Canossa

• IPA^(key): /kəˈnɒsə/

Canossa

1. A comune and castle town in the Province of Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, famed as the site where the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV did penance in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his excommunication by Pope Gregory VII.

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Canossa

1. (figuratively) An act of humiliating repentance.
   • 1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 126:

     No statement was issued on this meeting, but the world deduced that Bethlen had won all along the line, for on the 14th Gömbös read out on the wireless a declaration which was hailed as “a veritable Canossa.”

• Cassano