Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

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Kingdom of Italy
Regnum Italiae (
Latin)
Regno d'Italia (Italian)
Königreich Italien (German
)
855–1801
Otto I
• 1519–1556
Charles V1
Arch-Chancellor2
 
• 962–965 (first)
Bruno of Lotharingia
• 1784–1801 (last)
Maximilian Francis of Austria
Historical era
  • Otto I
25 December 961
1075–1122
1158
1216–1392[1]
1494–1559
9 February 1801
ISO 3166 codeIT
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Middle Francia
Italian Republic
Kingdom of Etruria
Today part ofItaly
  1. Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned king of Italy, with subsequent emperors removing it from their titles[2] however, they continued to claim the crown of Italy until 1801.
  2. The archbishop of Cologne was the Arch-Chancellor of Italy, one of the highest dignitaries of the empire.
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The Kingdom of Italy (

Latin: Regnum Italiae or Regnum Italicum; Italian: Regno d'Italia; German: Königreich Italien), also called Imperial Italy (Italian: Italia Imperiale, German: Reichsitalien), was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It originally comprised large parts of northern and central Italy. Its original capital was Pavia
until the 11th century.

In 773,

the kingdom collapsed and the Franks became masters of northern Italy. The southern areas remained under Lombard control, as the Duchy of Benevento was changed into the independent Principality of Benevento. Charlemagne called himself king of the Lombards and in 800 was crowned emperor in Rome. Members of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule Italy until the deposition of Charles the Fat
in 887, after which they once briefly regained the throne in 894–896.

In 951, King

Otto I of Germany, already married to Queen Adelaide of Italy, invaded the kingdom and had himself crowned in Pavia.[3] He continued on to Rome, where he had himself crowned emperor on 7 February 962. The union of the crowns of Italy and Germany with that of the so-called "Empire of the Romans" proved stable. Burgundy was added to this union in 1032, and by the twelfth century the term "Holy Roman Empire" had come into use to describe it. From 961 on, the emperor was usually also king of Italy and Germany, although emperors sometimes appointed their heirs to rule in Italy and occasionally the Italian bishops and noblemen elected a king of their own in opposition to that of Germany. The absenteeism of the Italian monarch led to the rapid disappearance of a central government in the High Middle Ages, but the idea that Italy was a kingdom within the Empire remained and emperors frequently sought to impose their will on the evolving Italian city-states. The resulting wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the anti-imperialist and imperialist factions, respectively, were characteristic of Italian politics in the 12th–14th centuries. The Lombard League
was the most famous example of this situation; though not a declared separatist movement, it openly challenged the emperor's claim to power.

The century between the

Humiliation of Canossa (1077) and the Treaty of Venice of 1177 resulted in the formation of city states independent of the Germanic emperor. A series of wars in Lombardy from 1423 to 1454 reduced the number of competing states. The next forty years were relatively peaceful in Italy, but in 1494 the peninsula was invaded by France
.

After the

unencircled territories south of the Alps. Juridically the emperor maintained an interest in them as nominal king and overlord, but the "government" of the kingdom consisted of little more than the plenipotentiaries the emperor appointed to represent him and those governors he appointed to rule his own Italian states. The 250 to 300 lesser feudal lords of the Reichsitalien nonetheless frequently appealed to the imperial courts and jurisdiction to settle conflicts with the prominent princes.[4]

The Habsburg rule in several parts of Italy continued in various forms but came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–1797, when a series of sister republics were set up with local support by Napoleon and then united into the Italian Republic under his presidency. In 1805 the Italian Republic became the Kingdom of Italy with Napoleon as the new king. This state was disbanded with the collapse of Napoleonic rule in 1814.

Lombard Kingdom

Main article: Kingdom of the Lombards

After the

Battle of the Volturnus and the peninsula was, for a short time, reintegrated into the empire.[6][7]

Early Modern period. It was for centuries a symbol of the Kings of Italy

The Kings of the

Germanic people from their invasion of Italy in 567–68 until the Lombardic identity became lost in the ninth and tenth centuries. After 568, the Lombard kings sometimes styled themselves Kings of Italy
(Latin: rex totius Italiæ).

The primary sources for the Lombard kings before the Frankish conquest are the anonymous 7th-century

Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon. The earliest kings (the pre-Lethings) listed in the Origo are almost certainly legendary. They purportedly reigned during the Migration Period; the first ruler attested independently of Lombard tradition is Tato
.

The actual control of the sovereigns of both the major areas that constitute the kingdom –

Neustria, and one eastern, or Austria and Tuskia) and Langobardia Minor in the centre-south, was not constant during the two centuries of life of the kingdom. An initial phase of strong autonomy of the many constituent duchies developed over time with growing regal authority, even if the dukes' desires for autonomy were never fully achieved.[8]

The Lombard kingdom proved to be more stable than its Ostrogothic predecessor, but in 774, on the pretext of defending the

Papacy, it was conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne. They kept the Italo-Lombard realm separate from their own, but the kingdom shared in all the partitions, divisions, civil wars, and succession crises of the Carolingian Empire
of which it became a part until, by the end of the ninth century, the Italian kingdom was an independent, but highly decentralised, state.

Constituent of the Carolingian Empire

The death of the Emperor

Principality of Benevento or of the Byzantine Empire
.

Following Louis II's death without heirs, there were several decades of confusion. The

Arnulf of Eastern Francia and Louis the Blind of Provence both claiming the Imperial throne for a time. The kingdom was also beset by Arab raiding parties from Sicily and North Africa
, and central authority was minimal at best.

In the 10th century, the situation hardly improved, as various Burgundian and local noblemen continued to dispute over the crown. Order was only imposed from outside, when the German king

Otto I invaded Italy and seized both the Imperial and Italian thrones for himself in 962.[9]

Imperial Italy

In 951, King

Otto I of Germany married Adelaide of Burgundy, the widow of late King Lothair II of Italy. Otto was proclaimed king of Italy at Pavia despite his rival Margrave Berengar of Ivrea. When in 960 Berengar attacked the Papal States, King Otto, summoned by Pope John XII, conquered the Italian kingdom and on 2 February 962 had himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Rome. From that time on, the Kings of Italy were always also Kings of Germany, and Italy thus became a constituent kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the Kingdom of Germany (regnum Teutonicorum) and – from 1032 – Burgundy. The German king (Rex Romanorum) would theoretically be crowned in Pavia as a prelude to the visit to Rome to be crowned Emperor by the Pope.[10][11]

Frederick Barbarossa
.

In general, the monarch was an absentee, spending most of his time in Germany and leaving the Kingdom of Italy with little central authority. There was also a lack of powerful landed magnates – the only notable one being the

Matilda of Canossa in 1115. This left a power vacuum – increasingly filled by the Papacy and by the bishops, as well as by the increasingly wealthy Italian cities, which gradually came to dominate the surrounding countryside. Upon the death of Emperor Otto III in 1002, one of late Berengar's successors, Margrave Arduin of Ivrea, even succeeded in assuming the Italian crown and in defeating the Imperial forces under Duke Otto I of Carinthia. Not until 1004 could the new German King Henry II of Germany, by the aid of Bishop Leo of Vercelli, move into Italy to have himself crowned rex Italiae. Arduin ranks as the last domestic "King of Italy" before the accession of Victor Emmanuel II in 1861.[12]

Henry's Salian successor Conrad II tried to confirm his dominion against Archbishop Aribert of Milan and other Italian aristocrats (seniores). While besieging Milan in 1037, he issued the Constitutio de feudis in order to secure the support of the vasvassores petty gentry, whose fiefs he declared hereditary. While Conrad stabilised his rule, however, the Imperial supremacy in Italy remained contested.

Staufer

The defense of the Carroccio during the battle of Legnano by Amos Cassioli (1832–1891)

The cities first demonstrated their increasing power during the reign of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190), whose attempts to restore imperial authority in the peninsula led to a series of wars with the Lombard League, a league of northern Italian cities, most of the times headed by Milan, and ultimately to a decisive victory for the League at the Battle of Legnano in 1176, that had as its leader the Milanese Guido da Landriano, which forced Frederick to make administrative, political, and judicial concessions to the municipalities, officially ending his attempt to dominate Northern Italy. From then, Italy became a patchwork of autonomous duchies and city-states only nominally tied to the Holy Roman Empire.[13][14]

Imperial Italy (outlined in red) in the 12th century

The scene was similar to that which had occurred between

Investiture controversy from previous centuries had been brought to a tendentious peace with the Concordat of Worms and affirmed in the First Council of the Lateran. Now it had recurred, in a slightly different form. Frederick had to humble himself before Pope Alexander III at Venice.[15] The emperor acknowledged the pope's sovereignty over the Papal States, and in return Alexander acknowledged the emperor's overlordship of the Imperial Church. Also in the Treaty of Venice, a truce was made with the Lombard cities, which took effect in August 1178.[16] The grounds for a permanent peace were not established until 1183, however, in the Peace of Constance, when Frederick conceded their right to freely elect town magistrates. By this move, Frederick recovered his nominal domination over Italy, which became his chief means of applying pressure on the papacy.[17]

Frederick's son Henry VI actually managed to extend Hohenstaufen authority in Italy by his conquest of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which comprised Sicily and all of Southern Italy. Henry's son, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor – the first emperor since the 10th century to actually base himself in Italy – attempted to return to his father's task of restoring imperial authority in the northern Italian Kingdom, which led to fierce opposition not only from a reformed Lombard League, but also from the Popes, who had become increasingly jealous of their temporal realm in central Italy (theoretically a part of the Empire), and concerned about the hegemonic ambitions of the Hohenstaufen emperors.

Frederick II's efforts to bring all of Italy under his control failed as signally as those of his grandfather, and his death in 1250 marked the effective end of the Kingdom of Italy as a genuine political unit. Conflict continued between

Guelfs
(Papal supporters) in the Italian cities, but these conflicts bore less and less relation to the origins of the parties in question.

Decline

Imperial Italy within the Holy Roman Empire in 1356

The Italian campaigns of the Holy Roman emperors decreased, but the kingdom did not become wholly meaningless. In 1310 the

Henry VII of Germany with 5,000 men again crossed the Alps, moved into Milan and had himself crowned king of Italy (with a mock-up of the Iron Crown), sparking a Guelph rebellion under Lord Guido della Torre. Henry restored the rule of Matteo I Visconti and proceeded to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by three cardinals in place of Pope Clement V in 1312. His further plans to restore the Imperial rule in northern Italy and to expand the empire, invading the Kingdom of Naples, were aborted by his sudden death the next year.[18]

Successive emperors in the 14th and 15th centuries were bound in the struggle between the rivaling Luxembourg, Habsburg and Wittelsbach dynasties. In the conflict with Frederick the Fair, King Louis IV (reigned until 1347) had himself crowned emperor in Rome by Antipope Nicholas V in 1328. His successor Charles IV also returned to Rome to be crowned in 1355. None of the emperors forgot their theoretical claims to dominion as kings of Italy. Nor did the Italians themselves forget the claims of the emperors to universal dominion: writers like Dante Alighieri (died 1321) and Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275 – c. 1342) expressed their commitment both to the principle of universal monarchy, and to the actual pretensions of Emperors Henry VII and Louis IV, respectively.

The Imperial claims to dominion in Italy mostly manifested themselves, however, in the granting of titles to the various strongmen who had begun to establish their control over the formerly republican cities. Most notably, the emperors gave their backing to the

duke of Milan in 1395. Other families to receive new titles from the emperors were the Gonzaga of Mantua, and the Este of Modena and Reggio
.

Imperial fiefs in the modern period

By the beginning of the early modern period, the Kingdom of Italy still formally existed but had de facto splintered into completely independent and self-governing Italian city-states. Its territory had been significantly limited – the conquests of the Republic of Venice in the "domini di Terraferma" and those of the Papal States had taken most of northeastern and central Italy outside the jurisdiction of the Empire.[19]

In many aspects, the Imperial claims to feudal overlordship over the Italian territories had become practically meaningless: the effective political authority, as well as the power to raise taxes and spend resources, was in the hands of the Italian princes and dukes. However, the presence of the Imperial feudal network in Italy continued to play a role in the history of the peninsula. It gave to Emperors

duke of Milan, Philip II was, at least formally, a vassal of Emperor Ferdinand. However, following the reign of Charles V, no Holy Roman Emperor of the Austrian Habsburgs was crowned king of Italy and the title effectively ceased to be used for two centuries and a half.[20][21]

In 1559, the Kingdom of France ended its ambitions over the Imperial fiefs in Italy, abandoning its claims to Savoy and Milan and withdrawing from Tuscany and Genoese Corsica by the terms of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. The major imperial fiefs in Italy were known as "Feuda latina", whereas the smaller ones were known as "Feuda Minora". Italian princes did not send representatives to the Imperial Diet, but their forces also joined the Imperial Army, as in the case of the Hungarian campaign of Maximilian II against Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566.[22]

While they were excluded from the Reichstag, the Italian states were still considered vassals of the emperor, like other states of the empire, and thus subject to certain obligations and jurisdiction. A special Italian section of the

County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the Duchy of Milan, and later the Grand Duchy of Tuscany). Unlike most of the German states, the Imperial Italian contributions bypassed the Reichstag and other institutions and went directly to the Imperial army and treasury. The Italian states were in large part autonomous, but their lack of representation gave the emperor greater ability to act autonomously with the Italian principalities than the German ones, such as when he decided to simply add the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (officially an imperial fief) to his family's lands after the extinction of the Medici ruling line in 1737.[25] Aside from the Prince-Bishopric of Trent, Piedmont-Savoy was the only independent Italian state represented in the Reichstag and also the only one to be part of the circle system (being within the Upper Rhenish Circle; the Habsburg possessions of Trieste and Gorizia-Gradisca were within the Austrian Circle, as was Trent). Thus despite being opposed to the Habsburg family, it still emphasized its imperial privileges to establish itself as suzerain over smaller surrounding lordships. In 1713 the dukes of Savoy also became kings through their holdings outside the Empire (first gaining the Kingdom of Sicily in 1713, swapped in 1720 for the Kingdom of Sardinia).[26]

Imperial authority was used by the Austrian Habsburgs to intervene in Italy during the

Duchy of Parma between 1735 and 1748, although this caused a dispute with the Papacy, which claimed it as a Papal fief
.

Emperor Leopold I increasingly asserted his rights over the imperial fiefdoms of Italy from the 1660s with the decline of Spanish power and more overt intervention of the French. In 1687, a new plenipotentiary of Italy was appointed, a position that had been left vacant for over a century prior (the powers of the office had instead been exercised haphazardly by the Aulic Council). In 1690,

Parma-Piacenza as imperial fiefs,[28] and the Habsburgs continuing to rule the Italian territories of their hereditary lands (roughly the modern provinces of Trentino-Alto Adige and the Austrian Littoral). Piedmont-Savoy, on the other hand, remained defiant of Imperial authority despite officially participating in the diet and the duke receiving the title of "Royal Highness" from the Emperor in 1693.[29]

Dissolution

The status of Imperial Italy was more or less stable up to 1789. There was even a serious push by the Savoyards (backed by Prussia) to raise Savoy to electorate status in 1788, which would make it only the second non-German state to become so (after Bohemia, which was after the crushing of Bohemian estates in 1620 dominated by German-speaking aristocrats). This came to nothing as the French Revolution of 1789 would quickly shatter the old order.[30]

During the

secularized along with the other ecclesiastical princes.[31][32][33] Napoleon's victory in the War of the Second Coalition saw this reconfirmed in the Treaty of Lunéville. In 1805, while the Holy Roman Empire was still in existence, Napoleon, by now Emperor Napoleon I, claimed the crown of the new Kingdom of Italy for himself, putting the Iron Crown on his head at Milan on 26 May 1805. He also directly annexed most of the former Imperial Italy (including Piedmont-Savoy, Genoa and Tuscany) into France. The Empire itself was abolished the next year on 6 August 1806. The Congress of Vienna following Napoleon's defeat did not bring back the Holy Roman Empire nor the Kingdom of Italy,[34][35]
and the restored Italian duchies now became fully sovereign in their own right.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Jaques, Tony. Dictionary of Battles and Sieges: A-E.
  2. ^ Lodovico Antonio Muratori; Giuseppe Oggeri Vincenti (1788). Annali d'Italia. pp. 78–81.
  3. ^ "Ottone I di Sassonia" (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  4. ^ Taddei, Elena. "Reichsitalien" in Mittelalter und Neuzeit/"Feudi imperiali italiani" nel Medioevo e nell'Età Moderna. StudienVerlag.
  5. ^ De Bello Gothico IV 32, pp. 241-245
  6. ^ the Deacon, Paul. History of the Lombards (The Middle Ages Series). University of Pennsylvania Press.
  7. ^ Deanesly, Margaret. A History of Early Medieval Europe From 476 to 911. Methuen & Co.
  8. ^ "DESIDERIO, re dei Longobardi" (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  9. ^ "Ottóne I il Grande imperatore e re di Germania" (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  10. ^ Tabacco, Giovanni. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule. Cambridge University Press. p. 116.
  11. ^ Orioli, R. Fra Dolcino. Nascita, vita e morte di un'eresia medievale. Jaca Book. p. 233.
  12. ^ "Battaglia di Solferino e San Martino" (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  13. ^ "La battaglia di Legnano". Ars Bellica. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
  14. ^ Grillo, Paolo. Legnano 1176. Una battaglia per la libertà (in Italian). Laterza. pp. 157–160.
  15. ^ Comyn (1851), p. 260
  16. ^ See Yale Avalon project.
  17. ^ Le Goff (2000), pp. 96–97
  18. ^ "Enrico VII di Lussemburgo imperatore" (in Italian). Retrieved 26 August 2023.
  19. ^ "The Rise & Alliance of the Italian City-States". study.com. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
  20. ^ Maltby, William. The Reign of Charles V (European History in Perspective). Palgrave; 2002 edition.
  21. ^ "Charles V | Biography, Reign, Abdication, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
  22. ^ Ludovico Muratori, "Annali d'Italia", Anno Domini 1566, mentioned in Brendian Maurice Dooley, Italy in the Baroque – Selected readings, New York and London 1995, pp. 622–628 and p. 678.
  23. ISBN 978-88-6576-606-4
    .
  24. ISBN 978-88-6576-606-4
    .
  25. ^ Wilson 2016, p. 226.
  26. ^ Wilson 2016, p. 226-227, p. 749.
  27. ^ Joachim Whaley, "Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806", from the Oxford History of Early Modern Europe, p. 109-110, 24.
  28. ^ Whaley, p. 137.
  29. ^ Whaley, p. 76.
  30. ^ Wilson 2016, p. 227.
  31. ^ "Treaty of Campo Formio | France-Austria [1797]". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
  32. ^ H. Thompson, Richard. Lothar Franz Von Schonborn and the Diplomacy of the Electorate of Mainz: From the Treaty of Ryswick to the Outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession. Springer. pp. 158–160.
  33. ^ Palmer, R. R. A History of the Modern World. McGraw-Hill Education.
  34. ISBN 9780025236608
    .
  35. S2CID 154316830
    .

References

  • Liutprand, Antapodoseos sive rerum per Europam gestarum libri VI.
  • Liutprand, Liber de rebus gestis Ottonis imperatoris.
  • Anonymous, Panegyricus Berengarii imperatoris (10th century) [Mon.Germ.Hist., Script., V, p. 196].
  • Anonymous, Widonis regis electio [Mon.Germ.Hist., Script., III, p. 554].
  • Anonymous, Gesta Berengarii imperatoris [ed. Dumueler, Halle 1871].
  • Peter Wilson. "Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire." Cambridge: 2016.
  • Comyn, Robert (1851). History of the Western Empire, from its Restoration by Charlemagne to the Accession of Charles V. Vol. I.
  • Le Goff, J. (2000). Medieval Civilization, 400–1500. New York: Barnes and Noble.
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