Boso II (Provence)

Boso II (around 928 ; † 965/67) was Count of Avignon from 935 and Count of Arles from 949 .

Life

After the death of Hugo von Arles in 948, Conrad III ordered . , King of Burgundy , regained power in the south of the kingdom in order to secure his position and that of his successors. He divided Provence into three counties, thereby limiting the authority and resources of the new counts.

Boso and his brother Wilhelm, of Burgundian origin, took over the counties of Arles and Avignon . The third Earl, Gripho of Apt , was soon put out of the way so that the brothers became the real masters of the land.

Around 953 Boso II married Konstanze von Provence, a daughter of the Buvinid Karl Konstantin, Count of Vienne , from whom he had two sons:

• Rotbald II. (Roubaud), † probably 1008
• Wilhelm I (Guillaume le Libérateur) (* around 952, † 994), Count of Arles and Provence, then Margrave of Provence.

origin

There are a number of hypotheses about the origin of Bosos:

1. Boso II was the son of Rotbold (Roubaud) von Agel , a nobleman from the Mâconais , whom Louis the Blind had made Count of Provence in 903. Whose ancestors are unknown; however, it is believed that he was the son-in-law of William the Pious , Duke of Aquitaine and Ermengarde, daughter of Boso of Vienne .
2. Boson II was the grandson of Boso , the later Margrave of Tuscien , and son of Rotbold the Elder or Rotbold von Spoleto, son of Boso of Tusciens from a previous relationship. This relationship (or marriage) prior to the marriage to Willa of Burgundy has not yet been identified. This redbold married Ermengarde of Aquitaine and was murdered at the same time as his father on the orders of his uncle Hugo I of Italy.
3. Boso II and Boso of Tuscia (Boso I.) are identical. Paul-Albert Février writes: “In 949, after Hugo's death, a new Count of Arles appeared, Boso, whose identity historians were very reluctant to identify. He was finally identified as the first husband of Bertha, Hugo's niece, whom he abandoned in order to separate his fate from that of the margrave when fortune left him. He then married Konstanze, who is otherwise unknown. With her he had two sons, Rotbald and Wilhelm Boso, who […] exercised the undivided authority of the Count, always together, as representatives of Konrad. As for Bertha, she then married the Count of Rodez and ended her days in Aquitaine. ”This hypothesis means that Boso was 73 years old and almost 60 when he had his sons.

Web links

• The Counts of Provence (French)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul-Albert Février: La Provence des origines à l'an mil . Editions Ouest-France Université, Rennes 1989, ISBN 2-7373-0456-3 .