Canossa, a town NW. of Bologna, in the courtyard of the castle of which the Emperor Henry IV. stood three days in the cold, in January 1077, bareheaded and barefooted, waiting for Pope Gregory VII. to remove from him the sentence of excommunication.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Canosa * Canova, Antonio