MATILDA countess or margravine of Tuscany, popularly known as the Great Countess, was descended from a noble Lombard family. Her great-grandfather, Athone of Can ossa, had been made count of Modena and Reggio by the em peror Otto I., and her grandfather had, in addition, acquired Mantua, Ferrara and Brescia. Her own father, Boniface II., the Pious, secured Tuscany, the duchy of Spoleto, the county of Parma, and probably that of Cremona; and was loyal to the emperor until Henry plotted against him. Through the murder of Count Boniface in 1052 and the death of her older brother and sister three years later, Matilda was left, at the age of nine, sole heiress to the richest estate in Italy. She received an excel lent education under the care of her mother, Beatrice of Bar, the daughter of Frederick of Lorraine and aunt of Henry III., who, after a brief detention in Germany by the emperor, married God frey IV. of Lorraine, brother of Pope Stephen IX. (1057-58). Thenceforth Matilda's lot was cast against the emperor in the great struggle over investiture, and for over 3o years she main tained the cause of the successive pontiffs, Gregory VII., Victor III., Urban II., Paschal II., with varying fortune, but with undaunted resolution. She aided the pope against the Normans in 1074, and in 1075 attended the synod at which Guibert was con demned and deprived of the archbishopric of Ravenna. Her hereditary fief of Canossa was the scene (Jan. 28, 1077) of the celebrated penance of Henry IV. before Gregory VII. She pro vided an asylum for Henry's second wife, Praxides, and urged his son Conrad to revolt against his father. In the course of the struggle her lands were plundered, and Pisa and Lucca lost, but she remained steadfast, and. before her death, had, by means of a league of Lombard cities, recovered all her possessions.
The donation of her estates to the Holy See, originally made in 1077 and renewed on Nov. 17, 1102, though never fully consum mated on account of imperial opposition, constituted the greater part of the temporal dominion of the papacy. Matilda was twice
married, first to Godfrey V. of Lorraine, surnamed the Hump backed, who was the son of her step-father and was murdered on Feb. 26, 1076; and secondly to the 17-year-old We'd V. of Ba varia, from whom she finally separated in 1095—both marriages of policy, which counted for little in her life. Matilda was an eager student : she spoke Italian, French and German fluently, and wrote many Latin letters; she collected a considerable library; she supervised an edition of the Pandects of Justinian ; and An selm of Canterbury sent her his Meditations. She died at Bodeno, near Modena, on July 24, 1115, and was buried in the Benedictine church at Polirone, whence her remains were taken to Rome by order of Urban VIII. in 1635 and interred in St. Peter's.
(C. H. H.) The contemporary record of Matilda's life in rude Latin verse, by her chaplain Domnizone (Donizo or Domenico), is preserved in the Vatican library. The best edition is that of Bethmann in the Monu menta germ. hist. scriptores, xii. 348-409. The text, with an Italian translation, was published by F. Davoli under the title Vita della granda contessa Matilda di Canossa (Reggio nell' Emilia, 1888 seq.).
See A. Overmann, Griifin Mathilde von Tuscien; ihre Besitzungen . . . u. ihre Regesten (Innsbruck, 1895) ; A. Colombo, Una Nuova vita della contessa Matilda in R. accad. d. sci., Atti, vol. 39 (Turin, 1904) ; L. Tosti, La Contessa Matilda ed i romani pontefici (Florence, 1859) ; A. Pannenborg, Studien zur Geschichte der Herzogin Matilde von Canossa (Gottingen, 1872) ; F. M. Fiorentini, Memorie della Matilda (Lucca, 1756) ; E. Huddy, Matilda Countess of Tuscany (1900) ; Nora Duff, Matilda of Tuscany (1910) ; Alercati, Nell' 8° Cen tenario di Matilde di Canossa. Scritti varii (1915).