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