Guido of Spoleto

Guido von Spoleto (actually Wido or Wido II (I) .; * 855 , † November 894 ) was the most important member of the Guidonen family , who founded the Longobard Duchy of Spoleto in central Italy in the second half of the 9th century ruled.

origin

Guido was the son of the margrave and duke Wido I or Guido I of Spoleto and his wife Itana, probably a daughter of the duke Siko of Benevento . His older brother Lambert I was Duke of Spoleto 850–871 and 875–879 and fought against Emperor Ludwig II , but maintained a good relationship with his successor Charles II the Bald . The father Wido I came to Italy with Emperor Lothar I in 842 and was made Duke of Spoleto by him.

Life

Before your own rule

From 876 Guido was Margrave of Camerino , the eastern part of the Duchy of Spoleto which his father Wido I had divided up among his sons; it is mentioned as such in a document from June 876. Probably in the year 879 he married Ageltrude , daughter of the prince and duke Adelchis of Benevento, and in this way renewed the political connection to the second Lombard state in central and southern Italy. He and his brother supported Pope John VIII in 876/877 in the fight against the Arabs in Campania as part of an alliance of several, but not all, southern Italian small states against the invaders. However, there were no noticeable successes.

When the West Franconian Synod of Bishops of Ponthion recognized the Pope's supremacy over Spoleto on July 16, 877 after the death of Charles the Bald, Lambert I turned against John VIII, conquered Rome and took the Pope prisoner in March 878, although he had been a little earlier was adopted by him. It is unlikely that Guido was involved. When Lambert died in the summer of 880, he was followed by his son Guido II (III). In February 882 he and his uncle took part in a synod in Ravenna, at which both swore allegiance to the Pope and promised to return all illegally acquired lands to him. The year before, Guido had intervened in a dispute for the throne in Benevento, which had broken out after the murder of his father-in-law Adelchis in 878, and took the opponent of his relative Radelchis II, Gaideris, prisoner, but then let him escape to Constantinople .

Own rule in Spoleto

In March 883 Guido II (III) died and his uncle took over the rule of the whole Duchy of Spoleto. The contemporary sources alternatively name Margrave or Duke as his title. The list of names also fluctuates between Guido II and III, whereby the latter possibility would be correct according to the succession of the dukes, but he is usually referred to as Guido II, which indicates the generation within the family.

Politically, he initially navigated between the Arabs, who had established themselves around the mouth of the Garigliano River south of Gaeta , and the Eastern Roman emperors. A campaign against the Arabs or Saracens brought no results, but an embassy to Constantinople provided financial support from the Emperor Basil I. Guido thus assumed the same position as his brother-in-law Waimar I, who ruled the Principality of Salerno , and his brother Lambert's daughter, Itta , had married.

Because of his relationship with the emperor in Constantinople, the new Carolingian emperor Charles III complained . Guido at a Reichstag in Nonantola in June 883, in which Pope Marinus I also participated, for high treason and had him arrested; he was sentenced to the loss of all his possessions. However, Guido was able to escape and entered into a brief alliance with the Saracens, which helped him to repel Charles' troops in 883/884. On January 6, 885, an imperial assembly in Pavia acquitted him of the charge of high treason and Charles III, who saw his rule threatened from many sides, reinstated him in his dignity. At that time Guido was considered one of the most powerful princes in Italy, which is why the Annales Fuldenses referred to his rule as regnum Widonis .

After his election in 885, Pope Stephan V turned to him because Emperor Charles III, with whom the election of the Pope had not been discussed, refused to support him in the fight against the Saracens. Guido then struck this on Garigliano and also conquered the county of Capua and the Principality of Benevento, whose owner Ajo II had come to him. With that he gained real power in central Italy. In order to strengthen their new alliance, Stephan V adopted Guido at the beginning of 886 and at the same time signed him as defender of the papacy . However, due to a revolt of the residents, he lost control of Benevento again to Ajo II.

Kingship and Empire

After the deposition of Charles III. in November 887 and his death on January 13, 888, Guido changed his political plans completely. He now saw a chance to position himself in the power struggle of all against all in the various kingdoms that made up the Carolingian Empire. As part of an agreement with the Margrave of Friuli , Berengar I , who wanted to be elected King of Italy, he moved to Burgundy in western France and was crowned King's successor in Langres in February 888 . He found support in the Archbishop of Reims , Fulko the Venerable , and also counted on the never-broken ties of his family to their homeland there. A short time later, however, he was forced by Odo of Paris , who was elected in Compiègne on February 29 , to slowly withdraw.

It was not until October 888 that Guido moved across the Alps to northern Italy, where he was joined by a number of princes who were opposed to Berengar I , who had himself crowned king at the turn of 887/888. In the power struggle between the west and east-upper Italian groups there was a first dispute near Brescia , which was won by Berengar at the end of October, but ended with a truce. The latter had been surprised by the entry of Arnulf of Carinthia , the new king in Eastern Franconia , and felt compelled to submit to this in December of the same year. A new, decisive battle between the two candidates for the regnum Italiae took place at the beginning of 889 on the Trebbia River , in which Berengar was defeated and wounded: He then withdrew to Verona and limited himself to the royal rule in eastern northern Italy.

A synod of bishops in Pavia, which was composed mainly of northern Italian bishops, agreed a contract with Guido, which he swore. In eight chapters it provided for the protection of the church and its officials from looting and alienation. The bishops then elected him King of Italy in February 889. He then left the Duchy of Spoleto to his great-nephew Guido IV. In the impending dispute with Arnulf about the imperial crown, Guido initially won and was crowned emperor by Pope Stephan V in Rome on February 21, 891, while his wife Ageltrude became empress. Thus, Guido was probably the first non-Carolingian ruler to win the imperial title (a descent from the Carolingians in the female line via Adalhaid, a daughter of Pippin of Italy, is disputed). Its seal was marked renovatio regni Francorum .

In May 889 he had made his son Lambert co-king. As an early act of government, he established two new margravates around Ivrea in western and around Lake Garda in eastern northern Italy. He also confirmed the rights of the Doge and the people of Venice , which had been agreed in a treaty between Charlemagne and the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael I Rhangabe in 812. On April 30, 892, Guido had his son crowned co-emperor by the new Pope Formosus during a synod in Ravenna ; In return, both confirmed the papacy's rights to the Central Italian territories from the Pippin donation . An alliance between Guidos, who was probably intended by Archbishop Fulko of Reims, and Charles the Simple , who was crowned king in western France on January 28, 893 , was apparently not realized.

Pope Formosus now began to fear the power of Guido and in autumn 893 sent envoys to the East Franconian Reichstag in Regensburg to persuade Arnulf of Carinthia to go to Italy. An intervention by Arnulf's son, Zwentibold , in northern Italy produced no result. At the beginning of 894, however, Arnulf himself crossed the Alps and was able to conquer the cities of Brescia , Bergamo , Milan and Pavia with his army and proclaimed himself King of Italy here. Due to increasing difficulties, however, he soon withdrew to the north again, not without being hindered by the resistance of Berengar. For his part, however, Guido died in the late autumn of 894 near the Taro River , where he had holed up. He was buried in Parma Cathedral.

The legal documents that Guido has received deal partly with the protection of clerics, and partly with the maintenance of legal peace in the country against its troublemakers. In particular, he tried to reserve the actual exercise of power in his realm and thus reduce the importance of intermediate instances such as the count. However, this endeavor proved unsuccessful in the long run. In contrast, he transferred a number of properties in northern Italy to his wife Ageltrude. Guido's policy has always been classified as ambivalent, although this tenor was naturally influenced in a negative sense by the Gesta Berengarii of his great rival in Italy during his lifetime .

Guido's son Lambert was able to assert himself when Arnulf moved to Italy again in 896, although he was crowned emperor by Pope Formosus in Rome, that is, in fact, had been raised to the position of anti-emperor. When Lambert was killed in a riding accident on October 15, 898, Arnulf inherited the sole empire until he died a short time later in November / December 899.

Marriage and offspring

With his wife Ageltrude, a daughter of the Duke or Prince Adelchis of Benevento, who was still alive in 894, Guido u. a. the son:

• Lambert († October 15, 898 in Marengo ), Duke of Spoleto, (co-) king since May 889, (co-) emperor since April 892

literature

• Jürgen Sydow : The Gegenkaiser Arnulfs von Kärnten , in: Negotiations of the historical association for the Upper Palatinate and Regensburg 96, 1955, S. 431-436
• Eduard Hlawitschka : Were Emperors Wido and Lambert descendants of Charlemagne? , in: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries 49, 1969, pp. 366–368
• Ders .: Die Widonen in the Ducat of Spoleto , in: Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries 63, 1983, pp. 44–90
• Ders .: Emperor Wido and the West Franconia , in: Gerd Althoff (Hrsg.): Person and community in the Middle Ages . Festschrift for K. Schmid, Sigmaringen 1988, pp. 187–198
• Francois Bougard: La royaume d'Italie de la fin du VIIIe siècle au début du XIe siècle. Institutions, pouvoirs et société (Microfiches), Paris 1992
• Herbert Zielinski : Regesta Imperii: The Regests of the Empire under the Carolingians 715-918 (926) , Volume 3: The Regnum Italiae and the Burgundian Regna 840-926 , Part 2: The Regnum Italiae in the time of the battles for the throne and divisions of the empire in 888 (850 ) –926 , Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 1998
• Franz Fuchs - Peter Schmid (Ed.): Kaiser Arnolf. The East Franconian Empire at the end of the 9th century , Munich 2002
• Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri: GUIDO, conte marchese di Camerino, duca marchese di Spoleto, re d'Italia, imperatore , in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 61, 2004
• Brigitte Kasten : Empresses in Carolingian times. Irmingard, Judith, Irmingard, Angilberga, Richildis, Richgard, Ageltrude, Oda / Uota, Adelheid and Anna , in: Amalie Fößel (ed.): Die Kaiserinnen des Mittelalters , Regensburg 2011, pp. 11–34
• Sebastian Roebert: The Italian policy of the late Carolingians (850-899) , in: Matthias Puhle - Gabriele Köster (ed.): Otto the Great and the Roman Empire. Empire from antiquity to the Middle Ages , exhibition catalog, Regensburg – Magdeburg 2012, pp. 503–505

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annales Fuldenses , ed. by Georg H. Pertz in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 1 (1826), p. 398
2. ↑ Annales Xantenses et Annales Vedastini , ed. by Bernhard von Simson in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum 12 (1909), pp. 64-65
3. ↑ I Diplomi di Guido e Lamberto , ed. by Luigi Schiaparelli in Fonti per la storia d'Italia 36, Rome 1906 (reprint 1970), p. XVI, on the terminus ante quem for Guido's death
4. ↑ Gesta Berengarii imperatoris , ed. by Paul von Winterfeld in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae latini aevi Carolini IV 1, Berlin 1899, here verses 115 f.

predecessor	Office	successor
Guido II.	Duke of Spoleto and Camerino 882–889	Guido IV.
Berengar I.	King of Italy 889–894	Lambert of Spoleto
Charles III the thick	Roman emperor 891–894	Lambert of Spoleto