The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 1046-1115

The Military Leadership of Matilda of Canossa adopts an interdisciplinary perspective towards the abundant and diverse sources for her life, reading the narrative sources against the letters, polemics, diplomas, and canonical collections. This is the first account in English of the entire, 40-year military career of one of the most powerful women of the Middle Ages. Challenging the boundaries between military and gender history, this book explains how one famous noblewoman rose to the defense of the reforming papacy, defeated the Holy Roman Emperor, and turned the tide of the first great war between Church and State. It combines these to reconstruct Matilda’s campaigns in painstaking detail, and reconsiders the limits of medieval women’s military agency in light of her demonstrable successes.