Mathilde of Canossa’s understanding of sovereignty

Mathilde of Canossa must undoubtedly be regarded as one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages. And not only that: during her lifetime, the Margravine was also the most influential princess on the Italian peninsula. For Mathilde of Canossa was not merely the woman who had made Henry IV’s Walk to Canossa possible in the first place. In the period that followed, she was in fact the only one amongst all Christian princes whom the Pope could entrust with the command of his troops in the power struggle between the Papacy and the Empire. Matilda’s strongest motivation in this was not necessarily the expansion of her own power - which had been gradually built up by her ancestors with the help of the Emperor and the Pope - but rather the holy struggle for the cause of God. For she made this unmistakably clear in the motto she used in her documents: 'Matilda, Dei gratia si quid est'.