Towards the end of January 1077, in the middle of a bitter winter, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV arrived in Canossa, twenty miles south-east of Parma in north Italy. Henry was barely twenty-three at the time, a large energetic man, with blue eyes and flaxen hair, a typical Teuton. He was in Canossa to see the pope, Gregory VII, ‘the Julius Caesar of the papacy’, who was staying in the fortress there.
