Church History through the centuries

Week 11 · 11th century: AD 1001–1100

Artwork

Matilda and Hugh of Cluny plead for Henry IV, from Donizo’s Vita Mathildis

Artwork 1

  • Title: Abbot Hugh of Cluny and Matilda of Tuscany as intercessors for Henry IV (caption: “Rex rogat abbatem, Mathildim supplicat atque”), from Donizo’s Vita Mathildis, fol. 49v
  • Artist: Donizo, a monk of Canossa who wrote the book. The painter is not named.
  • Date made: about 1115, some 38 years after the events at Canossa in January 1077
  • Medium: illuminated manuscript page, pigments and ink on parchment
  • Current location: Vatican Library, Vatican City, MS Vat. lat. 4922
  • Source page (Wikimedia Commons)
  • License: Public Domain Mark (artwork more than 70 years past its maker’s death)

Pope Urban II preaching at the Council of Clermont, from Les passages d’outremer

Artwork 2

What you see

The first page shows a king on his knees. Henry IV wears a small crown and a blue robe, and he looks up at a tall abbot in a red hooded habit. The abbot, Hugh of Cluny, holds a staff and points toward Matilda. She sits under an arch with blue and red decoration, and she stretches out one hand. A Latin line under the scene says the king asks the abbot, and begs Matilda. The second page shows a pope on a high throne in a Gothic church. Hundreds of bishops, nobles, and townspeople sit and listen. Armed men and cardinals stand in the lower panel.

Why it matters

Donizo wrote this book for Matilda, whose castle at Canossa was the setting for Henry IV’s penance in 1077. The artist drew the king small and humble, and Matilda and Hugh large and calm. That shows how Matilda’s own court told the story. Gregory VII’s letter and the later Church history both stress Henry’s penance, but the picture adds the two helpers who spoke for him. The second page comes from a much later book. It shows how fifteenth-century readers imagined Pope Urban II’s call for the First Crusade, in the dress and buildings of their own day. Neither page is a photograph of the past. Each shows how later people told the century’s two famous scenes. The Clermont scene belongs to 1095, and the Canossa scene to 1077.

Christ and the sacraments

Canossa was about absolution, the pardon that the Church speaks in Christ’s name, and about who holds the right to say it. The Lutheran Confessions teach that a pastor’s absolution is Christ’s own word and that Christ alone is the Church’s head. Clermont tied the pilgrim’s journey to forgiveness. The Confessions teach that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper give forgiveness by Christ’s promise, not by a journey or a battle.

Teaching question

A king kneels to win absolution. How does this picture compare with the Confessions’ teaching? They teach that Christ gives forgiveness freely through his Word and sacraments. Read Augsburg Confession XXVIII and Augsburg Confession XI.

Sources