A photographic "memoir" of Matilda of Canossa, an extraordinary countess of 11th century Italy who used her talents and vast wealth on behalf of the great Church reform movement of her time. Matilda is imagined on her deathbed at age sixty-nine, dictating her life story to an unidentified interlocutor. The photos are not illustrations, though almost all were taken in 'Matilda country' in northern Italy. They're more in the nature of visual poems intended to evoke the events Matilda is recounting.