law).11 The case turned on a citation to the Digest with a sophisticated legal analysis of real property law. The evidence also points to connections between Pepo and Irnerius and Matilda of Canossa. Matilda was remembered as Irnerius’ patroness in later centuries: the German priest Burchard von Ursberg wrote in the early thirteenth century that “the Lord Wernerius renewed the books of law which had been compiled by the Emperor Justinian from a wealth of records and which formerly had been neglected and which up to then no one had studied, at the petition of Countess Matilda...” 12

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Contemporary evidence confirms that Matilda and her mother Beatrice patronized the two jurists. In the 1076 case where he is listed as a legis doctor, Pepo appears to have been in Beatrice’s employ. He is listed along with a bank of judges headed by Nordillo, who is specifically said to be the “legate of the Lady Beatrice, duchess and marchioness.”13 In March 1076, Beatrice was with Matilda, who was tending her mother in her last illness in nearby Pisa.14 In addition to this proceeding, Pepo is recorded on several occasions in Matilda’s presence, acting as advocatus, or lawyer, for monasteries associated with the House of Canossa. On June 7, 107215 and February 19, 1078,16 Pepo represented the Monastery of San Salvatore at Monte Amiata. In a document of November 23, 1080,“Peponem” appears at Ferrara with Matilda as the lawyer of the Document issued at Borgo Marturi, March 1076, Archivio di Stato, Firenze, Carte della Badia di Borgo Marturi Monastery of Pomposa.17 Ferrara, located north of the Apennines, is about 50 km (or 31 miles) from Bologna. Both the monasteries at Monte Amiata and at Pomposa received rich donations from Matilda and her parents.18 Irnerius was also associated with Matilda’s court towards the very end of her life; he appears as a lawyer in Matilda’s courts starting in 1112.19 In May 1113 “Warnerius de Bononia” appears as “causidicus,” or lawyer, in a document in which the Countess takes the Monastery of Sant’Andrea in Ravenna under her protection. Three years later, immediately after the death of Matilda, between May and October 1116, “Warnerius iudex” or “Wernerius bononiensis iudex”(Warnerius of Bologna judge ) signed nine Imperial edicts issued by the Emperor Henry V.20 These documents effected agreements Matilda made with Henry V four years before her death. In 1111, Matilda agreed that, at her death, the entirety of the territory which Matilda’s father, Bonifacio, had held in feud and which under Germanic custom she, as a woman, would not be allowed to inherit,21 would be returned to Henry V, who was her closest male heir as well as the king and emperor (“rex et imperator”).22 She specifically excluded properties previously donated by herself and her ancestors to named monasteries.23 In the 1116 documents Henry V appears to be putting the terms of this agreement into effect.24 The emperor’s edicts benefit the monasteries at Pomposa and at San Benedetto Po to which the House of Canossa had donated substantial properties.25 Henry also confirmed the restitution of property to the Church of Parma which Matilda’s allies in the reform papacy had been demanding for years.26 When the Emperor returned to north

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Italy, in 1118, he granted his protection to the monastery at Bombiana, located along the pass through the Apennines that connects Bologna with Florence, which Matilda had established on August 9, 1098.27 In the 1116 and 1118 documents, “Warnerius iudex” signed directly below Henry V’s cross, see exhibit 4. As all these documents effect the prior agreements of the Countess, it is possible that Warnerius was acting on Matilda’s behalf before the Emperor.28 The other witnesses listed on the documents include judices and causidici, lay vassals, Bishops and Abbots, and laymen from the area – people, institutions, and groups who were part of Matilda’s court.29 Thus, although there is no direct, contemporary evidence that Irnerius was actually in Matilda’s employ, contemporary documents indicate that he was in the presence of the Emperor Henry V together with other members of Matilda’s court, effecting acts which she desired. We cannot draw a direct line between Matilda and Irnerius and Bologna, but it is certainly possible that she knew him and asked him to renew the study of the Emperor Justinian’s law books. There are many reasons why Matilda might have wanted jurists trained in Roman law in her entourage. Roman law was gaining in prestige in the eleventh century, partly because Matilda’s great rivals, the Emperors Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V, claimed to be the successors to the ancient Roman emperors and made appeals to Roman law to legitimate themselves; Henry III actually cited the Codex in one of his own constitutions in 1047.30 But once the emperors began to use Roman law to legitimate themselves, others could hold them to Roman law’s standards. Matilda would have had reason to do so. In the year 1076, the year in which we first see Pepo in Countess Beatrice’s employ, Matilda was embroiled in a major conflict with the emperor over her inheritance from her father. The emperor had followed prevailing German custom in investing Matilda’s husband, Godfrey, with her ancestral lands.31 When Godfrey died in 1076, he willed Matilda’s lands to his own nephew, cutting Matilda out entirely.32 Matilda was placed in the position of having to defend her patrimony against the emperor and against her husband’s appointed heir, neither of whom wanted her in control of Tuscany. Roman law allowed a daughter to inherit and control her father’s land, and would have given Matilda another weapon to use in her propaganda war against the emperor.33 Matilda’s turn to Romanists may also have been related to her involvement in the Gregorian reform movement. Roman law was used by some of the imperial and papal polemicists to support their sides.34 The year 1076 was also part of an active period of hostility between Pope Gregory and Henry IV, a period in which Matilda was one of the major political players. Gregory issued the Dictatus Papae in 1075 and Henry IV’s humiliation at Matilda’s castle of Canossa would occur in 1077.35 We cannot be certain of the role, if any, Matilda played in establishing the teaching of Roman law at Bologna. We only have the contemporary evidence of connections between her and Pepo and Irnerius combined with the memory of Roman jurists a century after the events happened. The best we can say is that two men who were associated early on with Roman law and its revival actively participated in the courts of the two great countesses, Matilda and Beatrice. We can also say that the first mention of the Digest in over three centuries occurred in 1076 under the authority of Beatrice, Matilda’s mother.36 Justinian’s Digest prevailed over other codes of law, including Salic and Lombard, in the century after Matilda’s death. Pepo, Irnerius and their students were intellectually committed to Roman law as the template for all law. They staffed the bureaucracies of the ruling elites, whether Kings, the Church, nobility, like Beatrice and Matilda, or the communes liberated in the course of Matilda’s rebellion from the German empire. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the bureaucracies became more sophisticated as each group sought to expand their political power.

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The Ius Commune Bologna very quickly became an international center for the study of law. Works by Bolognese scholars, such as the jurist Azo’s treatises on the Institutes and Codex, would circulate throughout Europe.37 Canon law studies blossomed there, as well. A scholar named Gratian wrote his Concordance of Discordant Canons, a work that would become the primary textbook of canon law throughout Western Christendom, at Bologna around 1140.38 By the end of the twelfth century, the two laws were being taught together as if they formed a coherent whole; a medieval proverb stated that “A Romanist without canon law isn’t worth much and a canonist without Roman law is worth nothing at all.” 39 In the twelfth century, jurists began to refer to them as utrumque ius (both laws) or the ius commune (the common law). Roman law acquired a quasi-divine status; medieval jurists saw it as the universal law of Western Christendom, something close to a Platonic form of law that the laws of individual kingdoms should, ideally, emulate. We see this kind of subtle influence in legal texts from Spain, Sicily, Southern Italy, France, Germany, and Scandinavia.40 Even the English common law, which has long been seen as an outlier among European legal systems, was heavily influenced by Roman law in its early centuries.41 The texts of Justinian’s corpus remained central to the study of Roman law. Some of the earliest works of Roman-law scholarship that survive are glosses on these texts.42 Often collectively called “the jurist’s Bible,” Justinian’s texts held a quasi-sacral status throughout the middle ages. A sixthcentury copy of the Digest, known today as the Littera Florentina, became one of the great treasures of Italy. It now resides in Florence, which took it from Pisa as a prize of war in 1406, see exhibit 6.43 The Littera Bononiensis, the version of the Digest used at the University of Bologna, became the gold standard for editions of the Digest in the middle ages and was used in all of Europe’s universities; since there was no printing press and copies had to be made by hand, the university placed careful controls on the copying of the Digest to ensure that copies were as uniform as possible.44 Justinian’s Digest, Codex, and Institutes were some of the first books printed in the second half of the fifteenth century. Although the Littera Bononiensis was considered authoritative for purposes of legal practice, the demand for a text that more accurately reflected Justinian’s original led the Italian humanist LelioTorelli to seek permission from Cosimo de Medici to edit the Littera Florentina, the text of which, after extensive comparison, was determined to be more complete than the copy in Bologna. He published the first edition of that manuscript in 1553, see exhibit 9.45 In 1583, Denis Godefroy, a French scholar of Roman law residing in Geneva, published a single, combined edition of the Institutes, Digest, and Codex and gave it the name it has borne ever since: the Corpus Iuris Civilis, see exhibit 10.46 While medieval students of Roman law focused on the Digest and all its subtleties, the Institutes rose in prominence in the early modern period as a text that could teach beginning law students the fundamentals of a legal system.47 The Dutch jurist Arnoldus Vinnius published an influential Latin edition of the Institutes in 1642.48 The edition contained an extensive Latin commentary, which incorporated the opinions and glosses of medieval and early modern jurists.49 Vinnius’ edition and commentary were read throughout Europe and in the American colonies. John Adams read it as he prepared for the bar, and the celebrated Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story cited Vinnius in his works.50 George Wythe, William & Mary’s first law professor, owned a copy, which he left to Thomas Jefferson in his will, see exhibit 11.

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The Institutes were first translated into English by George Harris, a lawyer who practiced in the English ecclesiastical courts, in 1753.51 Harris’ translation made its way into many British and American libraries, including that of George Wythe, see exhibit 12.52 Thomas Cooper re-edited Harris’ text for an American audience, commending the Institutes to American lawyers on the ground that “a competent knowledge of the general principles of the Civil law, is expected as a matter of course among the Bar, as well as upon the Bench.”53 Cooper was perhaps overstating his case, but the Institutes and other parts of Justinian’s corpus were cited with some frequency by American courts.54 Justice Tompkins’ opinion in that old chestnut of property law, the 1805 New York Supreme Court case Pierson v. Post, relies partially on the Institutes for its reasoning.55 Cooper’s edition, published in Philadelphia in 1812, tried to relate the to American legal practice. It included additional notes on American laws and cases relating to the topics covered in the Institutes, see exhibit 13. The Institutes also exerted an indirect influence on the Anglo-American common law and the way lawyers learned it for over a century. The institutional framework was adopted by many of the common law’s most influential authors. William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, the standard text for teaching law in England and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was modelled on the Institutes, as was Chancellor Kent’s Commentaries on American Law.56 The Corpus Iuris Civilis declined in importance as a legal text when many countries began to codify their national law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The civil codes adopted by countries like France and Germany, and copied by many others, were meant to be comprehensive; ius commune was no longer relevant to legal practice. But the influence of Justinian’s texts continued even in these codes, which took much of their organization, many of their doctrines, and the very idea that there should be an authoritative and comprehensive legal text from the Digest, Institutes, and Codex. This idea was influential even in the early American Republic. In a letter dated at Monticello on June 17, 1812 to Judge John Tyler, Thomas Jefferson calls Justinian’s Code of Roman Civil Laws “a system of perfect justice.” 57 A committee was established in 1776 that included Jefferson, Tom Lee, George Mason, Edmund Pendleton, and George Wythe to discuss what law the American colonies should adopt. The committee considered codification on the civil-law model: “Whether we should undertake to reduce the common law, our own & so much of the English, statutes as we have adopted, to a text, is a question of transcendent difficulty. It was discussed at the first meeting of the committee of the Revised code in 1776 & decided in the negative by the opinions of Wythe, Mason & myself, against Pendleton & Tom Lee.” A statutory or civil law system was rejected because of the inevitable period of litigation that would ensue to clarify such a new code. In particular Jefferson cited the extensive commentaries that the Institutes of Justinian had engendered as well as “the bustle of the times which] did not admit leisure for such an undertaking.”58 Although the Corpus Iuris Civilis is not at the forefront of our legal consciousness today, it is hard to understate its importance to the development of the world’s legal systems. Virtually every lawyer in the world has encountered some element of Roman law in her career, whether she knows it or not. The “big bang” that brought Roman law onto the world stage happened during Matilda’s lifetime, in Matilda’s part of the world, and was associated with people who worked in Matilda’s courts. The details, have, unfortunately, been obscured by time. But whatever the underlying reasons for the revival of Justinian’s corpus, and whatever role Matilda of Canossa played in it, the events of the eleventh century sparked a revolution in legal thought. We owe many of our fundamental legal ideas and concepts to the medieval revival of Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis.

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1 Code Just.Haec Quae Necessario. Translation by author. 2 Alan Watson, ed. The Digest of Justinian, 4 vols.(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), Constitutio de Auctore.2, Constitutio Omnem.1. 3 Peter Stein, Roman Law in European History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 32-35. 4 The Digest, in particular, appears to have been almost completely unknown. Charles M. Radding and Antonio Ciaralli, The Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages: Manuscripts and Transmission from the Sixth Century to the Juristic Revival (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 40, 65. 5 Kenneth Pennington, “The “Big Bang”: Roman Law in the Early Twelfth Century,” Rivista internazionale di diritto comune 18 (2007). 6 SeeLester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 30; Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Charles M. Radding, The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna 850-1150(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 7 Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London: Phoenix Press, 1986), 37. 8 James A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 224. 9 Anders Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 158. 10 Anders Winroth, in particular, has argued that there is little evidence of sophisticated Roman law teaching at Bologna before the 1140s.Ibid., 157-70; For a recent argument that the teaching of law at Bologna was already well established by the 1120s and 1130s, seePennington, “”Big Bang”,” 43-70. 11 Radding and Ciaralli, Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages, 183. The document is published in its entirety by Luciana CambiSchmitter, Carta dellaBadia di Marturinell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze (971-1199), Polistampa 2009, no. 9, pp. 77-78. 12 Burchard von Ursberg, Die Chronik Des Propstes Burchard Von Ursberg, 2nd ed., Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hannover and Leipzig: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1916), 15. Translation by author. 13 The text says that the case was heard “in the presence of Nordillo, the legate of the Lady Beatrice, duchess and marchioness.” Schmitter, Carta dellaBadia di Marturi, 77. Translation by author. 14 Donizone I, fol 46r, vv 1355-1356 15 Goez 1998, no. 2, pp. 35-39, at Caleraki on June 7, 1072; . 16 Goez 1998, no. 25, pp. 95-97, at Puntiglo, February 19, 1078. 17 Goez 1998, no. 32,pp. 114-116, at Ferrara, November 23, 1080. 18 See Goez 1998, no. 2, pp. 35-39, dated June 7, 1072 and no. 25, pp. 95-97, dated February 19, 1078, Donizone I, chapters XV and XVI, vv 1070 – 1137, for relationship of Matilda’s father with the Monastery at Pomposa. 19 Brundage, Medieval Origins, 84. The first document in

which Irnerius “causidicus” or lawyer, appears is in aplacito in Cornacervina of June 28, 1112, involving the monastery at Pomposa, NerioZanardi, Capitoli Bolognesidella Stori d’Italia: Da Irnerio a Carducci, Bologna 1997, p. 10; “causidici quoque Wernerius de Bononia” appears before Matilda in May 1113, at Baviana, see Goez 1998, no. 128, pp. 331-32, dated May 1113 at ‘Baviana’. 20 For a list of documents in which Irnerius appears see: Nerio Zanardi, Capitoli Bolognesi della Storia d’Italia: da Irnerio a Carducci, Bologna 1997, p.12, who writes at ( p. 22) that Irnerius retired to Bologna and died c. 1135. Of the documents listed by Zanardi, most are signed Wernerius iudex,. On April 8, 1116 at Reggio Emilia at a placito of Henry V, among those listed as present is “Vuarnerius de Bononia”, and on May 13, 1116 at Governolo “Wernerius bononiensis Ubaldus de Carpenetha iudices“ are listed as present; G. Mazzanti, Irnerio: contributo a una biografia in Rivista internazionale di diritto comune, 11, 2000, pp. 120-25; Enrico Spagnesi, Libros legum renovavit: Irnerio lucerna e propagatore del diritto, ed. il Campano, Pisa 2013, pp. 49-52, who writes that “most refer to him as “Wernerius bononiensis iudex” at p. 49 . 21 See eg Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001) Inheritance under Salic law is governed by Title 59.5 which provides that no land may be inherited by a woman but all of it must go to the male sons. « De terra vero nulla (salica) in muliere hereditas non pertinebit, sed ad virilem sexum qui fratres fuerint tota terra pertineat. » 22 See Paolo Colliva, Irnerio da Bologna, Comune di Bologna, Quartiere Irnerio, 1982, p. 20. See also, M.K. Spike, Tuscan Countess: The Life and Extraordinary Times of Matilda of Canossa, New York 2004, pp. 29, 73, 277-8, n 10. 23 Spike 2004, pp. 252-3. See also: Buzzacchi-Migliorini 1968, p. 17, citing Bacchini 1696, p. 89; Cantarella in Golinelli 1998, p. 76; Cowdrey 1978, p. 197: «Henry V] promised his protection to the possessions held by the Monasteries of Cluny, within the borders of the Empire, and in particular that of Polirone». 24 “Immediately after the death of the Countess,the Emperor Henry V arrived in Italy to take up his inheritance, but in the nine documents in which Irnerius appears with him, the emperor confirms his protection of the monasteries at Pomposa and at San Benedetto Po , the restitutioto the Church of Parma, the pardon and privilege to the comune of Bologna – in all of which the Emperor is surrounded by judices and causidici, lay vassals, Bishops and Abbots, and laymen from the area – people, institutions, and groups, which were in the Canossan court. Paolo Colliva, Irnerio da Bologna, Comune di Bologna, Quartiere Irnerio, 1982, p. 20. 25 Imperial privilege dated May 6, 1116, at Governolo, in favor of the Monastery at Pomposa, Zanardi 1997, p. 12; Donizone I, chapters XV and XVI, vv 1070 – 1137, for relationship of Matilda’s father with the Monastery at Pomposa. Imperial donation May 12, 1116, at Governolo, in favor of the Monastery of San Benedetto Po, Zanardi 1997, p. 12; San Benedetto Po was the beneficiary of significant donations by the Countess throughout her life, and it is the place of her

27


original tomb. 26 Imperial placito dated at Reggio Emilia, on April 8, 1116, before Abbot of Cluny and a various vassals of Matilda, in favor of the church of Parma,Zanardi 1997, p. 12; Matilda had fought for Roman control over the church of Parma for much of her life. The anti-Popes Cadulus II and Clement III came from Parma (Donizone II, fol 32r-33r, vv 843-885; Donizone II, fol 68r, vv 767-768) Parma remained allied to Clement III and refused to reconcile with Matilda even after she defeated Henry IV at Canossa in 1092. Parma opposed Pope Urban II through his entire papacy. Pope Paschal II’s attempt to seat a Gregorian bishop in Parma in August of 1104 was violently rejected by the people of Parma. (Donizone, II, fol 74r-75r, vv 963-1006) Parma refused to accept the Gregorian reform of the Roman church until 1106, after the Council of bishops held by Paschal II at Guastalla in October of that year. In November 1106, Matilda accompanied Paschal into this Lombard stronghold which had more than once conspired for her demise. At Parma, Pope Paschal II re-consecrated the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and invested Bernardo degli Uberti, Matilda’s close advisor and ally, as Parma’s bishop. Goez 1998, no.96, pp 264-66 dated November 5, 1106. See also Goez 1998 Dep no. 102, p. 458. 27 Imperial edict of protection dated June 12, 1118, at Bombiana, Zanardi 1997, p. 12, For Matilda’s relationship with the hospice at the monastery of Bombiania see: Goez 1998, doc no. 49, pp. 151-54, at Spedaletto in Val di Limentra, dated August 9, 1098; Goez 1998, Dep no 97 p. 455. R. Zagnoni, “Abbazia di San Salvatore della Fontana Taona”, in Il Romanico Appenninico, 2000; Renzo Zagnoni, Gli Ospitali di Bombiana ed i ponti di Svignano: Un complesso viario dalla Dipendenza Monastica a quella dal comune di Bologna (Secoli XI–XIV), in Atti e memorie della Deputazione di storia patria per Province ci Romagna, 1996, pp. 205-251; republished in Il Medioevo nella montagna toscobolognese, uomini strutture in una terra di confine, 2004, pp. 57-82. 28 For arguments for and against Irnerius in the role of counselor of the Countess, see Spagnesi 2013, pp. 52-58 and in particular, Wolf Eckhart Voss, IrneriusRechtsberater der Mathilde, seine Rolle und seine BedeudungimInvestiturstreit, in ipoteridei Canossa, p. 61, who argues that Irnerius was “consiglieregiuridico” to the Countess. 29 Nerio Zanardi, Irnerius: Rechtsberater, Bologna 1997, p.12-20. In the documents, with “Warnerius bononiensis”, also appears “Ubaldus de Carpenetha iudice” who frequently appeared with Matilda during her lifetime.G. Mazzanti, “Irnerio: Contributo a unabiografia”, in Rivista insternazionale di diritto comune, 11, 2000, pp. 120-125. See e.g. Archivio Storico di Milano, Diplomi e Dispacci Sovrani_Germania: faldone 1, 16 maggio 1116. For the existence of a court around Matilda see: G. Ropa Testimonianze di vita culturale nei monastery matildici nei secoli XI-XII, in Studi matildici. Atti e memorie del II convegno di studi matildici (Modena-Reggio E, 1-2-3 maggio 1970) Modena 1971, p. 231; and G. Boni, Sciluppi della canonistica al tempo di Matilde di Canossa in pp. 45-115 30 Radding and Ciaralli, Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages, 83.

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31 Spike 2004, 73. 32 Ibid., 102, 10. 33 Chris Wickham, “Rural economy and society”, in Italy in the Early Middle Ages, Cristina La Rocca, ed. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 141 “Lombards regarded women as permanently subjected to men – in turn to their father, their brothers, at their father’s death, their husband at marriage, and their sons at their husband’s death – and as incapable of taking legal action or having any public role except through the mediation of their guardians….Both Rothari and Liutprand expatiate upon the inconceivability that women might bear arms and its immorality if they did.” 34 Radding, Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence, 114. 35 Spike 2004, 18-19 36 Enrico Spagnesi, Libros legum renovavit: Irnerio lucerna e propagatore del diritto, ed. il Campano, Pisa 2013, p. 8. 37 See Azo, Summa Azonis Sive Locuples Iuris Civilix Thesaurus (Venice 1581). 38 Winroth, Making of Gratian’s Decretum, 140-45. 39 Brundage, Medieval Origins, 234, n. 55. 40 See Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995). 41 Thomas McSweeney, “English Judges and Roman Jurists: The Civilian Learning Behind England’s First Case Law,” Temple Law Review 84(2012); Thomas J. McSweeney, “Property before Property: Romanizing the English Law of Land,” Buffalo Law Review 60(2012). 42 Bellomo, Common Legal Past, 130-33. 43 Radding and Ciaralli, Corpus Iuris Civilis in the Middle Ages, 169. 44 Harry Dondorp and Eltjo J.H. Schrage, “The Sources of Medieval Learned Law,” in The Creation of the Ius Commune: From Casus to Regula, ed. John W. Cairns and Paul J. du Plessis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 14. 45 Laelius Taurellus and Franciscus Taurellius, Digestorum Seu Pandectarum Libri Quinquaginta Ex Florentinis Pandectis Repraesentati(Florence1553). 46 Ernest Grégoire, “Godefroy, Denis 1er,“ in Nouvelle Biographie Générale, vol. 19-20 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde et Bagger, 1966), 899-900. 47 Stein, Roman Law in European History, 80. 48 Michael H. Hoeflich, “Vinnius and the Anglo-American Legal World,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Romanistische Abteilung 114(1997): 348. 49 Ibid., 348-9. 50 Ibid., 356-9. 51 George Harris, trans., D. JustinianiInstitutionumLibriQuator, The Four Books of Justinian’s Institutions(London: 1753). 52 Wythe also appears to have owned a Latin edition of Vinnius’ text.Bennie Brown, “The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond,” (unpublished manuscript, May, 2012) Microsoft Word file. Earlier edition available at: https:// digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/13433. 53 Thomas Cooper, trans., The Institutes of Justinian (Philadelphia: 1812), viii.


54 Richard H. Helmholz, “The Use of the Civil Law in PostRevolutionary American Jurisprudence,” Tulane Law Review 66(1992): 1654. 55 Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. R. 175, 2 Am. Dec. 264. 56 Philip Girard, “‘Of Institutes and Treatises’: Blackstone’s Commentaries, Kent’s Commentaries and Murdoch’s Epitome of the Laws of Nova-Scotia,” in Law Books in Action: Essays on the Anglo-American Legal Treatise, ed. Angela Fernandez and Marcus D. Dubber (2012), pp. 43-62. 57 To Judge John Tyler, “For however I admit the superiority of the Civil, over the Common law code, as a system of perfect justice, yet an incorporation of the two would be like Nebuchadnezzar’s image of metals & clay, a thing without cohesion of parts.” The papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series, Volume 5, 1812-1813, Princeton and Oxford Princeton

University Press 2005, pp. 135-137. 58 “In that case the meaning of every word of Blackstone would have become a source of litigation until it had been settled by repeated legal decisions, and to come at that meaning we should have had produced on all occasions that very pile of authorities from which it would be said he drew his conclusion & which of course would explain it, and the terms in which it is couched. Thus we should have retained the same chaos of law lore from which we wished to be emancipated, added to the evils of uncertainty which a new text, & new phrases would have generated. An example of this may be found in the old statutes and commentaries on them in Coke’s 2d institute; but more remarkably in the Institute of Justinian, & the vase masses, explanatory, or supplementary of that which fills the libraries of the Civilians. We were deterred from the attempt by these considerations, added to which, the bustle of the times did not admit leisure for such an undertaking.” Ibid.

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Mosaic Tribute to Matilda showing the cardinal virtues, floor of the Chapel of Mary, San Benedetto Po, 1151

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The Afterlife of Matilda of Canossa (1115-2015) by Paolo Golinelli

As often happens to all great personalities in history, the life of Matilda did not end with her death, but was preserved in the collective memory, through a process of remembrance and imitation, as well as in the constant discursive revival carried on by posterity. The year after her death, 1116, Emperor Henry V went to Italy with his wife, Matilda of England, to take possession of the estate and inheritance of the Countess and, at Canossa, he was welcomed by the monk Donizone.1 If Matilda had wanted to leave her possessions to the Church, the document had disappeared, therefore the Emperor Henry V, a distant relative of hers, was able to claim her goods. The question of inheritance was proposed again upon the death of Henry V, and was claimed by Pope Innocent II in 1132 with a bull in which he granted it in usufruct to the Emperor Lothair III,2 leaving things as they were, but changing their legal definition. On 7 October of that year, the Pope went to S. Benedetto Po to visit the tomb of the Countess Matilda. First interred outside the Church of St. Benedict, built by Matilda, at that time the Countess’s body found a new home in the transept of the chapel of Santa Maria, where, in 1151, a mosaic was laid which symbolized the four lay cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) and other figures that represent the struggle between good and evil.3 San Benedetto became her mausoleum, and as such was visited in the following centuries, probably even by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), when he was in exile at the court of Cangrande della Scala at Verona.4 In the period in which Dante lived, the name Matilda was linked to the myth of the more than a hundred churches that were associated with the Countess,5 and he made her the symbol of the active life on top of the mountain of Purgatory, where he places the Terrestrial Paradise. Matelda, as Dante calls her, leads him to meet Beatrice, symbol of the contemplative life, who will guide the poet in Paradise. But Beatrice, besides being the woman sung by Dante, was also the mother of Matilda. Her daughter had buried her in an ancient Roman sarcophagus, which can still be admired in the Camposanto in Pisa. Dante had seen that tomb and he revives the daughter and mother couple, Matilda-Beatrice. Of Matilda, though, he may only have known the name and the myth of an “ extremely generous woman ( munificentissima), who flourished around the year 1060, who was a most virtuous ruler and built countless churches, endowing them with numerous properties. She was also very powerful in her time, leading a war against the Emperor, and when she was approaching death, brought all her patrimony to Rome, on St. Peter’s altar, what today is called “the Patrimony of the Church”, as Dante’s son, Pietro wrote.6 In the Renaissance, the figure of Matilda was revived for her example by various women writers of the time;7 she is remembered as a Christian heroine in the two outstanding epic poems by the major writers of the Italian Renaissance: in the Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), and in the Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) , and as a central character in the history of Florence and Italy by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527).8 In the same period she was chosen as a model by Lucrezia Pico (1458-1511), aunt of the famous philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Lucrezia made a large donation, and was buried next to Matilda in the Church of San Benedetto Po.9

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The famous painter and architect Giulio Romano (1499-1546) was commissioned to paint the meeting at Canossa and an image of the Countess in the “Hall of the fire” in the Vatican, but then was forced to change the subject and to paint the Donation of Constantine, less offensive to the Emperor (the preparatory drawings of the meeting at Canossa have been preserved),10 and in a fresco, which has now disappeared. In that same room, Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci, called Il Perugino (1446-1523), painted Matilda’s face in a wing of the ceiling.11 But Matilda and her donation to the church became a real touchstone at the time of the 16thcentury reforms: Protestant and Catholic. During her lifetime, when the conflict for investitures between the Emperor and the Papacy was rife, Matilda had been the subject of praise from those who stood with the Pope, and of expletives from the supporters of the Emperor. Now those positions were becoming current again, so while for the Church of Rome Matilda was the champion of the Papacy, for the Protestants she was responsible for the humiliation of a King, Henry IV at Canossa, a despicable woman, mistress of Gregory VII.12 It is easy to recognize her while she is giving away her possessions to the Pope, as we see in the illustrations of the Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521) by Lucas Cranach the Elder13 with lyrics by Martin Luther,14 in contrast to Jesus who throws out the merchants from the temple, and, perhaps, even in one of the figures surrounding the Pope, while the Emperor is kissing his slipper (the Fusskuss), compared to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (the Fusswasch).15 The contrast is pointed out at the end of the 16th century in different interpretations of the meeting of Canossa by the Centuriators of Magdeburg and by the Annales Ecclesiastici of Cardinal Caesar Baronius.16 After the Council of Trent, Matilda is recognized by the Catholic Church as one of the greatest supporters of the Papacy, author of the donation to the Church of her estate, a donation that was added to the (false) one of Constantine, making the Papal States stretch out and reach from Lazio to Bologna and to Ferrara, passing through parts of Abruzzo, Umbria, Marche and Romagna. In 1632 Pope Urban VIII Barberini purchased from the monastery of San. Benedetto Po the body of Matilda, which he secretly transferred to Rome,17 where he had the grandiose monument raised in St. Peter‘s, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and his assistants, which was finished only in 1644.18 In the 17th century, the biographies of the “Gran Contessa” multiply, since several Italian dynasties want to claim their relationship with her, as the Malaspina,19 the Estensi20 and the Canossa of Verona.21 But, during the Enlightenment, when the historiographical debate was ignited, to those scholars who praised Matilda, such as Benedetto Bacchini22 and Ludovico Antonio Muratori,23 were opposed to those followers of the Enlightenment that scorned her as an exponent of a dark Medieval Age. Voltaire, treating of Pope Gregory VII, wrote that “ce petit homme très pétulant et quelquefois très vif abusa quelquefois de sa pénitente, qui était femme, faible, et capricieuse: rien n’est plus commun dans l’ordre des choses humaines».24] The name of Matilda returned during the Risorgimento.25 When Italians sought to unify a territory which had been divided in so many little states, a movement, called “neo-Guelph”, would have liked to see a united Italy under Pope Pius IX. For the neo-Guelphs Matilda was an example of the agreement between religious (Pope Gregory VII) and political power (Matilda). Certainly for this reason and also to exploit the current cultural fashion, Antonio Bresciani (1798-1862), a Jesuit, one of the founders of the “Civiltà Cattolica”, wrote a historical novel: Matilde di Canossa and Yolande of Groningen (1857-58), which had a considerable editorial success, evidenced by the sales, the numerous Italian editions (1858, 1867, 1876, 1891) as well as the translations in Europe and the United States (French translations in 1859 and 1862, German in 1868, English in 1875, New

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York26 with several reprints.), with several reprints. France was also involved in the second war of independence of the Italian Risorgimento (1859), and Napoleon III intervened in Italy on the side of Piedmont to defeat the Austrians. It was on that occasion that a prominent French historian, Amédée Renée wrote a biography of Matilda, entitled La grande italienne Mathilde de Toscane, Paris 1859, that bore a portrait of Matilda, executed by Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, cousin of the Emperor, well-known for her cultural salon that welcomed artists, writers, and politicians in Paris.27 Matilda of Canossa was re-invented as a heroine, an emblematic representative of the Italian and French struggle against the Germans. By contrast, in Germany, the meeting of Canossa in 1077, and the advocate of that event, the Countess Matilda, were interpreted as a disgrace that weighed on the national consciousness at the very moment when German unification was established under the second Reich of Germany (1871). On May 14 1872, the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, during a session of Parliament pronounced the famous phrase: “Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht” (we won’t go to Canossa!). It was a time of friction between the Chancery of the Reich and the Holy See, which had to recognize the appointment of curia Cardinal Gustav Adolf von Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst as Ambassador to the Vatican. Bismarck’s anti-papal position was clear, and aligned with the moment of cultural revival of German national identity: the Kulturkampf,28 which referring to Medieval history strove to a humiliation and, at the same time, claimed also religious autonomy from Rome. Since then, the “going to Canossa” [der Canossagang] became a proverbial expression to indicate both repentance and retracing one’s footsteps, as a backward movement. This episode unleashed a veritable flood of reactions against Pope Pius IX, a controversial Pontiff in many ways, and a great deal of satire, written and drawn, which showed Matilda as a negative heroine, defined by the old, abusive insults of her opponents: cruel and perverted who some writers describe as the Pope’s lover, and others even as the Emperor Henry IV’s or his pages, and so she is represented especially in Germany. But even the famous art critic, John Ruskin (18191900), in the fourth of his writings in Fiction Fair and Foul, and also in a brief digression about Italian Medieval history, invited Protestants to read the lives of three Papist princesses: Theodora, Marozia, Matilda of Canossa, as well as that of Hildebrand,29 bringing together the Countess with Theodora and Marozia, famous for having used the papacy for their whims in the middle of the tenth century, giving rise to what has been termed “papal pornocracy”. But it is precisely in the romantic nineteenth century that her myth is renewed, while the remains of her castle at Canossa were being discovered, and the places where she lived were becoming the favored destinations of travelers, fascinated by history and by the landscape of ruins of towns and castles, sites that seen a more glorious time. At the beginning of the nineteenth century at Canossa had passed August von Platen (1796-1835), finding accommodation at the home of a hospitable priest; then came the poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), who dedicated an ode to Canossa, Auf den Schloss von Canossa (1839), and many others. But even Bismarck’s reaction came to be seen as a humiliation greater than the one suffered by Henry IV, at least in a sonnet, dated 1881, composed by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), Bismarck at Canossa, because the German Chancellor, who hated freedom, was forced to lower his head in front of the Pope. And, in 1885 a historical romance about the Countess was published in London: Matilda of Canossa: an historical drama in five acts by Benjamin Gott. “She was a woman of strong will and strong mind, she held her own, and rent from others, till she had united nearly all Lombardy under her rule»: so reads the reception of the figure of

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Matilda of Canossa by the American traveler and novelist William Dean Howells (1837-1920). In his “bestselling” account of Italy resonates the myth of the Risorgimento linked to the Italian heroine Matilda, who fought against the “German” Henry IV, who favored culture in its many manifestations, and especially favored the Church.30 Slowly, but progressively, the myth of the Countess Matilda spread across the ocean. She is a woman in whom the strong female figures who were colonizing the new world could identify. Matilda in the Belle Époque and at the beginning of the 20th century became: “the most famous handmaid, completely dedicated to the Holy Church”, and, for English-speaking travelers and writers, a role model, an exaltation of the variety and possibilities of the feminine life. Many sang her praises, as the English writers Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935), who visited the tomb of her mother, Beatrice, in the Camposanto of Pisa (1884); Mary E. Huddy wrote Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, 1905; Nora Duff, Matilda of Tuscany. La Gran Donna d’Italia, 1909; or the American Evangeline E. Whipple, who in her book, A Famous Corner of Tuscany, 1928, about Bagni di Lucca, dedicated a long chapter to Matilda. The scholar and historical novelist, Helen C. White, (18961967) wrote a well-documented novel all about Matilda: Not Built with Hands, published in New York by The Macmillan Company in 1935 and reprinted several times; in remembrance of the Countess, the poet Julia Cooley Altrocchi (1893-1972) drew sketches and composed poems; and, deriving inspiration from her character, Kathleen McGowan has invented the fantasy novel, The Book of Love, 2009, based on the gripping biography of Matilda: Tuscan Countess: The Life And Extraordinary Times Of Matilda Of Canossa, by Michèle K. Spike, published in New York in 2004. In the last nine centuries, Matilda of Canossa has continued to be a figure of reference for both men and women, who have recognized in her way of being, whether positive or negative, a part of themselves, and this form of recognition continues in the memory of those who live in her territory and in those, who from afar, admire her strength, her principles, her legacy. English Translation by Rita Severi.

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1 Donizo, Vita di Matilde di Canossa, II, vv. 1536-1549, ed. by P. Golinelli, Milano, Jaqca Book, 2008, pp. 238-239. 2 T. Gross, Lothar III: und die Mathildischen Güter, Frankfurt am Main-Bern-New York, Paris, 1990, P. Golinelli, L’Italia dopo la lotta per le investiture: la questione dell’eredità matildica, in «Studi medievali», 3rd s., XLII (2001), pp. 509-528 3 P. Piva, La tomba della contessa Matilde, in Studi Matildici, III, Modena, Aedes Muratoriana, 1978, pp. 243-254. 4 P. Golinelli, Le “antifrancesche” storiche: Cunizza da Romano e Matelda/Matilde di Canossa, in Women in Hell. Francesca da Rimini & Friends Between Sin, Virtue, and Honor, Giornate Internazionali Francesca da Rimini, sixth edition, Los Angeles, 20-21 April 2012, Rimini, Editrice Arte e Storia, 2013, pp. 157171. 5 Cf. M. Spike, Scritto nella pietra: le “Cento chiese”, programma gregoriano di Matilde di Canossa, in San Cesario sul Panaro da Matilde di Canossa all’età moderna, ed. by P. Bonacini and P. Golinelli, Bologna, Patron, 2014, pp. 11-42. 6 Pietro di Dante, Super Dantis ipsius genitoris Comoediam Commentarium, Florentiae 1845; cfr. P. Golinelli, Matilde nella letteratura italiana, Reggio E., Diabasis, 1997, p. 24. 7 B. Collina, Donna illustre e guerriera di Dio. Matilde nella letteratura fra Tre e Cinquecento in Matilde di Canossa nelle culture europee del secondo Millennio. Dalla storia al mito. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Reggio Emilia, Canossa, Quattro Castella, 25-27 September 1997 ed. by P. Golinelli, Bologna, Pàtron, 1999, pp. 109-25; M. P. Paoli, La donna e il melograno: biografie di Matilde di Canossa, in «Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome -- Italie et Méditerranée», 113, no. 1 (2001), pp. 173-215.. 8 P. Golinelli, Matilde di Canossa nella letteratura italiana , cit., p. 53. 9 B. L. Holman, Exemplum and Imitatio: Countess Matilda and Lucrezia Pico della Mirandola at Polirone, in “The Art Bulletin”, LXXX (1999), 4, pp. 637-664; V. Cappi, Lucrezia Pico (14581511). Dalla corte della Mirandola all’abbazia di San Benedetto in Polirone, Mirandola, Centro Internazionale di Cultura «Giovanni Pico della Mirandola», 2008. 10 You can see the reproductions in I mille volti di Matilde. Immagini di un mito nei secoli, ed. by P. Golinelli, F. Motta editore, Milano 2003, pp. 78-80. 11 Ibid., p. 78. 12 John Foxe (1517-1587), Actes and Monuments , London, John Day, 1563: “The tragicall Historye of Gregorius VII” (pp. 20-29), insists on alleged amorous relations with Matilda with the Pontiff, “ye popes paramour”, and illustrates with a woodcut the meeting at Canossa where the Emperor begs forgiveness accompanied by his wife and son, with the caption: “A wonderous submissyon of a valiant Emperour to a vyle pope”; see. R. Severi, Matilde in Inghilterra: trattatisti, polemisti e viaggiatori nel Cinque e Seicento, in Matilde di Canossa nelle

culture europee del secondo Millenio, cit., pp. 127-139, p. 132. 13 R. De Maio, Riforme e miti nella Chiesa del Cinquecento, Napoli, Guida, 1992, p. 55. 14 M. Luther, Werke, IX, Weimar 1893, pp. 677-715. 15 See the full reproduction in: http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/ tema/webudstillinger/luther/passion/index.html. 16 P. Golinelli, L’incontro di Canossa (1077) negli Annales Baroniani e nella storiografia confessionale, in Baronio e le sue fonti. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Sora, 1013 October 2007), ed. by L. Gulia, Sora, Centro Studi Sorani “Vincenzo Patriarca”, 2009, pp. 243-264 17 S. Andretta, Matilde di Canossa nella Roma dei Barberini, in I mille volti di Matilde, cit., pp. 87-103. 18 P. Guerrini, file IV.2, in I mille volti di Matilde, cit., pp. 92-94. 19 G. Dal Pozzo Hmeraviglie Heroieche di Matilda la Gran Contessa d’ Italia, Verona, per G.B. Merlo, 1678, on which see: O. Rombaldi, Giulio Dal Pozzo autore del volume Meraviglie Heroiche di Matilda la Gran Contessa d’Italia, in Matilde di Canossa nelle culture europee, cit. pp. 103-108. 20 P. Golinelli, Matilde di Canossa e le sante donne delle genealogie mitiche degli Estensi nella chiesa di Sant’Agostino, in La chiesa di Sant’Agostino a Modena Pantheon Atestinum, ed. by E. Corradini, E. Garzillo, G. Polidori, Modena, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, 2002, pp. 242-249. 21 F. Vecchiato, Matilde a Verona:la famiglia Canossa, in Matilde di Canossa nelle culture europee, cit. pp. 95-102. 22 B. Bacchini, Dell’Istoria del monastero di San Benedetto in Polirone nello Stato di Mantova, Modona, Capponi, 1696. 23 L. l. Ghirardini, L’edizione muratoriana della Vita Mathildis di Donizone, in L.A. Muratori storiografo, Firenze, Olschki,1976, pp. 107-116. 24 Voltaire, Ouvres complétes. Dictionnaire Philosophique, V, Paris 1822, pp. 135-141; cfr. H. Taviani-Carozzi, Mathilde de Canossa dans l’historiographie française du XIXe siècle, in Matilde di Canossa nelle culture europee, cit., p. 276. 25 P. Golinelli, Medioevo Romantico. Poesie e miti all’origine della nostra identità, Milano, Mursia, 2011. 26 A. Bresciani, Mathilda of Canossa, and Yolanda of Groningen, New York: d. & j. Sadlier & co., 1875. 27 See Taviani-Carozzi, Mathilde de Canossa dans l’historiographie française du XIXe siècle, cit., pp. 288-292. 28 H. Zimmermann, Der Canossagang von 1077, Wiesbaden 1975 (trad. it., Canossa 1077, Bologna 1977, and new edition: Reggio E. 2006), pp. 5-6. 29 J. Ruskin, Fiction-Fair and Foul, in Works , 34, pp. 749-750 http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/19618/]. 30 W. D. Howells, Italian Journeys, Boston – New York 1907 (Third Edition, with illustrations by Joseph Pennell), pp. 315316.

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Jefferson’s Vision Fulfilled by Davison M. Douglas

In some ways, the origins of William & Mary’s law school can be traced to 1762. That year, a Williamsburg lawyer named George Wythe, one of the most distinguished attorneys in colonial America, was asked to take on a particularly promising recent William & Mary graduate as an apprentice in his law office. Wythe agreed, and so for the next five years, he provided Thomas Jefferson with an extraordinary education that equipped him not only to practice law, but also to provide the intellectual and political leadership that the new nation would so desperately need. Most aspiring lawyers in colonial America had few options for studying law. There were no law schools in the American colonies. Those persons with considerable wealth could travel to London to study at the Inns of Court. But most young men could not afford such a luxury and so were forced to engage in legal study through an apprenticeship with a practicing lawyer. These apprenticeships were widely derided as an unsatisfactory way to learn the law. In an era with no photocopying machines, many apprentices did little more than copy documents. Wythe used his mentorship of Jefferson to try something different. Under Wythe’s guidance, Jefferson read the standard legal texts of the day and regularly attended court to watch lawyers in action. But Wythe trained Jefferson in far more than legal rules and procedures. Wythe encouraged Jefferson to study the theory of government (both ancient and modern), history, moral philosophy and ethics. Jefferson, in fact, would later develop his own bibliography that an aspiring lawyer should read that covered an astonishing array of topics. Jefferson and Wythe forged a close intellectual and personal friendship, and Jefferson embraced his mentor’s zeal for republicanism as the American colonies marched steadily towards independence. Wythe and Jefferson were both aware that they had been born at an extraordinary moment in human history. John Adams expressed this sentiment in a letter to Wythe in 1776: “You and I, dear friend, have been sent into life at a time when the greatest lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live. How few of the human race have ever enjoyed an opportunity of making an election of government ... for themselves or their children!” At the age of 33, Jefferson drew upon his years of readings and discussion with Wythe to draft a document - the Declaration of Independence that gave voice to the strivings of those colonists who sought to establish a republican form of government in the New World in place of the European model of government by monarchs. Jefferson knew that education was the key to the American experiment in self-government. Whereas monarchies used education, or the lack thereof, to fix each social class in its proper place in the political order, republicanism demanded an educated citizenry ready to engage in the work of self-government. As Jefferson noted, “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of the day.” Jefferson was particularly keen to educate a group of Americans who would exercise what was commonly referred to as “public virtue” - the preference for the greater good over one’s individual interests. Jefferson believed that a republican form of government could not survive without the exercise of public virtue, and that such virtue could not be assumed. Young people must be trained to exercise public virtue in the face of the strong inducements of a purely private life.

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Jefferson, along with other members of the revolutionary generation, believed that lawyers were particularly well-suited to exercise this public virtue. Historian Robert Gordon has commented on the role of lawyers in the American Revolution and in the establishment of the new nation: “Lawyers] furnished a disproportionate share of Revolutionary statesmen, dominated high offices in the new governments ... had more occasions than even ministers for public oratory, and were the most facile and authoritative interpreters of laws and constitutions. ... T]hey seemed to have exceptional opportunities to lead exemplary lives, to illustrate by their example the calling of the independent citizen, the uncorrupted just man of learning combined with practical wisdom.” Jefferson became governor of Virginia in 1779, and as part of his gubernatorial duties, he joined the Board of Visitors at the College of William & Mary. Jefferson persuaded the Board to engage in a restructuring of the education offered at the College, which included the establishment of a new professorship in law. To fulfill his vision of training lawyers who would exercise public virtue, Jefferson turned to his old friend and mentor, George Wythe. The William & Mary law school was born with a singular vision of training lawyers who would help the new nation successfully complete its remarkable experiment in self-government. The mythological griffin, which became the William & Mary mascot in 2010, appears on George Wythe’s bookplate. Wythe began teaching law at the College in January 1780. His students learned the nuances of the English common law, relying in significant measure on Blackstone’s Commentaries. Wythe also had his students read the work of contemporary political theorists, such as Montesquieu, and classical writers such as Horace and Virgil. But Wythe did far more. To supplement this classroom instruction, Wythe introduced the moot court to teach his students oral advocacy skills. The English Inns of Court had first utilized moot courts during the late Middle Ages, but the 17th-century English Puritans had abolished the moot court because the consumption of copious quantities of food and drink that followed the legal arguments was deemed unseemly. Wythe saw the value of the moot court in training his students in the skills of oral advocacy - a highly important skill in 18th-century political culture. Wythe’s second innovation, the establishment of a legislative assembly, served as his central tool for teaching his students the practical art of government. Once a week, Wythe would assemble his students in the legislative chamber of the old colonial capitol building at the end of Duke of Gloucester Street. Schooled in the nuances of parliamentary procedure, the students would debate bills then pending in the Virginia General Assembly. One Wythe student, John Brown, described Wythe’s legislative assembly: “He has form’d us into a Legislative Body, consisting of about 40 members. Mr. Wythe is speaker to the House, & takes all possible pains to instruct us in the Rules of Parliament. We meet every Saturday and take under consideration those Bills drawn up by the Committee appointed to revise the laws, then we debate & alter ... with the greatest freedom.” Brown was one of eight Wythe students who would later serve in the United States Senate. Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1780 to explain Wythe’s work: “Our new institution at the College has had a success which has gained it universal applause. They hold weekly courts and assemblies in the capitol. The professors join in it; and the young men dispute with elegance, method, and learning. This single school by throwing from time to time new hands well principled into the legislature will be of infinite value.” See exhibit 14. Wythe explained to John Adams in 1785 that his goal was to train students to take positions of leadership in “the national councils of America.”

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In fact, Wythe’s students would later assume an extraordinary variety of executive, legislative and judicial offices, including president of the United States, U.S. secretary of state, U.S. attorney general, chief justice and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. senator and governor. Many others would serve in state legislative assemblies or as judges on the state or federal bench. In fact, if one measures the greatness of a law professor by the accomplishments of his or her students, Wythe was arguably the greatest law professor in American history. Wythe’s most distinguished student was Chief Justice John Marshall, the single most important Supreme Court justice in our nation’s history. Years later, William & Mary’s law school would embrace the name “Marshall-Wythe School of Law” in honor of its most distinguished student and its most distinguished professor. Wythe continued teaching at William & Mary until 1789, at which point he was succeeded by one of his former apprentices, St. George Tucker. Tucker would, in time, become the most influential legal scholar of the early 19th century, particularly following the publication of his widely read 1803 five-volume annotated edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. William & Mary has continued the Jefferson-Wythe tradition of training lawyers to pursue the public good - what is now referred to as training “citizen lawyers.” Sometimes this work takes the form of public service, as many William & Mary law graduates currently serve as ambassadors, in state legislatures, and as state and federal judges. Many graduates fulfill the citizen lawyer mission in other ways - through leadership in a wide range of public and private ventures that serve the greater good. On occasion, Harvard Law School likes to claim the honor of being the nation’s oldest law school. The claim is unfounded. As the esteemed Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold conceded many years ago: “There can be no doubt that Wythe and Tucker were engaged in a substantial, successful and influential venture in legal education, and that their effort can fairly be called the first law school in America.”

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Portrait of George Wythe (1726 - 1806), Oil, Mary Sydnor Morel after John Trumbull, Muscarelle Museum of Art, 1956.001

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, engraving after Alonso Chappel, 1862, Muscarelle Museum of Art, 1977.019

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George Wythe and the Study of Roman Civil Law in Williamsburg by Linda K. Tesar

Those who know of George Wythe, Chancellor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and first law professor in America, are well aware of his contributions as a patriot, an educator and a judge. Others may be surprised to learn of the accomplishments of a founding father who remains relatively unknown outside Virginia. Wythe signed the Declaration of Independence, attended the Constitutional Convention, and served as a chancery court judge for nearly thirty years. But, legal education was by far the greatest contribution of the man who taught among others Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay. One historian summed it “Wythe’s teaching career may be assessed … as consequential beyond comparison to that of any successor in American university law teaching.”1 Legal historians have marked Wythe’s scholarly pursuit of the classical literature of Greece and Rome, and noted how these studies influenced his judicial opinions and his arguments as a lawyer. Scholars have examined his reliance upon Roman law as legal precedent as demonstrated in his published case reports. But, largely because of the loss of his lecture notes or other substantial evidence, some commentators have dismissed Wythe in discussions of Roman law in American legal education.2 True, no documentation exists to prove that Wythe lectured on Roman civil law, but no man in his time revered Greek and Latin classics more than Wythe. Given the ways he managed to convey that enthusiasm throughout his careers as lawyer and judge, it would be only natural to infer that Wythe referenced Roman law in his lectures and encouraged his students to compare the civil and common law systems. While the founding fathers frequently alluded to classical authors, including Justinian, sustained study of Roman law did not occur in the United States until early in the nineteenth century. David Hoffman deserves credit for establishing the first course in Roman law at the University of Maryland in 1816.3 Prior to that, Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, proposed a series of civil law lectures, and may have delivered the first lecture in Roman law in 1792 when he discussed “the ‘Jus Civile … Pandects and … Canon Law.’”4 Another early educator, James Kent, may have given the first series of “academic lectures in the United States on Roman Law” at Columbia College in 1794.5 None of these “firsts” takes into account what may have happened at the College of William & Mary in the 1780s. When newly-elected governor Thomas Jefferson decided to reform the curriculum at the College of William & Mary in 1779, he persuaded the Board of Visitors to create the position of Professor of Law and Police,6 the first chair of its kind in America. To fill that position, the Board followed Jefferson’s suggestion and appointed George Wythe, Jefferson’s own legal mentor and one of the most distinguished lawyers in Virginia. Jefferson and Wythe envisioned a curriculum that would train future statesmen and lawmakers -- “citizen lawyers.” In describing the purpose of his courses, the new professor hoped “to form such characters as may be fit to succeed those which have been ornamental and useful in the national councils of America.”7 Jefferson concurred: “This single school by throwing from time to time new hands well principled into the legislature will be of infinite value”.8

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Jefferson could rely upon his own experience in crafting his vision for legal education at William & Mary. In 1762, he had become Wythe’s apprentice and presumably learned from the master the same ideas that Wythe would employ at the College. Among those ideas, Roman law surely had a place. One biographer of Wythe described the young Jefferson and his mentor: The whole range of civil and common law passed under his review, and neither he nor his teacher was content till he had traced painstakingly every principle to its remotest origin in the Roman system or in the period when good King Alfred had ruled the Saxons.9 This propensity for intense study, for tracing a legal idea to its very roots was fundamental to Wythe’s approach to the law and naturally would have been reflected in his lectures. Sadly, Wythe’s lecture notes, known in 1810, four years after the Chancellor’s death, disappeared before they could be published.10 While there may be no class notes to support the idea that Wythe taught Roman civil law, there is strong evidence from his legal and judicial careers to demonstrate Wythe’s love of the classics and his use of Roman law. As opposing attorneys in the 1770-1771case Bolling v. Bolling, Wythe and Jefferson traded references to Justinian’s opus. Wythe referenced the Institutes, the Codex and the Digest in his final reply for the plaintiff.11 In doing so, he established, even before the Revolution, his opinion of the usefulness of Roman precedents in certain circumstances. The books in Wythe’s library also add weight to the argument that the chancellor likely lectured on Roman civil law. As demonstrated in this exhibition, Wythe owned a copy of Corpus Juris Civilis, George Harris’s English translation of the Institutes, Arnoldus Vinnius’s commentary on the Institutes, and the Greek paraphrase of the Institutes by Theophilus. He also owned at least one copy of the Codex Justinianus. In addition, he held copies of Jean Domat’s The Civil Law in its Natural Order (a work which organized the Corpus Juris Civilis “as a series of logical deductions from a number of self-evident premises”)12 and John Taylor’s Elements of the Civil Law. Unfortunately, information on the contents of Wythe’s library is incomplete. Losses through theft and loans depleted what we know of the chancellor’s holdings, and he may have owned a much larger civil law collection than bibliographers suggest. Wythe is known to have acquired multiple Greek and Latin classics in numerous editions, and his interest in Roman law surely encouraged him to collect those titles in multiple editions as well. The strongest evidence of Wythe’s admiration for and utilization of Roman law can be found in the chancellor’s published case reports. Like many of his time, Wythe associated Roman law “with order, clarity and coherence.”13 As Peter Stein noted in his study on the influence of Roman civil law: Immediately after the Revolution, there was a widespread feeling that efforts should be made to develop a particular American jurisprudence, which would not be just a slavish imitator of the English common law, but would be eclectic – selecting the best principles and methods from whatever system they might be found in.14 Wythe was a particularly strong proponent of this idea, and he incorporated a deep knowledge of Roman law into his career as a judge.

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In an article on Roman law in Virginia courts, W. Hamilton Bryson comments that Wythe “used the Roman] civil law expertly, and he used it over a wide spectrum of legal points.”15 Wythe cited Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis twenty-one times in his court decisions as precedent.16 The chancellor also commented upon the application of Roman law in two different cases. In one he remarked, “the Roman civil law … is ordinarily thought a reasonable rule of decision …”17 In the other, Wythe explained in sustaining a point “Roman civil law, the authority of which, if not decisive, is respectable, in cases of testamentary dispositions.”18 From these comments, “it appears that Wythe] considered the Roman law to be of equal value with the English common law as a source of legal ideas and precedents.”19 It seems unlikely that a teacher with such mastery of the subject and such respect for the precedential value of Roman law would have refrained from recommending it to his students as well.20 Bryson writes that “no judge or attorney seems to have resorted to the Roman law as often or as enthusiastically.”21 Given this, and given Wythe’s reputation concerning Jefferson’s legal education, it is reasonable to conclude that Wythe’s students at William & Mary benefitted from their erudite teacher’s tastes and inclinations. Despite the lack of documentary evidence, at some point Wythe must have translated his passion for Roman law into lectures for his students. If so, his lectures would have been the first academic discussions of Roman civil law on American soil.

1 Paul D. Carrington, “The Revolutionary Idea of University Legal Education,” William & Mary Law Review 31, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 538. 2 Lewis C. Cassidy, “The Teaching and Study of Roman Law in the United States,” Georgetown Law Journal 19 (1930-1931): 299: “w]hile the learning of the Chancellor was broad and deep, there is no evidence extant that he lectured on Roman law as such.” 3 Ibid., 301. 4 Charles Phineas Sherman, Roman Law in the Modern World, 3rd ed. (New York: Baker, Voorhis & Co., 1937), 1:409. 5 Lewis C. Cassidy, “The Teaching and Study of Roman Law in the United States,” 301. 6 “Law and police” would today be law and public policy. See Paul D. Carrington, “The Revolutionary Idea of University Legal Education,” 527, n3. 7 George Wythe to John Adams, December 5, 1783, in Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), 15: 396. 8 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, July 26, 1780, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008). 9 William Edwin Hemphill, “George Wythe: The Colonial Briton,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia (1937), 134. 10 Robert Bevier Kirtland, George Wythe: Lawyer, Revolutionary, Judge (New York: Garland, 1986), 279-282.

11 George Wythe, “Reply for the Plaintiff,” in Thomas Jefferson and Bolling v. Bolling: Law and the Legal Profession in Pre-Revolutionary America, ed. Bernard Schwartz with Barbara Wilcie Kern and R.B. Bernstein (San Marino, California: The Huntingdon Library and New York University School of Law, 1997), 415-420, n787, n791, n793-n794, n801. 12 Peter Stein, The Character and Influence of the Roman Civil Law: Historical Essays (London: The Hambledon Press, 1988), 414. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 415. 15 W. Hamilton Bryson, “The Use of Roman Law in Virginia Courts,” in American Journal of Legal History 28 (1984): 141. 16 Richard J. Hoffman, “Classics in the Courts of the United States,” 22 American Journal of Legal History (1978): 82-83. 17 “Dandridge et al. v. Lyon,” in George Wythe, Decisions of Cases in Virginia by the High Court of Chancery with Remarks upon Decrees by the Court of Appeals, Reversing Some of Those Decisions, 2nd ed., ed. B.B. Minor (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1852), 125. 18 “Turpin v. Turpin, et al.,” in Ibid., 142. 19 Bryson, “The Use of Roman Law in Virginia Courts,” 141. 20 Ibid. Bryson agrees, stating “it is most likely that he introduced his students to Roman law] as well.” (137-138). 21 Ibid.,” 143.

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Illustrated Chronology of the Life of Matilda of Canossa

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Frontispiece from the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS Vat. Lat. 4922, f.7v

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Biographical sources for the life of the Countess Matilda Most of what we know about Matilda, we learned from her. Matilda told her life story and the lives of her ancestors to the Benedictine abbot of the monastery at Canossa, named Donizone, between 1110 and 1115. His original manuscript, the Vita Mathildis, is set in verse and is today in the Vatican Library, manuscript 4922. (See Exhibit 1). The text provides an invaluable reference for Matilda’s life and times. Matilda also left one hundred and fifty-three documents dating between 1072 and 1115, which record her holding court, resolving a dispute or making a donation. These hand written, rolled sheets of vellum were transcribed and gathered in a single volume by Werner and Elke Goez, Die Urkunden und Briefe der Markgrafin Mathilde von Tuszien, MGH, Hannover, 1998. We thus possess strong evidence about where Matilda was, who she knew and what she did. A few of these manuscripts are illustrated in these pages. Matilda read and wrote in Latin and spoke the medieval versions of German, Italian and French. She had a vast library that included illuminated gospels, the letters of Saint Paul, sermons and essays which are today in the Italian state archives of Mantua, Modena and the monastery at Nonantola. Countess Matilda’s court at Canossa offered refuge to the exiled bishops Anselmo of Lucca, Rangerio of Lucca and Eriberto of Reggio and provided encouragement for a number of writers from her domains, particularly Bonizone, Placido of Nonantola, Giovanni of Mantua as well as Donizone. (Witt 2012, p. 292) The monastery at Canossa produced manuscripts of the Gospels with illuminations, one of which she donated in 1099 to the Monastery at San Benedetto Po. Today, it is among the treasures of the Morgan Library in New York (MS M492, see Exhibit 3). We also know what Matilda looked like from portraits which are contemporary in date. In all of her portraits, she appears intelligent, confident and kind. In the miniature preserved at the library at Admont, see page 7 above, Matilda is dressed elegantly in a cloak and mantle as she gives a manuscript to Anselm of Aosta, Archbishop of Canterbury. Similarly, in the Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae (1099 – 1106) Matilda wears a simple green mantle. This manuscript which records the construction and consecration of the cathedral at Modena is preserved in the Archivio Capitolare of Modena, Archdiocese Modena-Nonantola. (See Exhibit 2). The most famous contemporary images of Matilda are in Donizone’s manuscript. In both portraits of Matilda, including the Frontispiece, illustrated opposite, and the scene with Henry IV illustrated at page 62, Matilda is seated regally on a throne bedecked with the attributes of wealth and station. In Donizone’s Frontispiece, Matilda wears a golden crown that rises to a point. Her dainty feet, clad in golden slippers, rest on a pillow. Sheathed in blue silk, her slim figure is enveloped in a sumptuous red velvet robe, encrusted with jewels. She looks out with a clear steady gaze. At either side of her throne stand two small figures symbolic of her two natures. To her right is the monk Donizone, respectfully delivering his manuscript. To her left is her sword-bearing captain, likely Arduino of Palude, looking vigilant. As proud of her literacy as she was of her battles, Matilda chose to be remembered as one who ruled.

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Map of Europe, c. 1050. The area in light blue shows the territory claimed by the German kings, Conrad II and his descendants, Henry III, IV and V. The area of northern Italy which Matilda’s ancestors controlled as feudal lords within the German empire is outlined in bold.

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The Dynasty of Canossa The Vita Mathildis begins with the bold declaration that were Plato and Virgil still alive they would have exalted Matilda and her illustrious forebears. “No one in antiquity was greater than the dukes of Canossa, not even the sons of Priam.” For Matilda, her life story rivaled the Trojan War and the founding of Rome. Matilda was the fourth, and final, generation of a dynasty dating back to 940, the year that her great-grandfather, Atto Adalberto, erected an impregnable fortress on the vertical rock of Canossa, which watched over the Po river plain. He obtained the counts of Modena and Reggio when Otto I, the German king, conquered northern Italy in 962. Atto’s son Tedaldo and his grandson, Matilda’s father, Bonifacio, expanded the family’s holdings to acquire feudal rights from the German kings to properties from the Alps to the border of Rome. Matilda’s father, Bonifacio, held these in feud from the German King Conrad II who issued the first feudal law on May 28, 1037. Called the Consuetudines Feudorum, the law regulated feudal benefices held by knights, like Bonifacio, who fought and defended the German king. Among its provisions was the prohibition against women inheriting or managing feudal properties. (cf. S. Reynolds 2001; C. Wickham 2002). Matilda’s ancestors maintained their land holdings with a unique defensive system of castles that is cited by all scholars who study the life of the Countess beginning with Donizone. This network remains visible today, beginning with a line of five fortresses that guarded the entry to Italy from Germany through the Brenner Pass. Although the fortresses no longer exist, this line is marked by their towns of the same name, Piadena, Rivalta sul Mantua, Mantua, Nogara, Cerea-Legnago. Each has at its center a church which was built by the Countess Matilda, see pp. 92-93. The castles were positioned to facilitate communication between them. In addition to defense, the castle network controlled the medieval routes of communication, imposing taxes on the use of roads and rivers for travel, on the use of the rivers for fishing and land for hunting, pasturing, and farming, and on the use of markets for trade. A portion of these taxes were payable as a tithe to the German king. Merchants and travelers remember the Margrave Bonifacio, as an oppressive tax collector. (Cardini, in San Rocco 2000, p. 31; in San Cristoforo 2000, pp.19-46). According to Donizone, the spoils from battle combined with the rents and taxes he collected made Matilda’s father a wealthy man. Bonifacio lived, extravagantly wrote Donizone “in order to show how great and immensely rich he was.”

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Bonifacio of Canossa, father of Matilda, from the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS. Vat. Lat. 4922, I, f.28v

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Beatrice of Lorraine, mother of Matilda, from the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS. Vat. Lat. 4922, I, f.30v


1046 Mantua THE BIRTH OF MATILDA AND THE DEATH OF BONIFACIO AND HIS ONLY SON AND HEIR Bonifacio, duke of Tuscany and Spoleto, margrave of Mantua and Ferrara, count of Modena and Reggio, married Beatrice of Lorraine at a lavish ceremony, at Marengo north of Mantua, c. 1037. Of noble birth, Beatrice was the first cousin of the German King Henry III. Her marriage to Bonifacio was an important political alliance between the aristocracy of Germany and Italy. Beatrice bore Bonifacio three children. Frederick, the eldest, was Bonifacio’s heir. Matilda was their youngest child, likely born in 1046 in Mantua which was then the center of Bonifacio’s court. In the year of Matilda’s birth, Bonifacio welcomed Conrad II’s son, the new king, Henry III, on his first visit to Italy. In 1046, Henry III moved south to consolidate his control and to collect the tithes due him from the Italian feuds. The royal entourage relied upon albergheria which required local nobility and townspeople to provide them and their horses, food and lodging. The custom was considered oppressive, particularly by the people in the Italian towns. Bonifacio and his vassals greeted their new king lavishly with gifts of silver, horses, falcons, and even balsamic vinegar for which Modena is still famous. The extravagance of Bonifacio’s gifts and the opulence of Bonifacio’s court made Henry III painfully aware that his vassal’s wealth exceeded his own. By the time Henry III left Italy, according to Donizone, he envied, and coveted, Bonifacio’s wealth. On May 6, 1052, Bonifacio was murdered on a hunt in the forests outside Mantua. Within the year, his son, and heir, Frederick, and his eldest daughter also died. Their deaths are recorded in a document of Beatrice dated December 17, 1053 in which she donated property to the monastery of Santa Maria at Felonica on the Po river in their memories. After these deaths, the House of Canossa was reduced to only two women, Beatrice and her sixyear-old daughter, Matilda, neither of whom was eligible under Henry III’s feudal laws to inherit Bonifacio’s property.

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Baptistery of Florence, site of council where Henry III arrested Beatrice and Matilda and seized Bonafacio’s property

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1055 Florence THE SEIZURE OF BONIFACIO’S LANDS Matilda blamed the envy of the German king, Henry III, for her father’s death. If Henry III was not directly responsible for Bonifacio’s death, he certainly profited from it. The death of Leo IX gave Henry III the opportunity in June 1055 to convene his new Pope Victor II and a council of bishops in the Baptistery of Florence. In the three years since Bonifacio’s death, Beatrice had governed her husband’s lands together with her second husband, Godfrey of Lorraine. Their marriage was an uneasy alliance forged to prevent the German king from appropriating Bonifacio’s territory. To strengthen their claims they betrothed the eight-year-old Matilda to Godfrey’s son, also named Godfrey who had a humped back. At the council of Florence, Henry found Beatrice guilty of treason for marrying without his permission. He sentenced her to exile in Germany with Matilda, then nine years old. The king confiscated Bonifacio’s territories, escheating it to himself as king and as the closest male heir. For this reason the Florentines refer to him as Henry the Black (Cantini 1796, p. 60). Henry III had little time to enjoy his Italian properties. He died of a fever in 1056, leaving his wife, Agnes, as Queen Regent, who allowed Beatrice and Matilda to return with Godfrey to Italy in 1057 and they established Florence as the center of their court. They lived in Florence for the next twelve years, seemingly happy ones for Matilda. Many of the medieval monuments of Florence still reflect the renovations paid for by Beatrice and Godfrey. In 1059, they began to restore the ancient cathedral of Santa Reparata which stood adjacent to the Baptistery on the site where the many times larger Cathedral of Santa Maria dei Fiori, would be built. During these renovations, the Baptistery was consecrated as the Cathedral of Florence at a ceremony conducted by Pope Nicholas II on November 6, 1059. At this ceremony, Duke Godfrey, Beatrice, Matilda and the archdeacon Hildebrand, the future Pope Gregory VII, were all present. In 1064 Duke Godfrey, with his wife Beatrice, his son Godfrey the Hunchback and Beatrice’s daughter Matilda, donated property to the Baptistery. The Baptistery remained the Cathedral of Florence throughout Matilda’s life. It was during these years that this classical Roman construction, originally dedicated to Mars, received its distinctive geometric façade of green, black and white marble. Based upon the circles and squares of the Pantheon in Rome, the new Tuscan Romanesque as it has come to be called, was a visible sign of reverence towards the Eternal City. Other Florentine churches which benefited in this period from Beatrice’s donations include the churches of Santa Felicita (1073), San Lorenzo (1060), and a chapel dedicated to Mary on whose foundations was later built the Church of Santa Maria Novella. (Bertolini 1970, Verdon 2000, pp. 26, 116) The effect of their architectural restorations was felt so widely in Tuscany that Mons. Timothy Verdon refers to it as a Romanesque Renaissance. (Verdon 2000, p. 60) In Florence, Godfrey and Beatrice came into contact with a rising papal archdeacon Hildebrand who was a supporter of the reforms of the powerful monastery of Cluny. These monks sought to reform the Church by ending the custom by which the German kings named and invested bishops (called lay investiture). The custom incorporated the bishops into the government of the German state, depriving the Church of its administrators and its property and transforming clerical offices into positions of secular wealth and power. The reforms sought by the monks were opposed by German and Lombard bishops who had paid good money for their positions and/or who were married. Historically this is known as the “Investiture Conflict.” 53


Crypt, Monastery of San Salvatore a Monte Amiata, on the via Francigena, the pilgrim route to Rome

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1072 Monte Amiata THE BRIEF MARRIAGE OF MATILDA TO GODFREY THE HUNCHBACK AND HER FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH PEPO, A SCHOLAR OF ROMAN LAW Matilda married Godfrey the Hunchback in 1069 at Godfrey’s castle of Verdun in the Lorraine. The marriage, in accordance with a betrothal dating back to 1053, ensured that Godfrey the Hunchback would assume at his father’s death on Christmas Eve 1069 his father’s titles in the Lorraine and northern Italy. The marriage produced one child, a girl, who died at or soon after birth on January 9, 1071. Her grandmother, Beatrice, founded the monastery at Frassinoro on August 29, 1071 for the souls of Bonifacio and Godfrey (of both she says, “he was my man” “viro meo”) and for “Beatrice my grandchild.” Besides the lack of physical attraction, Matilda and her husband were unsuited politically. Unlike his father, Godfrey the Hunchback was among the most loyal knights in the entourage of his king, Henry IV. Matilda ended her unhappy marriage and her residence north of the Alps after two years. She abandoned her husband in the Lorraine and returned to join her mother, Beatrice in Mantua in January 1072. After her return, Matilda and her mother were inseparable. They were next recorded in south Tuscany, in June 1072, at a court held by Beatrice. Pepo, a lawyer and a scholar of Justinian’s Digest, appeared as the lawyer for the abbot of San Salvatore of Monte Amiata in a real property dispute. The monastery, on the via Francigena, the pilgrim route to Rome, controlled large tracts of property in south Tuscany. Its crypt is among the oldest in Italy dating to the monastery’s foundation in 757 AD. Of its thirty-five columns, twenty four are original, of unique form and design. Justinian’s Digest would have been of interest to Beatrice and Matilda at this critical juncture as it provides that at a father’s death, daughters, like sons, become independent and legally able to own and to manage (Institutes, Book I, title 12) and to inherit (Institutes, Book III, title 2) their father’s property. It would thus give Matilda a claim, as his daughter, to Bonifacio’s properties, against the contrary positions of her now estranged husband and the German King Henry IV. Godfrey the Hunchback followed Matilda to Italy and remained there until August of 1073. During this time, Godfrey ruled Bonifacio’s territories, using Bonifacio’s titles. At some point, Godfrey exercised his authority as Duke of Spoleto and appointed a bishop without consulting the Pope. Although Spoleto was part of Bonifacio’s territory, no document records Matilda’s presence there. Godfrey pointedly boycotted the consecration of Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII in June of 1073, although Beatrice and Matilda attended. In August, the Saxons revolted against Henry IV attacking his castle at Goslar and Godfrey, returned to Germany to defend his king. Godfrey is last recorded with Matilda, on August 18, 1073, at Marengo, where Matilda made a donation to which “Duke Godfrey my man” consented. A monk in the monastery of Sant’Uberto wrote, that Godfrey, having failed to obtain “marital grace” during his time in Italy, returned to the Lorraine “having accomplished nothing”. Nevertheless in Matilda’s day, marriage was forever and ended only at death.

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Matilda’s tower in Rome on the Isola Tiberina, beside the Tiber river and the Ponte Fabricius, the oldest bridge in Rome built 62 B.C.

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1073 Rome

POPE GREGORY VII AND MATILDA OF CANOSSA Beatrice and Matilda attended the consecration of their ally archdeacon Hildebrand in Rome in 1073. Hildebrand’s elevation as Pope Gregory VII which had been opposed by Henry IV and the German and Lombard bishops led to a complete collapse of relations between the German state and the Roman church. During this struggle, the Pope supported Matilda’s claims to her father’s properties and Matilda supported Hildebrand’s papacy and reforms of the Church of Rome which still bear his name, the Gregorian Reform. When she arrived in Rome, Matilda was 28 years old, a beautiful woman from a wealthy and aristocratic family. Church historians emphasize the spirituality and asceticism that Matilda surely possessed in her old age, while feminists prefer to view her as the woman who would be warrior, more comfortable in armor than a skirt. In the Frontispiece of Donizone’s Vita Mathildis, she is dressed in thick colorful silks, covered in gold with big baubles—in other words, rich, selfconfident, and very, very feminine. The lavish robes do not mask her slim figure, lithe and alluring; nor does her white wimple quite hide the intelligent, engaging woman reflected in her deep blue eyes. Gregory’s official correspondence, preserved in chronological order in the Apostolic Library of the Vatican, documents these years. Matilda’s letters are not preserved, but Donizone recorded that up until the day he died “Pope Gregory frequently sent messengers seeking her”. The Pope pointedly kept separate correspondence with “Duke Godfrey” and “Duchess Beatrice and her daughter Matilda”. After Christmas 1073, Matilda wrote the Pope and asked, simply enough, whether she should accede to legal and ecclesiastic pressure and retreat to a convent – the only alternative for a women of her class who abandoned her marriage bed. On February 16, 1074, Gregory wrote, “How great are my care and my unceasing devotion to your welfare and that of your kindred, he alone knows who searches the mysteries of the heart and who understands better than I myself.”(Emerton 1990, pp. 23-24) He encouraged her to persevere and to entrust herself to Christ’s mother, Mary. By March 1074 Matilda had returned to Rome and was recorded with lay leaders in attendance at the regular Lenten synod of bishops. At this synod, Gregory launched the first appeal to Christians to defend the Holy Land. An appeal that he made personal in a letter to Matilda dated December 16, 1074, in which he wrote that the Empress Agnes would go with them, “…leaving your mother here to protect our common interests, so that with Christ’s help we may be safe in going.… And I, provided with such sisters, would most gladly cross the sea and place my life, if need be, at the service of Christ with you whom I hope to have forever at my side in our eternal home.” (Emerton 1990, p. 60) After receiving Gregory’s December letter, Matilda moved to Rome. She stayed in a fortress belonging to the Pierleoni family on the Isola Tiberina, of which one tower still stands. Matilda was in Rome during the spring of 1075, possibly the most important period of Gregory’s papacy, and she maintained this home in Rome until 1087. Pope Gregory VII’s allies called Matilda “his most astute counselor”. In a letter to Matilda dated October 16, 1074 (Emerton 1990, p. 45) Gregory VII testified to the confidence he had in her good judgment.

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No one denies that the Pope and the Countess shared an intellectual attraction and common political goals. Indeed the Pope’s affection for Matilda was cited by Ferdinand Gregorovius, in his History of Medieval Rome, who wrote, “The personal friendship between Gregory and Matilda, a connection of world-historic importance, stands alone in history. Never again has a pope stood beside a young and energetic woman in equally important alliance.” (Gregorovius 1905, p. 180) The nature of the relationship between the Pope and the Countess is, however, strongly debated, given its sensitivity. Gregory VII was a staunch proponent of celibacy of the clergy. On the other hand, the seven years that they spent in intimate company together scandalized many, including Matilda’s estranged husband. The German bishops also protested that the pope relied upon Matilda’s counsel. A hundred years ago, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Matilda’s death, Vincenzo Bianchi – Cagliesi wrote (at p. 375), “Matilda in all her actions was exquisitely a woman, not really a saint, but a virago in the most spiritual sense of the word. None of her contemporaries could match her intellect, except one: Hildebrand, a man warm of heart and with strong morals, in the full vigor of his intelligence, completely aware of all aspects of human folly.”

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1075 ROME THE DICTATUS PAPAE Matilda is in Rome in early March 1075 when Gregory VII issued the Dictates of the Pope, called the “gauntlet thrown down by Gregory VII in the face of the German King Henry IV to liberate the church.” (Berman 1973, p. 520) The Dictates contain the basic outline of the Gregorian reform in twenty seven succinct sentences listed on a single sheet of paper. The Dictates delineate a radical reorganization of the Roman church and of western society. Pope Gregory VII freed the clergy from domination by the German empire and returned the administration of the wealth of the church to papal Rome, confirming the opposition of the monks from Cluny to the sale of clerical office (simony) and to investiture of bishops by the German king and lay nobility. He freed the laity from the feudal shackles of class and wealth by insisting that the church was the sole arbiter of universal justice: all men, Gregory said, are equal in the eyes of God. Only the Pope could judge all men, and he was judged by, and accountable only to, God. In the words of one historian, “The purity of his thought, even when stretched to the point of exaggeration, was only the purity in the Justitia Dei, the purity that shines in the clear transparent hardness of a cut diamond.” (Kühner and von Matt 1963, p, 74.) For this breath-taking clarity, Gregory VII is considered the greatest of the medieval popes, the man who led the first revolution of the Western world.

The Dictatus Papae (the Dicatates of the Pope) issued by Gregory VII, March 1075

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WINTER 1076 ROME The issuance of the Dictates of the Pope set into motion a series of momentous events that will culminate in the snows of Matilda’s castle of Canossa. During these months, Matilda was in Pisa, tending her mother, Beatrice, during her final illness. On Christmas Eve, the Pope by tradition says Mass at the high altar of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome where the crib of the baby Jesus is preserved. In 1075, as Gregory VII was distributing communion to the faithful, soldiers from the Cenci family seized the Pope, presumably on instruction of the German King Henry IV. On Christmas Day, 1075, the militia of the Pope’s family, the Pierleoni, rescued Gregory VII from the Cenci tower. In January 1076, the German King Henry IV convened a council of bishops at Worms. Twentysix bishops attended as well as the German Dukes, including Godfrey the Hunchback. The Bishops opposed the Dictates of the Pope which made the office of the Bishop of Rome the final, unappealable judge and which usurped power that belonged to the “whole brotherhood” of bishops. For issuing these Dictates the bishops accused Hildebrand of unheard of arrogance and cruel pride. They found Gregory VII guilty of three crimes: ascending to the papacy in violation of the Papal Election Decree; usurping from the body of the Bishops of the Church “all the divine power conferred upon them through the grace of the Holy Spirit” and cohabitating with a woman who was another man’s wife (Matilda of Canossa). They also found Gregory guilty of listening to her advice, with the result that “the entire church is administered through a senate of women”. (Morghen 1974, p. 123) The king then demanded Gregory VII’s resignation by a letter to be delivered to the synod of bishops schedule to meet in February in Rome. He wrote, “Henry, King not by usurpation, but by the pious ordination of God, to Hildebrand, now not pope but false monk”. One hundred ninety bishops attended the synod in Rome in February 1076 at which the king’s emissary read Henry IV’s demand for his resignation. On February 22, 1076, the Feast of the Cathedra of St. Peter, Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Henry IV, banned him from the communion of the faithful and forbade anyone to obey him as king. Four days later, on the road from Worms to Verdun, Matilda’s estranged husband was murdered, with a sword up his anus as he relieved himself in a latrine. Godfrey the Hunchback agonized for a week before he bled to death. During this torment, he named his nephew, Godfrey of Bouillon, as heir to his properties in the Lorraine and in northern Italy and he refused the last rites of the church that he believed had betrayed him. Landolfo of Milan accused Matilda of hiring a servant to commit the crime “because she regretted having Godfrey as her lord and because she wanted to exercise sole dominion over all the territory from Tuscany to Rome.”

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SPRING 1076 BORGO MARTURI, PISA, MARENGO With the death of Matilda’s husband, Beatrice resumed the governance of the Canossan territories. A mere month later, in March 1076, Justinian’s Digest of Roman Law was cited for the first time in three hundred years in a legal proceeding concerning land ownership. The document was issued at by a judge named Nordilo who stated that he was acting under the authority of Duchess Beatrice. The document was issued at the church of Santa Maria in Borgo Marturi (near Poggibonsi south of Florence). Also present among the judges was Pepone leges doctor, very likely the same expert on Justinian’s Digest who is cited in June 1072 in a document issued by Beatrice. A month later, on April 18, 1076, Beatrice died in Pisa where she was buried in an ancient Roman sarcophagus in the nave of the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary.. Beatrice had outlived Godfrey, long enough to establish Justinian’s Digest, which allows a daughter to inherit, own and manage property at her father’s death, as an alternative law to the feudal laws of the German kings, Henry III and IV. On May 27, 1076, at Marengo, north of Mantua, in the palace where her mother married her father, Matilda took charge of her father’s properties, holding court alone for the first time. She took charge irrespective of the rights of the heir named by her deceased husband and without any authority from the German king Henry IV, who, in any event, being ex-communicated was unable to exercise his royal prerogatives.

Tomb of Beatrice of Lorraine, Camposanto, Pisa.

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At Canossa, Henry IV asks the Abbot of Cluny and Matilda to intercede for him before the Pope, from the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS. Vat. Lat. 4922, II, f. 49r

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1077 Canossa THE HUMILIATION AND PARDON OF KING HENRY IV AT CANOSSA These events of the previous year brought the German king to his knees before the Roman Pope at Matilda’s castle of Canossa. The excommunication of Henry IV had devastating consequences for the German king. The German dukes gave him one year to return to communion with the Roman church or they would depose him and elect another man as king. In December 1076 Pope Gregory VII travelled to Lucca where he and Matilda celebrated Christmas with Bishop Anselmo. They continued to Mantua to wait for soldiers who would escort the Pope to Germany to preside at the election. To prevent this trial, Henry IV crossed the Alps in the midst of the coldest winter on record and arrived in Italy in early January 1077. He traveled towards Canossa, his intentions, initially unclear. Gregory and Matilda retreated to Canossa for protection. The king followed, arriving at Canossa by January 22, 1077. According to the letter of Pope Gregory VII, written to the German dukes on January 28 of that year, the king stood in the snow, in penitent garb, barefoot, for three days outside the castle walls. The pope agreed to pardon his sins, to re-admit him to the communion of the faithful and to return his royal dignity, on the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, January 25, 1077. In Donizone’s telling, the king knelt first before Matilda, a woman with no rights in his kingdom, and asked her to plead his case before the pope. In Donizone’s miniature of this scene, Henry wears his crown and holds the orb, both indicia of his royal office. He wears shoes. Matilda sits under a canopy dressed in a bejeweled brocade cape, looking very much like a ruler. It is certainly worth asking whether Henry may also have knelt before her because her mother, Beatrice, had six months’ earlier begun the process to change the law by which northern Italy would be governed, from Henry’s laws, to Rome’s. In her, and the pope’s telling, it is Matilda who convinced the pope to forgive the king. She agreed to intercede with the pope based upon assurances made to her by Henry IV. The pope agreed to pardon the king based upon promises made by Henry IV, promises which the pope demanded that Matilda guarantee. When the king left Canossa, he repudiated every one of those promises. Henry IV left Canossa and immediately realigned with the bishops who opposed the reforms of the church, including Guibert of Parma who would become the leader of the opposition to Gregory as Henry’s antiPope Clement III. Henry IV invited the pope and Matilda to a meeting in Mantua, intending to capture and imprison them. The pope and Matilda were warned of the plot on the road to Mantua and immediately returned to the security of Matilda’s fortress at Canossa. They stayed in these mountains during the months that Henry IV remained in Italy. When the king returned to Germany, he zealously sold churches for money, sometimes investing two men as bishops of the same diocese. Matilda then repudiated Henry IV as her king.

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View of the Passo delle Radici between Canossa and Lucca

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1077 From Canossa to Rome

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A NEW ORDER IN THE CANOSSAN TERRITORIES From December 1076 until the following autumn, Pope Gregory VII and the Countess Matilda traveled extensively through territories formerly ruled by her father. Their mission was to demonstrate in person the radical transformation in law and governance that was under their direction. They are recorded in Lucca, Mantua, the monastery of Nonantola and the Apennine mountain castles and monasteries of Canossa, Frassinoro, and Carpineti. They are in Tuscany by early June when both the Pope and the Countess issue documents in Florence. Gregory issued a papal privilege in favor of the monastery of Santa Felicità (see lower half of document, below). His signature is remarkably modern for the date. Matilda is documented at a hearing in Florence on June 6, 1077. Two weeks later, by June 21, 1077 the pope and the countess are recorded in Pisa, at the Canossan palace where Beatrice had died the year before. Although Pisa was within the Duchy of Tuscany during Bonifacio’s and Godfrey’s lifetimes, Beatrice seems to have allowed Pisa to develop independently of feudal authority. Pisa’s independence received the blessing of Pope Gregory VII in June 1077 when he approved the “Laws and Customs of the Sea” (Heywood 1921, p. 8) which the Pisans had developed to govern themselves. In June 1077, Pope Gregory VII would have visited and said mass at the Petrine shrine of San Piero a Grado at the ancient port of Pisa where the Apostle Peter landed in 44 A.D. In thanksgiving for his safe journey, Peter consecrated bread and wine in memory of the new covenant on a white marble slab over which a shrine was constructed. The Romanesque church of San Piero a Grado at Marina di Pisa rises above this altar. Pope Gregory VII’s identification with the first Apostle is so complete that he spoke of himself as Peter “now living in the flesh”. Matilda’s connections to Peter are no less strong. The Pope called her the “daughter of St. Peter”, a description repeated frequently by Donizone.

Papal Bull of Pope Gregory VII at Benedictine monastery of Santa Felicita, Florence 1077. Archivio di Stato, Firenze, S.Felicita, Normali.

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Basilica of San Piero a Grado, Marina di Pisa

Signature of Matilda on a document made at Villa Magisi near Florence on December 28, 1103 or 1104 Archivio di Stato Firenze

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1077 Rome MATILDA’S DONATION TO SAINT PETER AND HER SECOND ENCOUNTER WITH PEPO, A SCHOLAR OF ROMAN LAW Pope Gregory and Matilda’s journey ended at the Lateran Palace in Rome when Matilda declared her intention to give all her worldly goods to St. Peter, the personification of the papacy. Twentyfive years later, she confirmed the donation in November 1102 in the only document she ever signed in the castle of Canossa. Although Donizone describes Matilda’s donation, it remains enormously controversial. The original document was lost and only a copy of the 1102 document of donation exists today. On leaving Rome, Matilda traveled north to Canossa. Matilda stopped in Borgo Marturi which was the first town in her domains after she left the papal state. There Matilda made a donation to the bishop of Volterra. In this document dated February 11, 1078, she adopted the form of signature she will use for the next forty years, MATILDA DEI GRATIA SI QUID EST (Matilda who by the grace of God is) inside a hand penned cross. Her signature announced both her alliance with St. Peter and her intent to replace the German feudal order with Rome’s. Two weeks later, on February 29, 1078, Matilda is again recorded in the presence of Pepo, the legal scholar of Justinian’s civil code of laws. In this document Pepo advocatore again is listed as the lawyer for the abbot of San Salvatore at Monte Amiata. It may be on the basis of Pepo’s advice that, Matilda based her authority on her status as “the daughter of Bonifacio, Duke and Margrave” because, under Justinian’s law, Matilda derived her rights through her inheritance from her father.

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Lintel of the Portale della Contessa Matilda, Basilica of Santa Cristina, Bolsena, c. 1078

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1078 Bolsena, Florence

THE FIRST ACTS OF MATILDA AFTER HER DONATION AND THE LIBERATION OF FLORENCE The most southern church restored by the Countess is the Basilica of Santa Cristina in Bolsena. Located on the via Francigena 100 kilometers from Rome, it is also among the first documented church restorations which Matilda accomplished by herself, without her mother. Santa Cristina was an early Christian martyr who defended her faith and her virginity against the persecutions of her father. A shrine dating to the fourth century was built over the Saint’s tomb cut into the local volcanic rock. Matilda of Canossa visited the ancient shrine, likely with Pope Gregory on their journey to Rome in late summer 1077. They despaired of its poor condition. Matilda is credited with ordering a basilica to be built over it. This basilica is documented as being consecrated by Pope Gregory VII on May 10, 1078 at a ceremony where the Countess was likely also present. In 1263, this Matildan Basilica became the site of the miracle of Corpus Domini and was greatly enlarged in the Renaissance. To arrive at this sacred altar, one must pass through the Portale della Contessa Matilda. This white marble door, today at the center of the Basilica’s nave, was likely the entrance to the Romanesque church built by Matilda in 1078. A delicate vine tracery winds up the door jambs. The lintel is a marvelous example of early Romanesque sculpture at the center of which is the Agnus Dei. To the right of the Lamb are the three magi worshiping Mary, her Child and Joseph an early sculptural figuration of the Holy Family. At the far left of the lintel are three women. These women likely represent the Virgin martyrs, of whom one would be Cristina. Between the martyrs and the angel next to the Lamb is a woman wearing a crown and offering a gift who some believe represents the Countess Matilda. In this same year, 1078, Matilda is credited with re-building the walls around Florence to protect the commune from the German king. By 1079 she had transferred jurisdictional and administrative powers formerly reserved to the margrave to the Florentines themselves. By 10901095 the Florentines formed a council to collect and disperse taxes, keeping for its citizens imposts previously paid to the German king and his feudal representative (Procacci 1996, p. 144; Dameron 1991, p. 67; Cantini 1796, p. 74). Florence is the only commune that remained loyal to Matilda throughout her life.

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The Walls of Lucca which Henry IV agreed to protect among other privileges he granted to the citizens of Lucca in the summer of 1081

Royal Seal and signature of the German king Henry IV, dated July 19, 1081, Archivio di Stato Lucca, S. Giustina

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1081 Lucca THE ARRIVAL IN ITALY OF HENRY IV TO DEPOSE POPE GREGORY VII AND THE CONCESSIONS TO THE CITIZENS OF LUCCA Henry IV returned to Italy in the spring of 1081 to avenge his birthright to the lands in northern Italy which Matilda’s father had held in feud from his father – the same lands that Matilda had donated to papal Rome. The bishops of Parma, Modena, and Reggio sided with the German king. The commune of Florence allied with Matilda. When news arrived that Henry IV had crossed the Alps in March 1081, Gregory VII remained in Rome. Matilda returned for protection to her great grandfather’s impregnable fortress at Canossa. The castle defended her, manned by few soldiers. The fortress’s bastions, higher than any other castle’s, were “impervious to bellicose machines, lances or javelins.” She did not fear even the famine threatened by a siege, because Canossa’s towers were “filled with grain, meat and wine.” Bishops allied with the empire waged war against Gregorians from the Po river plain south to Rome. At Canossa, Matilda closed her gates against the fray. She protected the priests and bishops who supported the Gregorian reform for twelve years, 1081-1092. But, Matilda did not have the soldiers to prevent the German king from marching his troops all the way to Rome, where he made camp. In June 1081 the citizens of Lucca sent emissaries to the king to seek concessions from taxes that were, presumably, similar to those granted by Matilda to the Florentines. In this document Henry agreed to protect the walls of Lucca and to exempt the citizens of Lucca from taxes charged on several roads and rivers and at the prosperous market of Capannori outside the city. Henry’s privilege long lay unnoticed in the civic archives of Lucca and has only recently been recognized as a landmark in the history of the liberation of the Tuscan communes. In this same summer, the king confirmed Pope Gregory’s approval in 1077 of the Laws and Customs of the Sea adopted by the citizens of Pisa. Henry also granted privileges to the citizens of Siena. The king did not specifically deprive Matilda of any properties, as some scholars have stated. His sole purpose was to grant to the citizens of these towns unprecedented autonomy in matters of trade, but this crack would soon begin to widen irresistibly. The Italian communes were freed from feudal obligations by all three parties to the conflict, the king, the pope and the countess. To the consternation of the successors to Henry IV, the communes, once freed from feudal obligations, successfully defended these fragile privileges against those who tried to re-impose German authority after Matilda’s death.

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The castle of Canossa with a view of the ruins of the Monastery of Sant’Apollonio

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1084 CANOSSA, ROME, AND SORBARA

THE FALL OF ROME TO HENRY IV After three years of siege, Henry IV was able to conquer Rome. During this desperate time, Matilda gave her wealth and heart to the cause of the beleaguered Gregorians. In 1082 she ordered the gold and silver liturgical objects given by her family to the church of Sant’Apollonio at Canossa to be melted down and sent to the Pope to pay the soldiers who were defending Rome. The Roman clergy had been asked to make the same sacrifice from their church treasuries, but they refused. On June 3, 1083, Henry breached the walls of Rome and Gregory fled to the nearby fortress of the Castel Sant’ Angelo where, in an act of defiance, on August 15, 1083, the Pope canonized Stephen, king of Hungary (d.August 15, 1038). Stephen had dedicated his battle against Conrad II, a predecessor of Henry IV, to the Virgin and had preserved the freedom of Hungary from German feudal laws. The canonization rebuked Henry IV, twice excommunicated, and proclaimed the sanctity of the just king who ruled his territory within the Roman Church. Henry, now in control of the city, proposed a new Pope, Clement III, who the Romans elected. On Easter, March 31, 1084, Clement crowned Henry as Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda went to her grave believing that the anti-Pope Clement bought the Romans with gifts, but a later source suggests that Henry IV promised the Romans the same freedoms from feudal obligations he had offered to the Tuscan communes. (Solmi 1922, p. 76) THE EXILE AND DEATH OF POPE GREGORY VII Having accomplished all of his goals, Henry left Rome and returned, without stopping, to Germany. Henry never considered that Matilda, isolated in the Apennine mountains, could threaten his total victory over papal Rome. After the departure of the German king, the city of Rome was left undefended and ungoverned. Gregory remained a virtual prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Rushing into the vacuum, the Norman armies came north from their base in Salerno and cruelly sacked the capitol of Christendom, pillaging and burning until only wisps of smoke rose above the rubble of the ancient monuments that Matilda and Gregory had dreamt of restoring. When Guiscard left Rome a month later, he brought Gregory to Salerno where he died in exile on May 25, 1085. After Gregory VII’s death, it fell to Matilda of Canossa to fulfill his program. THE VICTORY OF MATILDA AT SORBARA In July 1084, the troops of the Lombard bishops loyal to Henry IV made camp at Sorbara north of Modena. They enjoyed dinner accompanied by an excess of Sorbara wine and were sleeping heavily when Matilda’s troops attached at dawn. Her militia killed or captured many that day, including the bishop of Reggio who tried to escape by hiding naked for three days among the blackberry brambles. After this battle, Donizone wrote, Matilda secured the counts of Reggio and Modena. It was her way of notifying the king that she had not surrendered and Gregory, through her, did not concede defeat.

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Drawing of a Notary, Matricola del Notai, 1229-1294, pen and brown ink, Archivio di Stato Bologna

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1088 Bologna THE REVIVAL OF THE JUSTINIAN CODE OF ROMAN LAW Two events vital to the success of the Gregorian reform occurred in 1088. First, and foremost, on March 12, the man named by Pope Gregory VII as his successor was elected by a group of loyal bishops, as Pope Urban II. The new Pope pledged his papacy to the campaign to establish Gregory’s Dictates of the Pope as dogma of the Roman church. For the moment the victory was symbolic as the anti-Pope Clement III remained in possession of St Peter’s. Nonetheless, the election of Urban II gave the Gregorian reform a dedicated, intelligent and articulate leader. The second transforming event of 1088 took place almost unnoticed but its consequences have resonated through western civilization down to the present day. In the year 1088, according to Burchard, Abbot of Ursberg (1177 - 1230), Matilda of Canossa asked a legal scholar named Wernerius to assume responsibility and teach the content of the volumes of Roman law that had been enacted by Justinian, the Holy Roman Emperor in Constantinople (r. 527-565 AD) and stored for more than five hundred years in the monastery of Santo Stefano. Those loose sheets of handwritten sheepskin are the foundation of western European and American law. A slightly later chronicle written by Odofredo (d. 1265) who studied law in Bologna, stated that before Wernerius arrived in Bologna a man named Pepo had become an authority on Justinian’s books of Roman law (“auctoritate sua legere in legibus’) but he had not received any measure of fame similar to that enjoyed by Wernerius. Both of these scholars were associated in the courts of Matilda and her mother, Beatrice, and appear in documents issued under their authority. The Justinian Code of Law gave women certain basic property rights that no other law offered, a point on which Matilda and the Roman papacy relied. Justinian’s laws also established freedom and fairness as fundamental human expectations. The Digest begins with a discourse on natural versus civil law and makes the statement, that surely influenced Thomas Jefferson, “For under [natural] law, all men are born free.” (Institutes, Book I, Title II. 2) Lawyers trained in Bologna administered the Italian communes during their continuing struggle for independence from the German empire. Finally, Justinian’s laws establish basic concepts of real and personal property, contracts, mortgages, corporations, trusts and estates, all of which facilitated the revival of trade and commerce in the ensuing centuries.

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Statue of Matilda as a Warrior, stone, Seventeenth Century, at the entrance to the monastery (today the Museo Civico), San Benedetto Po

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1092 Canossa MATILDA’S VICTORY IN BATTLE OVER HENRY IV At Pope Urban II’s suggestion, in 1089, Matilda made an alliance with Guelf IV and V, Dukes of Bavaria who were supporters of the papacy. The alliance compelled Matilda, at the age of 43, to marry the son and heir of the duchy of Bavaria, Duke Guelf V, who was seventeen at the time. In accordance with feudal law, he received her father’s titles. She expected him to win her battles. Although Henry’s allies ridiculed Matilda for the disparity of ages in this marriage, the German king took the alliance seriously. He returned to Italy in the spring of 1090. He first attacked the center of Bonifacio’s court, the island fortress of Mantua. Matilda left the defense of the city to her second husband, Guelf V. The city fell, after a siege of 11 months, at Easter of 1091. The marriage did not survive the loss. A short time later, Guelf V disappeared from contemporary accounts, as if he never existed. By the summer of 1092, Henry IV had conquered all of Italy north of the Apennines. He offered a cessation of hostilities on the condition that she recognize the papacy of his appointee, Clement III. Exhausted and demoralized by a decade of war, her entire court of bishops, abbots, and counselors, advised her to accept the king’s offer. Matilda refused. During the summer of 1092, the advance of the king and his troops was blocked by her castle at Monteveglio, on the pass through the Apennine mountains to Tuscany. By October, Henry IV had no choice but to direct his troops against Canossa.The only approach to the base of the mountain was along a narrow ridge. As the soldiers followed their leaders on horseback an impenetrable fog rose from the valleys, rendering the fortress and the path invisible. At this critical moment, Matilda’s troops launched their counterattack. In the indescribable confusion, the king’s standard was seized by the Canossan men and the king was forced to retreat ignominiously. At Canossa in October of 1092, Matilda won her and Gregory VII’s war.

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The Basilica of the Pieve of Saints Peter and Paul was the site of two papal synods hosted by the Countess Matilda, one of Urban II in 1095 and the other of Paschal II in 1106. The church was restored by the Countess in 1110. Modern mosaics of Matilda and the Popes who she supported are set in roundels in the nave.

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1095 GUASTALLA, PIACENZA THE VICTORY OF THE GREGORIAN REFORM The defeat of Henry IV at Canossa rallied the people of north Italy to the Gregorian cause of Matilda and encouraged the aspirations of the Italian communes, as cities and towns were called, towards self-government. These two historical movements proceeded upon different tracts, political and ecclesiastic, that continually crossed. The communes of Milan, Cremona, Lodi, and Piacenza seceded from the German kingdom and united to form their own political unit, called “La Lega” (the League). These communes are located east of the Enza river and were never part of the territory controlled by Matilda’s family. They asserted their independence from different German feudal nobility. Nevertheless, Matilda’s policies must have led these communes to believe that Matilda would support their claim for freedom. In 1093, the League entered into a treaty with Matilda as “soldiers of St. Peter” against their former sovereign the German king. By Christmas 1094, Pope Urban II took possession of St. Peter’s where he celebrated Mass on Christmas Day. Fulcher of Chartres wrote at the time that, “Urban II obtained complete papal power everywhere, with the help of a certain most noble patron, Matilda by name, who then had great influence in the Roman state.” In the spring of 1095, at Matilda’s request, Pope Urban II traveled north, holding councils at Guastalla and at Piacenza. The council at Piacenza united two hundred bishops from Lombardy, Rome, Burgundy, and France and even Germany; four thousand priests, and thirty thousand laity – so many people attended to celebrate Italy’s independence that the council was held in a field outside of town. There the bishops repudiated the papacy of Clement III, re-affirmed the papacies of Gregory VII and Urban II, and ratified the Gregorian reforms. In November 1095, Urban II traveled to Clermont to meet bishops from France and England and gained their ratification of the Gregorian reforms. At this council, Urban II called on all the knights of Western Christendom to rescue the Church in Jerusalem from the Saracens. Could it be mere coincidence that the knight chosen to lead this heroic but dangerous crusade was Godfrey of Boillon, the bitter enemy of Matilda, who continued to press his claims of inheritance to Canossan lands? Godfrey acquitted himself valiantly in the Holy Land overcoming the Saracens in 1099, accepting the title of King of Jerusalem. He was killed by a poison arrow in 1100 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

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Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Pisa, begun 1064 consecrated 1118, Matilda supported its construction throughout her life.

Head of Matilda of Canossa, faรงade Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, Pisa

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1097 PISA THE CRUSADES AND MATILDA’S DONATIONS TO THE GREGORIAN BISHOPS IN HER TOWNS In 1097, Pisa answered Urban II’s call to arms and sent a fleet of one hundred twenty ships to participate in the First Crusade, led by their archbishop Daibert. At their victory in 1099, Pisa’s archbishop Daibert became Patriarch of Jerusalem. In 1092, when Henry IV threatened to overwhelm Matildan defenders, Pope Urban II encouraged the Pisans to maintain their alliance by raising the cathedral of Pisa to a Primacy with the rank of Archbishopic. At the same time, the Pope enriched the diocese by conferring on its Archbishop supremacy over the churches in Corsica and Sardinia. Matilda confirmed this grant in a document. As the principal port of Tuscany, Pisa belonged to the duchy of Tuscany under Matilda’s father. Her mother Beatrice owned a palace in the city where she and Matilda frequently visited. The new cathedral was begun in 1064, partly sponsored by the capture of Palermo from the Saracens, and partly by donations from the Countess Matilda, beginning in 1077 with donations of valuable property to the cathedral canons. In 1103 from Nonantola, the countess donated to the canons of Pisa’s cathedral her castle on the road to Lucca and her fortress in Livorno which controlled access to Tuscany from the Mediterranean Sea. The new building was consecrated by Pope Gelasius II in 1118, three years after Matilda’s death. The Pisans had many reasons for gratitude towards her and some scholars have suggested that a small sculpture of the face of a woman on the façade is an idealized representation of Matilda. (Piccinelli in Golinelli 2004, pp. 142-43). The marble face was placed high at the eleventh triangular bracket on the first order of the loggia.

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Church of San Giacomo, Altopascio, a hospice on the via Francigena south of Lucca called Matilda’s hospice in a diary of 1154.

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1099 LUCCA AND THE VIA FRANCIGENA THE REVIVAL OF TRAVEL, PILGRIMAGE AND TRADE IN BONIFACIO’S LANDS Matilda devoted the last years of her life to building the infrastructure that would establish the Gregorian reform from the ground up, creating a capillary network that expanded the footprint of Gregorian clergy throughout Italy north of Rome. This network enhanced travel and communication between the bishops’ dioceses. She also intentionally built a network of churches with hospices attached, the famous ‘One Hundred Churches’ of the Countess Matilda, see pp. 92-93, to encourage communication and cooperation between the Italian communes and to revive travel, pilgrimage and trade within her territories to Rome. In 1099 in Lucca, Matilda donated land on a public road to the Monastery of San Ponziano in Lucca “for the construction of a pilgrim hospice for the poor.” Unlike the nobility, ordinary people, merchants and pilgrims, had no place to stop for a warm meal and a safe bed at the end of each day until Matilda re-built the ancient network of rural pieve with hospices attached along the ancient Roman roads. Matilda’s purpose is indicated by the documents that she issued. In July 1105 at Pieve Fosciana, near the top of the Apennine pass that connects Reggio and Modena with Lucca, Matilda convened the leading citizens from Lombardy and Tuscany (“bonorum hominum Lombardie et Tuscie”) and took under her protection a hospice along the mountain pass. The act demonstrates Matilda’s encouragement of cooperation between the citizens of various communes on both sides of the pass for the specific purpose of providing safe travel between them. Lucca is situated at the crossroads of the ancient routes through Tuscany. Matilda built a network of churches and hospices along these pilgrim routes which connected Rome to Canterbury along a network built by the Abbot of Cluny and to Jerusalem through hospices built by the patriarch of Jerusalem (Cardini 2000, p. 31). To the Gregorian bishops of Lucca, Matilda donated the castrum of Decimo that controlled the Apennine pass from Canossa to Lucca. She also confirmed in the bishops of Lucca houses in Montecatini which overlooked the via Cassia; the ospedale, or pilgrim hospice, at Altopascio and the market town of Capannule (today Capannori) on the via Francigena. Lucca became an important stop for pilgrims on the road to Rome in 742, when the relic of the “Volto Santo” (or Holy Face) arrived in Lucca. The crucifix, whose face is believed to have been carved by Nicodemus, is located in a Renaissance chapel in the nave of the Cathedral of San Martino, and is venerated to this day. The Cathedral of San Martino, was founded in the sixth century by San Frediano and restored under Matilda’s mother, Beatrice, who attended its reconsecration in 1070. Some scholars suggest that a small sculpture of the face of a woman above the side door on the porch of the façade represents the Countess Matilda.

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The bridge at Borgo a Mozzano built by Matilda of Canossa, c. 1100

Ponte Fabricius Rome, 62 B.C.

Ponte dell’Abbadia, Vulci, 90 B.C.

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1100 Borgo a Mozzano THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN ARCH BRIDGE To Matilda is credited the construction c. 1100 of the bridge at Borgo a Mozzano, the first set of stone arches to span a river built since antiquity. These arches cross the Serchio River and connect Lucca with the pass through the Apennines to Canossa and Reggio and Modena. The bridge facilitates travel between Tuscany and Emilia without hampering traffic on the Serchio. Freedom of trade on the Serchio and Motrone Rivers was among the privileges requested by, and granted by Henry IV to, the citizens of Lucca in 1081. (Spike 2004, Appendix) Matilda’s inspiration to build this bridge came from Rome, as historians recognize. Her tower home on the Isola Tiberina stood at one end of the ponte Fabricius, the oldest bridge in Rome built c. 62 BC and named after the engineer who built it. The hemispherical central arch is the distinctive feature shared by the two bridges. (See Sinopoli 1998, pp. 48-49) Matilda may also have known the ponte dell’Abbadia at Vulci, built by the Etruscans c. 90 BC and located near Tarquinia where Matilda had a castle and is recorded in March 1080. There are remarkable similarities between the bridge at Borgo a Mozzano and the Etruscan bridge of one thousand years earlier.

The walkway across the Ponte dell’Abadia, Vulci, 90 BC, compared to walkway across the Ponte a Mozzano, ca. 1100

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Route 1. Between the Brenner Pass to the Po: along the Oglio, the Mincio and the Adige rivers

Route 2. Along The Po River from Brescello to the Adriatic Sea

Route 3. Between the Po River and the via Emilia: along the Enza, the Secchia and the Panaro rivers

Route 4. Along the via Emilia from Parma to Bologna

Route 5. Through the Appenine Mountains: along the pass along Reno and Limentra river valleys; the pass along the Secchia river valley; the pass along the Enza river valley from Reggio nell’Emilia to San Pellegrino in Alpe and along the Serchio river valley to Lucca; the mountain road above Pistoia, Prato and Florence

Route 6. The via Cassia and the foothills of the Apennines to Florence Route 7. The Arno River

Route 8. The via Cassia: from Florence to Siena

Route 9. The via Francigena: from Luni to Roma

Route 10. The via Aurelia: the coastal road from Pisa to Roma

The ‘One Hundred Churches’ of Matilda of Canossa were built with hospices attached approximately 20 kilometers apart on all of the medieval routes in her territory.

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1095-1115 From the Alps to Rome THE ‘ONE HUNDRED CHURCHES’ OF MATILDA OF CANOSSA An oft-told legend credits Matilda of Canossa with the construction of one hundred churches, and at least one hundred thirty-five from the Alps to outside Rome trace their origins or restoration to the Countess Matilda (See Spike 2014). Significantly, the Countess devoted as much of her energy and her resources to the construction and restoration of churches in the countryside as she did to the cathedrals within the town walls. In the same manner as her great-grandfather Atto Adalberto built a strategic network of castles to establish and defend Canossan control of its territories, Matilda built or restored church buildings to secure the ancient routes of travel. Like the castles built by Matilda’s ancestors these churches and hospices had the same sight lines north to south and east to west, aiding communication and protection of travelers. Her churches, most with hospices attached, are built approximately twenty kilometers apart, or what was then a days’ journey. The architectural patronage of Matilda was not concentrated in the region contiguous to Canossa, which is most studied today. Rather, as the Map of the ‘One Hundred’ Churches of Matilda of Canossa on the facing page indicates the buildings securely associated with Matilda were evenly distributed along the major medieval routes of Lombardy, Emilia, and Tuscany. Matilda built churches on both banks of the Po and Arno rivers and their major tributaries, along the river valleys and passes through the Apennine mountains between the Enza river on the west to the Reno river on the east, that connect Lombardy, Emilia and Tuscany. Her churches line all of the ancient Roman routes, including the via Emilia north of the Apennines and those portions of the via Aurelia, the via Cassia and the via Francigena within Tuscany to the border of the papal states. The legendary ‘One Hundred Churches’ of the Countess Matilda established the Gregorian reform as an integrated network throughout Canossan lands. By this means Matilda fulfilled her promise to transfer her father’s property to St Peter and to his successors as Popes of Rome. The network also established the infrastructure to revive travel, pilgrimage and trade.

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Pieve of Santa Maria Assunta, Rubbiano di Montefiorino in the Modenese Apennines. One of the ‘One Hundred Churches’ restored by Matilda of Canossa c. 1100.

Inscription with the name of Wiligelmo on the facade of the Cathedral of San Geminiano, Modena, 1106

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1106 Modena MATILDA’S PATRONAGE OF LANFRANC AND WILIGELMO The cathedral of San Geminiano in Modena, the manner of its construction, and Matilda’s participation, is chronicled in a contemporary manuscript entitled, Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae. The Relatio identifies the architect as Lanfranc, about whom little is known other than his name. An inscription prominently displayed on the façade between the carved figures of Enos and Enoch names the sculptor, Wiligelmo, who proudly records: “Among sculptors Wiligelmo is worthy of great honors to which these his sculptures attest.” Lanfranc and Wiligelmo are the first architect and sculptor since antiquity to receive credit for their work. Two centuries before Giotto, Wiligelmo had the same inspiration to recreate sacred compositions using carving techniques known from ancient Roman sarcophagi. Wiligelmo translated biblical stories from Genesis into monumental stone reliefs using a naturalness of form and a vivacity of expression that make his sculptures appealing across the centuries. Viewed in its entirety Wiligelmo’s sculptural program supports the Gregorian proposition that God created the world and God created the normal order of all things. Wiligelmo opens the Creation sequence with God, the law giver. As the scenes unfold, God patiently explains the law to Adam and Eve after the Fall and to Cain after his murder of his brother. God is represented on earth by His Church. The Church then assumes God’s role of law giver, and the Pope, as the head of the Church, has the final authority, as asserted by Pope Gregory VII, to judge all mankind, be they a peasant or a king.

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WILIGELMO, THE STORIES OF GENESIS, FAÇADE, CATHEDRAL OF SAN GEMINIANO, MODENA, 1106-1110 Marble, each panel is one meter high

The Creation of Adam and Eve and the Fall

The Expulsion from the Garden and the Toil in the Earth

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The Offerings of Cain and Abel and the Murder of Abel by Cain

The Murder of the Innocent by the hunter Lamach and the Ark of Noah

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The abdication of Henry IV in favor of Henry V, from the Chronicle of Ekkehard von Aura, c. 1106

The town of Quattro Castella is named for the four Canossan castles at the top of four hills at the foothills of the Apennine approach to Canossa. Bianello is the only castle still standing and in use.

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1111 Bianello THE ARRIVAL OF HENRY V In January 1106, Henry IV was deposed by the German dukes and his crown given to his son Henry V. They wanted the son to recover the lands that the father had lost. The following August, the embittered Henry IV died in exile and, because he was still under excommunication by his nemesis Gregory VII, his body was buried in unconsecrated ground outside of the burial chapel of his ancestors at Speyer. Henry V was an energetic, young sovereign determined to accomplish his mandate. At the head of a formidable army, he descended into Italy and cut a swath of terror across Lombardy, burning the castles and fortified cities that tried to resist. Every city except Milan paid him homage, offering vases overflowing with gold and silver. Matilda retreated, as always to the safety of Canossa’s stone walls. Her enemy’s son sent his ambassadors to demand her promise of unimpeded passage through the Apennine mountains to Rome. She agreed—not having much choice—but “refused to join the king against the pope.” Henry’s mission in Rome was to obtain permission for his father’s burial inside the cathedral at Speyer with dignity. For himself he demanded that Pope Paschal II crown him Holy Roman Emperor. He obtained both, after imprisoning the Pope and his recalcitrant bishops, for a few months. Henry V then returned north. He visited the Gran Contessa from May 6-8, 1111, at her castle at Bianello, determined to return the Italian territories to feudal dominion. Donizone wrote that Henry V offered Matilda the consolation of an honorary title Vice Regina of Liguria. Henry V’s act recognized Matilda as having a sovereign title, a right for which she had fought her whole life. Although some scholars see this as an abandonment of her commitment to the Gregorian reforms, Enrico Spagnesi (2013, p. 54) points out that Matilda did not modify her policies in any way. In 1111 Matilda was nearly sixty-five years old and suffering from gout. Henry V, as king and her closest male relation, was Matilda’s only heir. Feisty to the end, Matilda exacted Henry V’s agreement to respect, after her death, properties given by her and by her ancestors to the monasteries at San Benedetto Po and at Pomposa. Henry V acknowledged that these Canossan properties would be excluded from the lands that he would claim at Matilda’s death.

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The tomb of the Countess Matilda, Monastery of San Benedetto Po

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1115 San Benedetto Po THE DEATH OF THE COUNTESS MATILDA Long family tradition, dating back to 1007, made San Benedetto Po the sanctuary which Matilda resolved would be her final resting place. Beginning in 1101, and at least annually until she died, the monastery of San Benedetto Po benefited from property donations by the countess. When the pain from her gout had confined her to bed, she had a chapel built dedicated to St James, the patron saint of pilgrims, near her bedroom so that she could continue to hear daily Mass. On the vigil of that Saint’s Feast day, July 24, 1115, Matilda heard Mass and, holding a crucifix to her chest said, “I have always honored you, now purify me of my sins”. Then, after Bonseniore, Bishop of Reggio, gave Matilda the Eucharist, she prayed, “Always, as long as I was able I put my hope in you, o Lord. Now show to me your face that saves.” And Matilda breathed her last. At her death, Matilda was buried in the Church dedicated to Mary that she had restored at the Monastery of San Benedetto Po. Her tomb, now empty, is in the sacristy, beneath the late Renaissance painting of the Countess by Orazio Farinati, Matilda on horseback holding a pomegranate (1587). In gratitude for her generosity, the monks of San Benedetto Po promised Matilda that they would celebrate a mass on the anniversary of her death and, in her memory, distribute food to the poor on the first Monday of every month – a promise which they kept for five hundred years until her remains were brought to St. Peter’s n Rome.

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The Revival of Roman law in Florence and in Virginia

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Atto Adalberto and Ildegard, Matilda’s great-grandparents. Her grandfather Tedaldo is at right. His brother, Godfrey, bishop of Brescia, is in the center, and the youngest brother, Rodolfo, is at left. From the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS

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Tedaldo and Guilia, Matilda’s grandparents. Her father, Bonifacio, is at center, flanked by his brothers, Tedaldo, Bishop of Arezzo, and Conrad. From the Vita Mathildis of Donizone, MS


1. Vita Mathildis, written at Canossa by the monk Donizone, in the years 1111-1115 Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. Vat.Lat.4922 Six color miniatures Two box set including Codice Vaticano latino 4922, facsimile, no. 692 of edition of 2000, 1984 The second volume includes an introduction by Vito Fumagalli and a translation of Donizone’s Latin text into Italian, with explanatory footnotes, by Paolo Golinelli. 177.8 x 228.6 mm Collection of John and Michèle Spike

The Vita Mathildis is the principal and irreplaceable chronicle of Matilda’s life. It was issued at Canossa by a Benedictine monk named Donizone who lived at the monastery of Sant’Apollonio eventually becoming its Abbot. He probably began the manuscript in 1110, when Matilda retired again to this mountaintop, as her nemesis’s son, Henry V, and his armies plundered the plain below. She told Donizone her version of the momentous events of her and her ancestor’s lives and he put pen to parchment in the monastery’s scriptorium. In his text he uses the titles of Duchess and Countess and throughout he spells her name, Mathildis. The first letters of each line in the prologue spell: “FILIA MATHILDIS BONEFACI I BEATRICIS NUNC ANCILLA DEI FILIA DIGNA PETRI” (Mathildis daughter of Bonifacio and Beatrice, handmaiden of God, worthy daughter of Peter). And with the first letters of the epilogue, he signed his name: PRESBITER HUNC LIBRUM FINIXIT MONACHUS QUE DONIZO. The manuscript includes six miniatures. The portraits of Matilda, her mother and her father are illustrated in this exhibition, see pp. 46, 50, 62. The first miniature shows Atto Adalberto receiving the head and arm of the patron saint of Brescia, Saint Apollonio, from his son, Godfrey, then bishop of Brescia. Atto brought his remains to Canossa to consecrate the altar of the church that Atto built within his castle walls and dedicated to this saint. Donizone also depicted the family trees of her great grandfather, Atto Adalberto, and her grandfather, Tedaldo, and their sons, see facing page. The only women in these family trees are the mothers, Hildegard and Guilia. This is not because they had no daughters, but because only sons had a place in the feudal hierarchy.

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The building of the Cathedral of San Geminiano at Modena, Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae, Archivio Capitolare di Modena, MS O.II. 1099-1106, f.1.v

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The Countess Matilda and Pope Paschal II at Modena, Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae, Archivio Capitolare di Modena, MS O.II. 1099-1106, f.9.r


2. Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae, written at Modena by an anonymous author, in the years 1099-1106 Two color miniatures Archivio Capitolare di Modena, Archdiocese Modena-Nonantola, ms. O.II.11 Facsimile edition, Il Bulino, 2009 325 x 220 mm Lent by Archivio Capitolare di Modena, Archdiocese Modena-Nonantola Illustrated and exhibited, f. 14v. and 83 v.

The Relatio fundationis cathedralis Mutinae is among the oldest and most important codices conserved in the Archive of the Chapter of the Duomo of Modena. The Relatio tells the story of the construction by the Modenese people of a new cathedral to replace the shrine built over the tomb of Geminiano at his death. Saint Geminiano was bishop of Modena at the end of the 4th century (c. 350 to 396 AD) and converted the city to Christianity through his prayer and his piety. Revered for his sanctity as far as Constantinople, Geminiano is venerated as the protector of Modena. The Relatio describes a group project, carried out and completed by the people of Modena with the assistance of an architect named Lanfranc and of Matilda of Canossa who contributes to their efforts, mediates their disputes and brings Pope Paschal II to consecrate their cathedral. The manuscript relates the process of the transfer of the Saint’s tomb from the old church to the new. It describes the debate among the citizens as to whether they should test Geminiano’s sanctity and open the tomb. Four scenes are illustrated. In the first miniature, f.1v, at top, the architect Lanfranco directs the workers as they dig the foundation for the new cathedral. At bottom, the architect Lanfranco supervises the workers as they build its walls. In the second miniature, f.9r, at top, Matilda of Canossa, in a simple brown dress with a green mantle, greets Pope Paschal II and his entourage of bishops, abbots and monks. At bottom, the architect Lanfranco with Matilda on one side, and the bishops of Modena and Reggio on the other side, open the tomb of Saint Geminiano. According to the text, the Saint’s tomb remained open overnight to allow the townspeople to see that the saint’s body had remained incorruptible over the centuries. The body was protected by six armed nobles and twelve male citizens of the town, who are illustrated along the side of the sarcophagus. Matilda holds a gold liturgical cape which she donates at the tomb of the saint. San Geminiano’s fourth century sarcophagus remains today in the apse of the Cathedral of Modena in the place where it was venerated by pope Paschal II and Matilda of Canossa in 1106. Goez publishes four documents of donation between 1107 and 1109 (nos. 101, 106, 108 and 109) by which the Countess transferred property to Dodone the bishop of Modena. Her donations provided significant support, but the manuscript makes clear that the entire town actively participated in the project.

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Gospels of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, f. 14v. and f. 83v.

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3. Gospels of Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, manuscript produced at the monastery of Sant’Apollonio at Canossa, in the years 1075-1099 106 pages of which 24 are illustrated, 333 x 226 mm Illustrated and exhibited, fol. 14v and f. 83v. San Benedetto Po, Italy, between 1075 and 1099. Credit line: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. MS M.492. Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1912.

Among the manuscripts produced by the monks in the monastery of Sant’Apollonio at Canossa is an illuminated set of the four Gospels which were donated by the Countess in 1099 to the monastery at San Benedetto Po. It was purchased at the turn of the twentieth century by J.P. Morgan and is today in the Morgan Library, New York (MS M492) The manuscript includes the texts of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as well as additional material applicable to the monastery of San Benedetto Po. The manuscript is on vellum lined with a sharp edged point. Written in Carolingen script in a remarkably even hand, the pages are in magnificent condition. Only a few of the pages, such as the figure of St. Mark, are completed with the color added. The illustrations of the scenes from the life of Christ, unique for this early period, (Warner 1917, p. 18) are all drawn in pen with brown ink, without any additional color, except for the gold on the halos. During the period 1075 - 1099, the monastery at Canossa was full of monks and clerics, writers and illustrators, who had fled the persecutions of supporters of Henry IV and had taken refuge with Matilda, who welcomed them all, according to Donizone. Ora et labora, prayer and work, in the scriptorium, formed the rhythm of a Benedictine monk’s day. These Gospels, which have a Gregorian theme, according to Robert Rough (1973), are part of the “pamphlet war” waged from Canossa against Henry IV and his Imperial Pope Clement III. Scenes of the Expulsion of the Money Changers from the Temple (fol. 84r, Matt 21:13), the life of John the Baptist (fol. 42v; Mark 1:3, 7, 11) and the Three Temptations of Christ (fol. 43r; Matt. 4:3, 4), emphasize the sacrament of clerical consecration and the goal of the Gregorian reformers to end simony and lay interference in the administration of the church. Of equal note are the illustrations of the Marian mysteries. The Gospel of Luke opens with the scenes of the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the Presentation and Christ among the Doctors in the Temple (fol. 58v, 59r, and 59v). The Gospel of John opens with the depiction of the wedding feast at Cana where Christ performed His first miracle at the request of His mother (fol 83v), see facing page. Mary sits at the head of the table with her Son, and two disciples, at her right. The busy servants and the jars of water / wine fill the bottom of the page. The Gospel of John concludes with the Passion of Christ, the last image of which is the Two Holy Women at the Tomb. Pope Gregory VII in his letter to Matilda of February 16, 1074 commended to Matilda a devotion to Mary and Donizone recorded that Matilda always recited the daily prayers to the Virgin. Cowdrey (2004, p. 302) wrote that Giovanni of Mantua’s exegesis on the first chapter of Luke was made at Matilda’s urgent request. Of the one hundred and thirty five churches which were built or restored by the Countess, forty four are dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, the woman who Heaven assumed. These Gospel illustrations may confirm the Countess’s devotion to Mary, the Mother of God.

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4. Diploma of Henry V, dated May 12, 1116, at Governolo Archivio di Stato di Milano, Diplomi e Dispacci Sovrani Germania, faldone 1:1116 maggio 12 Donation by Henry V to the monastery of San Benedetto Po of an island called Solamine and rights to a part of the woods of Carpeneto. The diploma is marked by the Emperor with a cross and an “R”. Wernerius signs directly below the Emperor : “Ego Wernerius Judex affui et subscripsit” Two subscriptions follow: “Ego Ubaldus judex affui et subscripsit” “Ego Dominicus sacri palatii notarius scripsi et complevi”

In 1111, four years before her death, Henry V went to Matilda’s castle at Bianello to meet his famous cousin, the Countess Matilda. As her king and closest male relation, Henry intended to restore to himself the lands of northern Italy that his father had lost. At this meeting Matilda obtained Henry’s promise that he would respect her donations of properties to certain monasteries, including San Benedetto Po and Pomposa. Thus, the agreement assured Matilda that donations made during her lifetime would outlive her passing away. After Matilda’s death, this agreement was seemingly administered on behalf of the Countess by a lawyer named Wernerius who appeared in nine documents together with Henry V during 1116, when the king arrived to reimpose German feudal order on northern Italy. A facsimile of one, a document dated May 12, 1116 is exhibited here. (Zanardi 1997, p. 12) These documents are marked by Henry V with a cross and the initial “R” presumably for Rex, which may indicate that the German king was not fully literate. Directly below the cross of the king, is the signature, “Wernerius Judex.” Scholars believe that Wernerius is the legal scholar who Matilda asked to renew the study of Justinian’s Digest at Bologna and who began the university at Bologna in 1088.

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5. Investiture signed by Rabodo, marchese of Tuscany (“marchio tuscie”) dated July 21, 1117 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Diplomatico, Strozziane Uguccioni, Normali, cod. id. 00003582 Vellum, 490 x 340 mm The document is marked “Rabodo dei gratia si quid est” inside a hand penned cross The document retains the red wax seal The subscriptions are lost

Histories of Tuscany record that Matilda’s reign was instrumental in the creation of the Tuscan city-states. During her lifetime “communes,” literally cum with] + munire to wall], formed in Tuscany. Those within the walls administered the commune, autonomously, retaining powers to tax previously reserved to the German feudal nobility. The death of the Countess in 1115 tolled the end of a strong central authority, whether king or duke, in Tuscany. (See e.g. Rubinstein 1942, p. 205; Dameron 1991, p. 65) Nonetheless, the communes had to defend their liberty against the nobility in the castles outside the walls who sought to re-impose feudal laws and taxes. Imperial partisans, like the Alberti family whose castle at Prato Matilda and the commune militias had destroyed in 1107, remained loyal to the German crown, because they profited from it (Heywood 1921pp. 95-97). They allied with the Emperor Henry V after her death to re-establish a German as Duke of Tuscany. Henry V tried to reintegrate northern Italy into the German feudal system in 1116, naming Germans as Dukes and Margraves to collect the tolls and taxes that had made Matilda’s father a wealthy man, wealth Henry V wanted for himself. This document shows that Henry named Rabodo, as feudal lord, or Marchese, of Tuscany sometime before its date of July 21, 1117. The document further indicates that Rabodo attempted to persuade the citizens of Tuscany to consent to his authority by adopting Matilda’s signature as his own. Among the feudal properties Rabodo held was a castle atop Monte Cascioli (at Lastra a Signa) that looked over the Arno River and the via Cassia. From its heights, Rabodo’s vassals collected, or tried to collect, feudal taxes on Arno river traffic and on the roads that connected Florence to the cities of Lucca, Pistoia, Pisa and the market town at Capannori. The rights to these taxes Matilda had ceded to the citizens of Florence about twenty years earlier. On October 2, 1119, the Florentines attacked this castle. The Alberti fought alongside Rabodo, After a fierce and bloody battle, the Florentine militia killed Rabodo. They then dismantled the castle at Monte Cascioli, replacing its tower with vineyards. This area is still called the “Vallemorta” (valley of the dead) indicating the site where the Florentines exterminated the defenders of the castle. The victory gave Florence control of the Arno and Signa rivers and the road to the seaport at Pisa.(See e.g. Cardini 1991) Neither Henry V nor his successors were able to re-impose German feudal law or taxes on the Italian communes which, like Florence, successfully defended their new and fragile liberties. Frederick Barbarossa ultimately acknowledged the privileges previously obtained by the Italian communes from Henry IV and Matilda in the Peace of Constance signed on June 25, 1183.

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The Littera Florentina

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Le Pandette, I, fol. c.004r

Le Pandette, I, fol. c.006.r

Le Pandette, I, fol. 020.r

Le Pandette, I, fol. c.020v


6. Le Pandette, the “littera florentina” The Pandects, or Digest, of the Emperor Justinian 907 unbound folios, datable to 6th century A.D. in two volumes respectively of 442 pages (books I-XXIX) and 465 pages (books XXX – L) Vellum, 365 x 320 mm; inner manuscript 235-270 x 255 mm In Latin and in Greek Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana

Justinian became emperor in Constantinople in 527 A.D. and reigned until his death in 565 A.D. He conquered much of the ancient Roman western empire through the efforts of his great general Belisarius (c. 500-565). He built the beautiful Hagia Sofia dedicated to Holy Wisdom. He saved and transformed Roman law through the efforts of his chief counsel, a man named, Tribonian, “The last Roman jurist, his was the hand which preserved and renewed Rome’s lawyers and its laws.” Justinian’s Corpus Iuris Civilis, literally the Body of Civil Law, is composed of four parts: the Digest (in Latin) or Pandects (in Greek), the Codex, the Institutes and the Novellas. The Digest (or Pandects) is a compendium of writings by ancient Roman jurists. The Codex is a compendium of Imperial decrees issued by the Roman Emperors whose word itself was law. These Imperial decrees begin with those issued by the Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-138 A.D.) and are based upon prior compilations dating from the fourth century. The Institutes are a short summation of these laws, intended for students of the law. The Novellas include the Imperial decrees issued by Justinian after publication of the Codex. (See Birks and McLeod 1987) Justinian raised Theodora, an actress, to the rank of Empress. Her efforts on behalf of women are reflected in Justinian’s Laws which recognize the rights of women to own and to manage and to inherit property equally with men. Justinian’s comments and his Novellas reflect her influence. For example, at Book II, Title 15, Section 5, “Jus Novum” Justinian wrote, ”These were the rules of the times, but We (Justinian) have by our constitution introduced the same law both as to sons and daughters… (Cooper 1812). When Justinian published these manuscripts, copies were sent to various schools throughout the Empire, including Bologna. Bologna’s copy of the Digest is today referred to as the littera bononiensis and was studied by Wernerius at the request of the Countess Matilda beginning in 1088. A second copy of the manuscript of the Digest appeared in Pisa at least by 1150. Its origins are unclear. The Pisans obtained this copy either during the Crusades in Constantinople or when they conquered Amalfi in 1135. By this date, scholars in Bologna were well advanced in their study of the Digest. The Pisan copy was brought to Florence by Gino Capponi after he conquered Pisa for Florence on October 9, 1406. Today called the littera florentina, these pages were placed in a tabernacle in the room of the Priors in the Palazzo Signoria. The Florentines view the Pandette, as they call the Digest, as the perfect symbol of the law, a fundamental and perpetual guarantee of freedom. For this reason they placed these pages at the heart of their public archive, together with the Gospels and the commune’s laws. On the tabernacle which contained the pages, Neri di Bicci painted Justinian next to Moses. (See Spagnesi 1983) In December 1779, the littera florentina was transferred to the Biblioteca Laurenziana, where it remains today.

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7. Digestorum seu Pandectarum libri quinquaginta ex Florentinis Pandectis repraesentati. Florentiae: In officina Laurentii Torrentini ducalis typographi, 1553. The Fifty Books of the Digest or Pandects reprinted from the original littera florentina in Florence by Laurentii Torrentini, printer of the Duke. 1553. In two volumes. With special privileges from the Pope, Emperor Charles V, Henry II King of France, Edward VI King of England, Cosimo I de’ Medici Second Duke of Florence. Latin and Greek. Two volumes rebound in brown calf with gold stamping, possibly during the eighteenth century. Spine features raised bands and gilt labeling. Title pages of both volumes stamped “Ex libris C.H. Huberich” in purple ink. Annotated throughout in brown and black ink. Width (closed): 25 cm., width (open): 57 cm., length: 38.5 cm., depth: 9 cm. Provenance: Front pastedown is inscribed “To Dr. C.P. Sherman, the great Roman law scholar, from his old friend, C. H. Huberich, July 15, 1932.” Bookplate reads “In memory of J. A. C. Chandler, Ph.D, LL.D., President, 19191934, Presented to the Marshall-Wythe School of Law Library by Charles P. Sherman, D.C.L., LL.D., Lecturer in Roman, Canon and Civil Law, 1925-1956.” College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library

The Pandects, also known as the Digest, is the largest work contained in the Corpus Juris Civilis, published by Emperor Justinian on December 16, 533 A.D. Organized in fifty books with four hundred and thirty-two titles, the Digest contains excerpts of writings from classical jurists predating Justinian by more than three hundred years. The writings of Ulpian comprise roughly forty percent. This is the first printed version of the manuscript called the littera florentina, see exhibit 6. When the littera florentina arrived in Florence on October 9, 1406, it was placed in the Palazzo Signoria. Italian Renaissance humanists, including Angelo Poliziano (1454 – 1494) and Ludovico Bolognini (14461508), compared this text with the littera bononiensis which had been the subject of study in Bologna since 1088 at the request of the Countess Matilda. Their research indicated that the littera florentina was the more complete version. This study remained unfinished at their deaths. Lelio Torelli (1489 – 1576) began his study of the littera florentina after 1531, when he was appointed a judge in Florence. Torelli worked with two scholars in Bologna the Spaniard Antonio Agustín (1517 – 1586) and the Frenchman Jean Matal (1520 – 1586)] to collate and compare the Florentine and the Bolognese versions. In 1542 Torelli discovered that the last two pages of the Florentine manuscript were reversed and that this mistake had been copied in all versions of the Digest then extant. In 1543, Agustín proved that the littera florentina was a private copy which had been made a few years after Justinian’s death. Torelli obtained the financial and political support he needed to publish the littera florentina when he was appointed the first secretary of Duke Cosimo I in October 1546. Lelio Torelli worked with his son, Francesco who had studied law at Pisa, and with the two scholars from Bologna to create a definitive version of Justinian’s Digest in Latin; Pietro Vettori (1499-1585) worked on a definitive version in Greek. Torelli brought a printer from Brabant (The Netherlands) to Florence to print the work which took three years. The text is “a landmark in legal scholarship and Renaissance textual criticism.” (See Spagnesi 1983; Grendler 2011, pp. 44041) The first printed edition of Justinian’s Digest is dated 1553 in Florence under the name Lorenzo Torrentino, a copy of this edition is exhibited here. Lelio Torelli undertook this project in order to teach Roman law to his students. He viewed it as a “monumental and highly symbolic” endeavor that was “intended to link the Medici regime with Rome’s ancient past.”( Vanhaelen 2012) In the decades following this printing, the Digest gradually diffused throughout Europe as various French editions were printed in Lyon, Paris, Venice, Geneva. With assistance of Erica Wessling 119


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8. Letter of Alessandro, Count of Canossa, to Michelangelo Buonarroti, written from Bianello, October 8, 1520 © The British Library Board, Egerton 1977, f.8. Digestorum seu Pandectarum libri quinquaginta ex Florentinis Pandectis repraesentati.

In 1553, Ascanio Condivi began his biography of Michelangelo Buonarroti, with the assertion that Michelangelo was descended from “the Countess Mathilda, a woman of rare and singular prudence and religion... ”. Michelangelo discovered this connection, according to Milanesi (1875, p. 216, n 1), from a letter written by Alessandro Count of Canossa from Matilda’s castle at Bianello in Quattro Castella on October 8, 1520. In the letter the Count addressed Michelangelo as “honored kinsman.” The Count had found a reference in old correspondence to “Simone da Canossa who had been podestà of Florence in 1250.” Michelangelo traced his own lineage back to the same ancestor Simone da Canossa, who began the line of di Buonarrota (Spike 2010, pp. 17-18). The connection appealed to both the noble Count and to the great artist. Michelangelo wrote to his nephew in 1546, saying, “we are descended from a very noble race”. The Count of Canossa visited Michelangelo in Rome sometime around Christmas of 1547, which Michelangelo recorded in a letter to his nephew on January 6, 1548, “In the book of contracts there is a letter from Count Alessandro from Canossa who I have found at home in these days. He came to Rome to visit me as a relative. Take care of it the letter.” The Counts of Canossa maintain two palaces, in Mantua and in Verona. The Counts obtained their title in 1432, when the then emperor Sigismondo invested a nobleman from the House of Este with the fortress of Canossa and with the ancient title of Matilda’s family. Their connection to the Countess Matilda is unknown. Under the colonnaded entry portal of their palace is the heraldic symbol taken by the family in 1432. It depicts a dog with a bone, being a word play on Can-ossa (or cane, dog, ossa, bone). This heraldic symbol, unknown in Matilda’s time, also appears in a room in Michelangelo’s home in Florence, today the Casa Buonarroti. Matilda’s rebellion effectively ended the duchy of Tuscany until its re-evocation by Cosimo I Medici in 1555. Michelangelo Buonarroti supported the independence of the citizens of Florence against the re-institution of the duchy of Tuscany by the Medici. Michelangelo likely chose to begin his biography with the claim that he was a descendent of the Gran Contessa because her noble imperial lineage exalted his own. (See Wallace 2010, p. 22) But, he may also have been inclined to ally himself with the Countess because of her role in the liberation from Imperial claims of the commune of Florence.

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9. Countess Matilda of Tuscany by Gian lorenzo Bernini, c. 1633 to 1637 Bronze, 14 7/8 inches high North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC Object no. 58.4.20, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina. Literature: For a complete bibliography see: Bernini: Sculpting in Clay, C.D. Dickerson III, Anthony Sigel, and Ian Wardropper, eds. Yale University Press, 2012, cat. No. 5, pp. 132-34; Andrea Bacchi, Matilde di Canossa, Un bronzetto di Bernini degli anni Trenta, Carlo Orsi, Milan April, 2013.

This bronze statue of Matilda of Canossa was created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in connection with the commission to design a majestic tomb for the remains of the Countess inside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In 1630 Pope Urban VIII resolved to honor Matilda’s crucial role in the history of the church and approached the monks of San Benedetto Po with the request to transfer her bones. The monks who had faithfully honored Matilda’s memory for five hundred years refused. The Pope then sent two priests with a sack of coins, reputed to be about 6,000 ducats, to convince the Abbot. As the monks slept, the priests pried open Matilda’s casket and removed her remains. Before the monks awoke her body was on the road to Rome. The Pope then commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to design her tomb which was unveiled in the Basilica of St Peter’s on March 20, 1637. On Matilda’s marble casket, Bernini carved the scene that etched her name in history: the humiliation of her cousin, the German king Henry IV, as he knelt before the Roman Pope Gregory VII at her castle of Canossa. Matilda stands beside the Pope, above the kneeling king. Bernini assumed full authorship of the monument in a document of 1644, in which the master specified he had made: small and large scale drawings (of which one, a pen and ink wash sketch for Matilda’s tomb is in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels); models of all decorative parts; models for all figures, in particular the reliefs and the figure of the Countess; and retouching of all figures. Bernini wrote that the figure of the Countess is “almost entirely by him since there is no part that he has not worked over and finished.” (Wittkower 1981, cat. 33) The bronze statuette of the Countess Matilda is the only bronze accepted by authorities as by Bernini himself. (Bernini 2012, cat 5). Two statuettes of the Countess one in bronze on a stone pedestal and a second in gilt bronze on an ebony pedestal are listed as in Urban VIII’s personal collection at his death. (See Bacchi 2013) Scholars assume that Bernini gave a model to the Pope at the beginning of the project, c. 1635. At this time Bernini gave permission for the casting in bronze of his terracotta model for the figure of Matilda. As a result the bronze statuette of the Countess Matilda has a freshness of handling, reduced to its most essential forms and unified by an irresistible swaying movement of her figure that could not be transferred to the monumental marble of the tomb sculpture. Bernini portrays the Countess in her two roles as commander and protector of the Roman church. In her right hand she grasps the marshal’s baton, in her left hand under the folds of her cloak she safeguards the papal tiara and St. Peter’s keys.

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10. Corpus juris civilis. Pandectis ad florentinum archetypum expressis, Institutionibus, Codice et Novellis, addito textu græco, ut & in Digestis & Codice, legibus & constitutionibus græcis 1663 The Body of Civil Law: With the Pandects or Digest, from the Florentine archetype, the Institutes, the Code and the Novellas, with Greek text added, both in the Digest and Code, with Greek laws and constitutions… Edited by Denis Godefroy, published in Amsterdam by Ludwig and Daniel Elzevir, in 1663. Greek and Latin. Two volume set, rebound in quarter-calf. Spine features five raised bands with blind-tooled stamps and red labels. Title pages of both volumes inscribed “Grosley.” Half-title page of volume one features an embossed stamp. Width (closed): 25 cm., width (open): 52 cm., length: 40 cm., depth: 5.5 cm. College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library, George Wythe Collection

The index of Thomas Jefferson’s Library (Gilreath and Wilson 1989, pp. 399-400) lists, “J.39 Corpus Juris civilis Gothofredi. Antwerp. 2.v. fol. edition, 1815 catalogue p. 89, no. 58; 2 vols. Jefferson bought a copy from Froullé in Paris on November 24, 1788, price 42 livres.” George Wythe also possessed a copy, which he bequeathed along with the rest of his library to his former student and close friend, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson gave Wythe’s copy to Jame Dinsmore (17711830), an Irish joiner who worked at Monticello from 1789-1809. Denis Godefroy (1549-1622) was a prominent French lawyer, a professor of law at Geneva, and a scholar of Roman law. His most important work is this edition of the four books of law of the Emperor Justinian: the Institutes, the Digest, the Codex and the Novellas, to which Godefroy gave the name which they have borne ever since, the Corpus Juris Civilis. First published at Geneva in 1583, Godefroy’s work went through over twenty editions. Among the most valuable is this edition, printed by the Elzevirs at Amsterdam in 1663. The publication by Godefroy concluded an intense period of comparison by Renaissance humanists between the Bolognese and the Florentine versions of the Digest which began after the littera florentina arrived in Florence in October 1406. In addition to Justinian’s texts, Godefroy included, at the end of the second volume, the Consuetudines Feudorum of Frederich II Imperator. This imperial decree, like those included in the Codex, was issued c. 1170 by Frederick Barbarossa as an emperor whose word itself was law. The feudal law, which presumably relied to some extent on the 1037 Consuetudines of his predecessors that governed northern Italy at the time of Matilda’s birth, still specifically prohibits wives and daughters from succeeding to feudal property (Liber I, Titles XV, XXIV). Godefroy also included a chronological list of all the emperors of the Empire both east and west, beginning with Justinian in 564 A.D. (at p. 381) and of the patriarchs of both Rome and Constantinople. Erica Wessling

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11. Arnoldi Vinnii JC. in quatuor libros Institutionum imperialium: commentarius academicus & forensic. Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Joannem van der Linden, Juniorem, 1726 Arnold Vinnius JC. In four books. Imperial Institutes: academic commentary. Lugdunum Batavorum (Katwijk): by Johannes van der Linden, Jr., 1726.) Edited by Arnoldus Vinnius and Johann Gottlieb Heinneccius. Latin. Quarto form (eight pages of text printed on each sheet, four to a side, which is folded twice to form four pages). Bound in contemporary full calf. Spine is marked with raised bands, gilt-decorated compartments, and a gilt-lettered label. Bookplate reads “The Right Honourable Lord Viscount Lymington” with the French motto “en suivant la verite” on the front pastedown. Width (closed): 21 cm., width (open): 46 cm. length: 25.5 cm., depth (at binding): 5.5 cm.; 7 cm. at pages’ edge. College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library, George Wythe Collection

The index of Thomas Jefferson’s Library (Gilreath and Wilson 1989, pp. 399) lists “J.36 Justiniani institutions Vinii. Elzev. 24; 1815 catalogue, p. 90. No. 44, Justiniani Institutiones Vinnii, to.” Jefferson’s copy of the Corpus juris civilis edited by Vinnius is no longer in the Library of Congress. George Wythe also owned a copy, which he bequeathed along with the rest of his library to his former student and close friend, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson gave Wythe’s copy to Jame Dinsmore (1771-1830), an Irish joiner who worked at Monticello from 1789-1809. The Institutes of Justinian is one of the four parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis. The Institutes was created as an introduction to students to build a legal framework for their study of the other three parts, the Digest, the Codex, and the Novellas. The four books of the Institutes provide an overview of Roman law arranged into three categories: the law of persons, things, and actions. The Latin word Institutes comes from the verb ‘instituere,’ which means ‘to teach.’ Unlike the systematically titled subdivisions of the Digest, the Institutes consist of a series of essays, many of which were authored by the second century jurist Gaius. Roughly one twentieth the size of the Digest, the Institutes provided the initial foundation for legal education. Arnoldus Vinnius (1588-1657), a professor of law at Leiden, published an influential Latin edition of the Institutes in 1642, which went through several editions. Vinnius then added explanatory footnotes to Justinian’s text. Vinnius’ commentary on Justinian’s Institutes drew upon contemporary scholarship as well as the views of the Glossators and Postglossators. Lord Mansfield advised the Duke of Portland to prepare himself for the law by reading and studying “Justinian’s Institutes without any other comment than the short one of Vinnius”. (Birks and McLeod 1987, p. 22) John Adams obtained a copy of Vinnius’ commentary on Justinian’s Institutes from the Harvard College library. The celebrated Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story cited Vinnius in his works.(Hoeflich 1997, pp. 356-9). Thomas Jefferson listed Vinnius’s edition as in his personal library in a letter which he wrote to Thomas Cooper, dated from Monticello, January 16, 1814. Erica Wessling

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12. D. Justiniani Institutionum libri quatuor: the Four Books of Justinian’s Institutions, 1761, Second Edition. Translated by George Harris. Printed by J. Purser for M. Withers at the Seven Stars of London on Fleet Street. Latin and English. Quarto form (eight pages of text printed on each sheet, four to a side, which is folded twice to form four pages). Bound in contemporary full calf and rebacked in period style. The title page is signed “J. Wickham 1789.” Width (closed): 21 cm., width (open): 46 cm., length: 27.5 cm., depth: 4 cm. Library of Virginia jurist John Wickham (1763-1839) who was a graduate of William & Mary Law School. Wickham represented Aaron Burr in his infamous treason trial. Wickham was a loyalist during the American Revolution and a close friend of John Marshall. College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library, George Wythe Collection

The index of Thomas Jefferson’s Library (Gilreath and Wilson 1989, pp. 397) lists “J. 34 1815 Catalogue, page 90, no. 43. Justinian’s Institutes, Lat. Eng. By Harris, 4to.” Jefferson owned this second edition dated 1761. George Wythe also owned a copy, which he bequeathed along with the rest of his library to his former student and close friend, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson gave Wythe’s copy to Jame Dinsmore (1771-1830), an Irish joiner who worked at Monticello from 1789-1809. The Institutes were first translated into English by George Harris, a lawyer who practiced in the English ecclesiastical courts, in 1753. He based his work on Vinnius’s Latin edition of the Institutes which was published by the Dutch jurist Arnold Vinnii some twenty five years earlier, see exhibit 11. In the introduction to the 1753 volume, Harris wrote, “This translation of the Institutions of civil law into English is principally intended as an introduction to Vinny’s Edition.” In 1756, Harris completed his annotated translation of the emperor Justinian’s Institutes, the second edition of which was published in 1761, and is exhibited here. In a letter to Thomas Cooper, Thomas Jefferson listed Harris’s edition as in his personal library. The Institutes exerted an indirect influence on the Anglo-American common law and the way lawyers learned law for over a century. The institutional framework was adopted by many of the common law’s most influential authors. William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, the standard text for teaching law in England and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was modeled on the Institutes, as was Chancellor Kent’s Commentaries on American Law. (Girard 2012, pp. 43-62.) Erica Wessling

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13. The Institutes of Justinian with Notes by Thomas Cooper, Esq., 1812. Translated by Thomas Cooper. Printed in Philadelphia Latin and English in parallel columns.714 pp. Features tooling on the cover, a decorative impression achieved by means of a metal implement. Width (closed): 14.5 cm., width (open): 32 cm., length: 24 cm., spine width: 32 cm. A stamp on this volume records that it was owned by “Issac Hudson, Attorney At Law, Dublin, Pulaski County, VA. Practice in the Court of Pulaski and adjoining counties and in the Sup’e Court of Appeals.” A second stamp reads “Major M. Hibbard, Norfolk County Clerk, 6408 George Washington Hwy., Portsmouth, Virginia.” College of William & Mary, Wolf Law Library

In the index of Thomas Jefferson’s Library (Gilreath and Wilson 1989, pp. 397), Cooper’s Institutes appear as a “First edition… Preface signed Thomas Cooper and dated September 30th 1812. “Presentation copy from the author. “ On July 25, 1812, Thomas Cooper wrote to Jefferson, “…When my edition of Justinian is out, which will be in about three months, I will beg your acceptance of a copy. I have already printed the text and translation amounting to 400 pages, and 150 pages of notes….” In a letter of January 16, 1814, written from Monticello, Jefferson acknowledged receipt of the volume (Retirement Series, Vol 7 1813-1814, p. 124-124). Thomas Cooper (1759-1839) was educated at Oxford and emigrated to America from England in 1794, where he distinguished himself as a political writer and chemist. Cooper was an active supporter of the Jeffersonian party and published Letters on the Slave Trade in 1787, in which he expressed strong opposition to slave trafficking. Thomas Jefferson regarded Cooper as “one of the ablest men in America.” John Adams described him as “a learned ingenious scientific and talented madcap.” (Cooper 1999, p. 463) Thomas Cooper edited George Harris’s English translation of Justinian’s Institutes (exhibit 12) for an American audience, including additional notes on American laws and cases relating to the topics covered in the Institutes. He commended the Institutes to American lawyers on the ground that “a competent knowledge of the general principles of the Civil law, is expected as a matter of course among the Bar, as well as upon the Bench.” (1812, viii) His commentary appears at the end of the volume, together with an English translation of the ancient Roman Twelve Tables. Cooper’s opposition to slavery may be one reason why he studied Justinian’s Institutes. The Institutes themselves have a decided bias in favor of freedom, as Book I, Title II, provides that under the law of nature, “all men are born free.” Although slavery is accepted as part of the laws of nations, Justinian’s Code provides various ways by which a slave can become free, called manumission. In Cooper’s commentary he concluded, “I cannot but approve of the prohibition of the slave trade, as one of the steps toward a gradual abolition of the whole system of slavery, a system that greatly detracts from the industry, the improvement, the security, and the happiness of society, wherever it prevails.” (1812, p. 415) Cooper also compared Justinian’s Code as it related to inheritance to England’s, “where institutions partake of laws which were established in feudal times, and where primogeniture calls for exclusive privileges, …” (1812, p. 485). In his commentary on intestacy, Cooper examined Justinian’s “new” law under the 118th Novella which “calls to succession all legitimate children without distinction… between sons and daughters….” (1812, p. 540) Cooper concluded, Justinian made the condition of all children equal when they succeed their parents; he called all, male and female, indiscriminately to succession. (1812, p. 52) Thus, it appears that slaves and women fared better under the laws enacted by the Emperor Justinian in 533 A.D. and revived by Matilda of Canossa in 1088, than they did under the laws enacted by the Founding Fathers. Women, and particularly married women, did not achieve equivalent property rights in most of the states of the United States of America until the mid-1800s at around the same time as slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. 131


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14. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Richmond, Virginia July 26, 1780 Thomas Jefferson Correspondence (Mss. Sm Coll Jefferson), Swem Library, Special Collections Research Center

Transcription of Thomas Jefferson’s letter to James Madison, dated Richmond, Virginia July 26, 1780

DEAR SIR With my letter to the President I inclose a copy of the bill for calling in the paper money now in circulation, being the only copy I have been able to get. In my letter to the delegates I ask the favor of them to furnish me with authentic advice when the resolutions of Congress shall have been adopted by five other states. In a private letter I may venture to urge great dispatch and to assign the reasons. The bill on every vote prevailed but by small majorities, and on one occasion it escaped by two voices only. It’s friends are very apprehensive that those who disapprove of it will be active in the recess of assembly to produce a general repugnance to it, and to prevail on the assembly in October to repeal it. They therefore think it of the utmost consequence to get it into a course of execution before the assembly meets. I have stated in my public letter to you what we shall consider as authentic advice lest a failure in that article should increase the delay. If you cannot otherwise get copies of the bill, it would be worth while to be at some extraordinary expence to do it. Some doubt has arisen here to which quarter our 3000 draughts are to go? As Congress directed 5000 militia to be raised and sent to the Southward including what were ordered there, and these 3000 (which I think will be 3500) draughts are raised in lieu of so many militia, the matter seems clear enough. When we consider that a fourth or fifth of the enemy’s force are in S. Carolina, it could not be expected that N. Carolina, which contains but a tenth of the American militia should be left to support the Southern war alone; more especially when the regular force to the Northward and the expected aids are taken into the scale. I doubt more whether the balance of the 1,900,000 Doll. are meant by Congress to be sent Northwardly, because in a resolution of June 17. subsequent to the requisition of the sum before mentioned they seem to appropriate all the monies from Maryland Southward to the Southern military chest. We shall be getting ready the balance, in which great disappointments have arisen from an inability to sell our tobacco; and in the mean time wish I could be advised whether it is to go Northward or Southward. The aids of money from this state through the rest of the present year will be small, our taxes being effectually anticipated by certificates issued for want of money, and for which the sheriffs are glad to exchange their collections rather than bring them to the treasury. Congress desired N. Carolina and Virginia to recruit, remount, and equip Washington’s and White’s horse. The whole has been done by us except as to 200 saddles which the Q. M. expects to get from the Northward. This draws from us about six or seven hundred thousand pounds, the half of which I suppose is so much more than was expected from us. We took on us the whole, because we supposed N. Caroline would be considerably burthened with calls for occasional horse, in the present low state of our cavalry; and that the disabled horses would be principally to be exchanged there for fresh. Our troops are in the utmost distress for clothing, as are also our officers. What we are to do with the 3000 draughts when they are raised I cannot foresee. Our new institution at the college has had a success which has gained it universal applause. Wythe’s school is numerous. They hold weekly courts and assemblies in the capitol. The professors join in it; and the young men dispute with elegance, method and learning. This single school by throwing from time to time new hands well principled and well informed into the legislature will be of infinite value. I wish you every felicity & am Dr. Sir Your friend and servt., TH: JEFFERSON. P.S. You have not lost sight of the map I hope.

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15. Letter from James McHenry, Baltimore, Maryland, to Thomas Jefferson dated May 22, 1786 Thomas Jefferson Correspondence (Mss. Sm Coll Jefferson), Swem Library, Special Collections Research Center

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia and he died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. Jefferson studied at The College of William & Mary and read law with George Wythe. In the course of his 82 years, Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence; he was a Governor of the State of Virginia and was the third President of the United States. He was ambassador to France. He founded the University of Virginia and built Monticello. Jefferson considered all aspects of human nature and its relationship with religion and with the law. He set his thoughts to writing in public documents and in his voluminous private correspondence, which is available on line. The College of William & Mary holds approximately 700 Jefferson documents at the Earl Gregg Swem Library, Special Collections Research Center, of which two are exhibited here. These letters are indicative of Jefferson’s active involvement and constant concern to train lawyers capable of governing the Nation. Notwithstanding the separation of seven hundred years, Jefferson’s interest in legal education was shared by the Countess Matilda. In the first letter, dated July 26, 1780 Thomas Jefferson wrote from Richmond to James Madison who was then in Philadelphia, representing Virginia in the Continental Congress. Jefferson was likely responding to letters written to him by Madison on June 2 and June 23, both of which review in detail the war effort, and in particular the threat on New York’s border from the Six Tribes in alliance with the British. At the end of the letter, Jefferson relates news of George Wythe’s law school in Williamsburg. Jefferson had met Madison, who will succeed him as President (18091817), in Williamsburg in 1777 during meetings to consider revisions of Virginia’s laws. At the time, Jefferson was staying in the house of his former professor, George Wythe, and Madison’s cousin, the American bishop, also named James Madison, was the President of the College. (See Burstein and Isenberg 2010; Meacham 2013) In the second letter, dated May 22, 1786, James McHenry wrote to Jefferson concerning his efforts to build schools in Maryland. McHenry signed the Constitution for the State of Maryland and served as Secretary of War under both Presidents George Washington and John Adams (17961800). He wrote, “… we are making to found a university at Annapolis, and that our people begin to be convinced that general ignorance is the greatest enemy to good laws and the duration a republic.”

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Bibliography

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Leges Salicae, Ripuariae, Longobardorum Baioariorum, Caroli Magni, Archivio Capitolare

Manuscripts dating from c. 1100, the Archivio Capitolare, Modena

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Bernabei, M. Castelli e Corti Reggiane. Modena, 2004.

Andreucci, S. and G. Lera, Altopascio, Lucca 1970.

Bernini: Sculpting in Clay. C.D. Dickerson, III, Anthony Sigel, Ian Wardropper, eds. Yale University Press 2012.

Anonymous, Relatio fundationis caathedralis Mutinae, Archivio Capitolare di Modena, MS O.II.11, 1099-1106 (reprinted in facsimile edition Il Bulino, Modena 2009) Anonymous, The Life of the Emperor Henry IV c. 1106 (reprinted in Kirshner & Morrison 1986, pp. 107-39). Azo. Summa Azonis Sive Locuples Iuris Civilis Thesaurus. Venice 1581. Bacchi, Andrea. Matilde di Canossa, Un bronzetto di Bernini degli anni Trenta, Carlo Orsi, Milan April, 2013. Bacchini, B. Dell’istoria del monastero di San Benedetto di Polirone, Modena 1696. Barlow, Frank. Thomas Becket. London: Phoenix Press, 1986. Bedoni, G. “Beatrice di Lorena e la Donazione di Frassinoro”, in Canossa Prima di Matilde. Reggio Emila 1990, pp. 237-58. Bellomo, Manlio. The Common Legal Past of Europe. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995. Berman, H. Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1983. Berman, H. Faith and Order. Michigan, 2000

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