Matilda of Tuscany gave her lands to the papacy, a historian says the surviving deed is a forgery, and the emperor took the lands the year after she died

Matilda, countess of Tuscany, held most of northern and central Italy and backed the popes against the emperor. In 1079 she gave all her domains to the pope. On 17 November 1102, at Canossa, she renewed the gift; the deed says the first document had been lost. The historian Paolo Golinelli argues the 1102 deed is a forgery made in the 1130s and that Matilda made Emperor Henry V her only heir in 1110 or 1111; other scholars, Elke and Werner Goez, treat it as genuine. In May 1111 Henry V crowned her imperial vicar and vice-queen of Italy at Bianello castle. She died on 24 July 1115 at Bondeno di Roncore. In 1116 Henry V took possession of the Matildine lands, and popes and emperors disputed them well into the 13th century. She was buried at the abbey of Polirone near Mantua. In 1632 the abbot sold her body to Pope Urban VIII, who had it moved to Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. In 1634 it was placed in St Peter's Basilica, in a monument designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. She is one of six women buried in St Peter's.