If one thinks of the grants to cities such as Pisa or Mantua that Matilda made, it does seem that what is occurring is the trade-off between a grant of rights and recognition of authority over the city. It seems to me in many respects the matildine reaction to the rise of the communes was very similar. The trade-off in these documents was almost always the same, which was that the imperial authority would grant away certain rights – of justice, or fiscal rights, sometimes particular pieces of land, the right to nominate their own officials – in return for acknowledgement of their authority.
And the response, the default response of the imperial authority was to make concessions in the form of diplomas to the citizen bodies, the cives, sometimes to their representatives, the consuls, as Henry IV did to Pisa, the first one, the major one in the north and then to many other cities. So, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the reaction of Matilda to the response of the Empire, of the imperial authority, to the rise of the communes. And a number of cities in which Matilda was much in control Pisa, e.g., would be the earliest communal city, and the Canossa were much in control of property at this time. There are plenty of documents so that type of study could be done. So interesting work could be done no one has done this to my knowledge scholars have talked about how the Empire, how Henry IV in particular, reacted to the communal movement, but not Matilda. How do you, as the central authority or power-holder, how do you react to this call for – often a quite forceful movement – greater local autonomy? And so in that respect, I think, Matilda of Canossa found herself, ironically, in a position similar to Henry IV in her relationship to the cities and the emergence of the communes. And I think Matilda found herself in a position, and again it’s an interesting contrast to be drawn here, of being – how would one put it – maybe, at the receiving end of the emergence of the communes because what the communal movement did, it operated or effected a shift in power, a devolution of power away from the over-arching monarchical or marquisal authority that had pre-existed toward a much more localized collective authority invested in the cives of the various cities. It certainly was well under way for the last two decades and more of her lifetime, the first two decades of the 12th century. And that was happening arguably for much of her lifetime if you think that the communes can be dated from, say, the 1080s. On the thing that is my own particular area of interest, the aspect of the interesting times in which Matilda lived – this is, of course, the period of the emergence of the communes in Italy, a fundamental change in the government and political regimes of all the major cities in northern Italy, including those, of course, under Matilda’s rule. Participants discuss the results of applying ‘new methodologies’ to some very old questions and suggest new questions to be addressed, possibly by using some very old methodologies. Session 918: Matilda of Tuscany-Canossa: Commemorating the 9th Centennial of the Great Countess, IV – The Gregorian Reform and Beyond Leeds International Medieval Congress – July 6-9, 2015 Helen Nicholson (HN), School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University, Wales, UK Penelope Nash (PN), Medieval & Early Modern Centre, University of Sydney, Australia John Oastler Ward (JOW), Medieval & Early Modern Centre, University of Sydney, Australia
Robert Houghton (RH), University of Winchester, UK She is also the organizer of the Matilda 900 sessions at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan Univ., Kalamazoo MI, USA (May 14-17, 2015) and the Leeds International Medieval Congress (6-9 July 2015) where these papers were presented.Įdward Coleman (EC), University College, Dublin, Ireland.ĭavid Hay (DH), University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
Valerie Eads (VE) is a member of the faculty of Humanities & Sciences at the School of Visual Arts, New York City, USA.
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