Modern historians rarely mention the presence of royal and aristocratic women at Canossa in January 1077.Yet contemporaries emphasised the important roles played by several women, including Matilda of Tuscany, Adelaide of Turin, Empress Agnes and Queen flexcon reverse osmosis water storage tank Bertha.This paper seeks to re-appraise royal and aristocratic women’s actions at Canossa in the light of gender studies, and also of recent scholarship on political diplomacy and mediation, in order to emphasise their centrality to political events in here the eleventh century.