Carolingian dynasty
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family founded by Charles Martel with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The dynasty consolidated its power in the 8th century making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary, becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne. In 751 the Merovingian dynasty which had ruled the Germanic Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy, a Carolingian Pepin the Short was crowned King of the Franks; the Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of Romans in the West in over three centuries. His death in 814 began an extended period of fragmentation of the Carolingian empire and decline that would lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire; the Carolingian dynasty takes its name from Carolus, the Latinised name of Charles Martel, de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death.
The name "Carolingian" or "the family of Charles." Traditional historiography has seen the Carolingian assumption of the Frank kingship as the product of a long rise to power, punctuated by a premature attempt to seize the throne through Childebert the Adopted. This picture, however, is not accepted today. Rather, the coronation of 751 is seen as a product of the aspirations of one man, whose father, dynastic founder Charles Martel, had been a Frankish high court official military commander, of the Roman Catholic Church, always looking for powerful secular protectors and for the extension of its spiritual and temporal influence; the greatest Carolingian monarch was Pepin's son. Charlemagne was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III at Rome in 800, his empire, ostensibly a continuation of the Western Roman Empire, is referred to historiographically as the Carolingian Empire. The Carolingian rulers did not give up the traditional Frankish practice of dividing inheritances among heirs, though the concept of the indivisibility of the Empire was accepted.
The Carolingians had the practice of making their sons minor kings in the various regions of the Empire, which they would inherit on the death of their father, which Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious both did for their sons. Following the death of the Emperor Louis the Pious in 840, his surviving adult sons, Lothair I and Louis the German, along with their adolescent brother Charles the Bald, fought a three-year civil war ending only in the Treaty of Verdun in 843, which divided the empire into three regna while according imperial status and a nominal lordship to Lothair who at 48, was the eldest; the Carolingians differed markedly from the Merovingians in that they disallowed inheritance to illegitimate offspring in an effort to prevent infighting among heirs and assure a limit to the division of the realm. In the late ninth century, the lack of suitable adults among the Carolingians necessitated the rise of Arnulf of Carinthia as the king of East Francia, a bastard child of a legitimate Carolingian king, Carloman of Bavaria, himself a son of the First King of the Eastern division of the Frankish kingdom Louis the German.
It was after Charlemagne's death that the dynasty began to crumble. His kingdom would end up splitting into three, each being ruled over by one of his grandsons. Only the kingdoms of the eastern and western portions survived, would go on to become the countries known today as Germany and France; the Carolingians were displaced in most of the regna of the Empire by 888. They ruled in East Francia until 911 and held the throne of West Francia intermittently until 987. Carolingian cadet branches continued to rule in Vermandois and Lower Lorraine after the last king died in 987, but they never sought thrones of principalities and made peace with the new ruling families. One chronicler of Sens dates the end of Carolingian rule with the coronation of Robert II of France as junior co-ruler with his father, Hugh Capet, thus beginning the Capetian dynasty; the dynasty became extinct in the male line with the death of Count of Vermandois. His sister Adelaide, the last Carolingian, died in 1122; the Carolingian dynasty has five distinct branches: The Lombard branch, or Vermandois branch, or Herbertians, descended from Pepin of Italy, son of Charlemagne.
Though he did not outlive his father, his son Bernard was allowed to retain Italy. Bernard rebelled against his uncle Louis the Pious, lost both his kingdom and his life. Deprived of the royal title, the members of this branch settled in France, became counts of Vermandois, Valois and Troyes; the counts of Vermandois perpetuated the Carolingian line until the 12th century. The Counts of Chiny and the lords of Mellier, Neufchâteau and Falkenstein are branches of the Herbertians. With the descendants of the counts of Chiny, there would have been Herbertian Carolingians to the early 14th century; the Lotharingian branch, descended from Emperor Lothair, eldest son of Louis the Pious. At his death Middle Francia was divided between his three surviving sons, into Italy and Lower Burgundy; the sons of Emperor Lothair did not have sons of their own, so Middle Francia was divided between the western and eastern branches of the family in 875. The Aquitainian branch, descended from Pepin of Aquitaine, son of Louis the Pious.
Since he did not outlive his father, his sons were deprived of Aquitaine in favor of his younger brother Charles the Bald. Pepin'
Castel Sant'Angelo
The Mausoleum of Hadrian known as Castel Sant'Angelo, is a towering cylindrical building in Parco Adriano, Italy. It was commissioned by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family; the building was used by the popes as a fortress and castle, is now a museum. The structure was once the tallest building in Rome; the tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian called Hadrian's mole, was erected on the right bank of the Tiber, between AD 134 and 139. The mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with a garden top and golden quadriga. Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138, together with those of his wife Sabina, his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who died in 138. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217; the urns containing these ashes were placed in what is now known as the Treasury room deep within the building. Hadrian built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the left bank of the Tiber, is renowned for the Baroque additions of statues of angels holding aloft instruments of the Passion of Christ.
Much of the tomb contents and decorations have been lost since the building's conversion to a military fortress in 401 and its subsequent inclusion in the Aurelian Walls by Flavius Honorius Augustus. The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigoth looters during Alaric's sacking of Rome in 410, the original decorative bronze and stone statuary were thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius. An unusual survivor, however, is the capstone of a funerary urn, which made its way to Saint Peter's Basilica, covered the tomb of Otto II and was incorporated into a massive Renaissance baptistery; the use of spolia from the tomb in the post-Roman period was noted in the 16th century – Giorgio Vasari writes:...in order to build churches for the use of the Christians, not only were the most honoured temples of the idols destroyed, but in order to ennoble and decorate Saint Peter's with more ornaments than it possessed, they took away the stone columns from the tomb of Hadrian, now the castle of Sant'Angelo, as well as many other things which we now see in ruins.
Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague of 590, thus lending the castle its present name. A less charitable yet more apt elaboration of the legend, given the militant disposition of this archangel, was heard by the 15th-century traveler who saw an angel statue on the castle roof, he recounts that during a prolonged season of the plague, Pope Gregory I heard that the populace Christians, had begun revering a pagan idol at the church of Santa Agata in Suburra. A vision urged the pope to lead a procession to the church. Upon arriving, the idol miraculously fell apart with a clap of thunder. Returning to St Peter's by the Aelian Bridge, the pope had another vision of an angel atop the castle, wiping the blood from his sword on his mantle, sheathing it. While the pope interpreted this as a sign that God was appeased, this did not prevent Gregory from destroying more sites of pagan worship in Rome; the popes converted the structure beginning in the 14th century.
The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V's Landsknechte during the Sack of Rome, in which Benvenuto Cellini describes strolling the ramparts and shooting enemy soldiers. Leo X built a chapel with a Madonna by Raffaello da Montelupo. In 1536 Montelupo created a marble statue of Saint Michael holding his sword after the 590 plague to surmount the Castel. Paul III built a rich apartment, to ensure that in any future siege the pope had an appropriate place to stay. Montelupo's statue was replaced by a bronze statue of the same subject, executed by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, in 1753. Verschaffelt's is still in place and Montelupo's can be seen in an open court in the interior of the Castle; the Papal state used Sant'Angelo as a prison. Another prisoner was goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. Executions were performed in the small inner courtyard; as a prison, it was the setting for the third act of Giacomo Puccini's 1900 opera Tosca. Decommissioned in 1901, the castle is now the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant ` Angelo.
It received 1,234,443 visitors in 2016. Cardinal-nephew Concordat of Worms List of castles in Italy Stand of the Swiss Guard Via della Conciliazione Official website Site describing arrangement of the original mausoleum. Mausoleum of Hadrian, part of the Encyclopædia Romana by James Grout Platner and Ashby entry on the tomb on Lacus Curtius site Roman Bookshelf – Views of Castel Sant'Angelo from the 19° Century Hadrian's tomb Model of how the tomb might have appeared in antiquity
Cadaver Synod
The Cadaver Synod is the name given to the posthumous ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus, held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome during January 897; the trial was conducted by Pope Stephen VI, the successor to Formosus' successor, Pope Boniface VI. Stephen had Formosus' corpse brought to the papal court for judgment, he accused Formosus of having acceded to the papacy illegally. At the end of the trial, Formosus was pronounced guilty and his papacy retroactively declared null; the Cadaver Synod and related events took place during a period of political instability in Italy. This period, which lasted from the middle of the 9th century to the middle of the 10th century, was marked by a rapid succession of pontiffs; these brief papal reigns were the result of the political machinations of local Roman factions, about which few sources survive. Formosus became bishop of Porto-Santa Rufina in 864 during the pontificate of Pope Nicholas I, he carried out missionary activity among the Bulgarians, was so successful that they requested him for their bishop.
Nicholas refused his permission, because an appointment in Bulgaria would require Formosus to leave his see in Porto, the fifteenth canon of the Second Council of Nicaea forbade a bishop to leave his own see to administer another. In 875, shortly after Charles the Bald's imperial coronation, Formosus fled Rome in fear of then-pope John VIII. A few months in 876, at a synod in Santa Maria Rotunda, John VIII issued a series of accusations against Formosus and some of his associates, he asserted that Formosus had corrupted the mind of the Bulgarians "so that, so long as was alive, would not accept any other bishop from the apostolic see," that he and his fellow conspirators had attempted to usurp the papacy from John, that he had deserted his see in Porto and was conspiring "against the salvation of the state and of our beloved Charles." Formosus and his associates were excommunicated. In 878, at another council held at Troyes, John may have confirmed the excommunications, he legislated more against those who "plunder" ecclesiastical goods.
According to the tenth-century author Auxilius of Naples, Formosus was present at this council. Auxilius says he begged the bishops for their forgiveness, in return for the lifting of the excommunication, swore an oath to remain a layman for the rest of his life, to never again enter Rome, to make no attempts to resume his former see at Porto; this story is doubtful: another description of the synod does not mention Formosus’s presence and says instead that John confirmed his excommunication. After the death of John VIII in December 882, Formosus' troubles ended, he resumed his bishopric at Porto, where he remained until elected pope on 6 October 891. Yet this earlier quarrel with John VIII formed the basis of the accusations made at the Cadaver Synod. According to the tenth-century historian Liutprand of Cremona, Stephen VI asked Formosus' corpse why he "usurped the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition" after the death of John VIII, echoing John VIII's own assertion that Formosus had tried to seize the papal throne while he was alive.
Two further accusations were made against Formosus at the Cadaver Synod: that he had committed perjury and that he had attempted to exercise the office of bishop as a layman. These are related to the oath Formosus is said to have sworn before the council at Troyes in 878; the Cadaver Synod is presumed to have been politically motivated. Formosus crowned Lambert of Spoleto co-ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in 892. In 893 Formosus nervous about Guy's aggression, invited the Carolingian Arnulf of Carinthia to invade Italy and receive the imperial crown. Arnulf's invasion failed, Guy III died shortly afterwards, yet Formosus renewed his invitation to Arnulf in 895, early the next year Arnulf crossed the Alps and entered Rome, where Formosus crowned him as Holy Roman Emperor. Afterwards the Frankish army departed, Arnulf and Formosus died within months of each other in 896. Formosus was succeeded by Pope Boniface VI. Lambert and his mother, the empress Angiltrude, entered Rome around the time that Stephen VI became pope, the Cadaver Synod was conducted directly afterwards, at the beginning of 897.
The dominant interpretation of these events until the early twentieth century was straightforward: Formosus had always been a pro-Carolingian, his crowning of Lambert in 892 was coerced. After the death of Arnulf and the collapse of Carolingian authority in Rome, Lambert entered the city and forced Stephen to convene the Cadaver Synod, both to re-assert his claim to the imperial crown and also to exact posthumous revenge upon Formosus; this view is now considered obsolete, following the arguments put forth by Joseph Duhr in 1932. Duhr pointed out that Lambert was in attendance at the Ravenna Council of 898, convened under Pope John IX, it was at this proceeding. According to the written acta of the council, Lambert approved of the nullification. If Lambert and Angiltrude had been the architects of Formosus’s degradation, Duhr asked, “how was John IX able to submit to the canons which condemned the odious synod for approbation of the emperor and his bishops? How could John IX have dared to broach the matter before the guilty parties, without making the least allusion to the emperor’s participation?”
This position has been accepted by another scholar: Girolamo Arnaldi argued that Formo
Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)
The Kingdom of Italy was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany and Burgundy. It excluded the Republic of Venice and the Papal States, its original capital was Pavia until the 11th century. In 773, the King of the Franks, crossed the Alps to invade the Kingdom of the Lombards, which encompassed all of Italy except the Duchy of Rome and some Byzantine possessions in the south. In June 774, the kingdom collapsed and the Franks became masters of northern Italy; the southern areas remained under Lombard control as the Duchy of Benevento is changed into the rather independent Principality of Benevento. Charlemagne adopted the title "King of the Lombards" and in 800 was crowned "Emperor of the Romans" in Rome. Members of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule Italy until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887, after which they once regained the throne in 894–896; until 961, the rule of Italy was continually contested by several aristocratic families from both within and outside the kingdom.
In 961, King Otto I of Germany married to Adelaide, widow of a previous king of Italy, invaded the kingdom and had himself crowned in Pavia on 25 December. 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, by the twelfth century the term "Holy Roman Empire" had come into use to describe it. From 961 on, the Emperor of the Romans was also King of Italy and Germany, although emperors sometimes appointed their heirs to rule in Italy and 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 sought to impose their will on the evolving Italian city-states. The resulting wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the anti-imperialist and imperialist factions were characteristic of Italian politics in the 12th–14th centuries.
The Lombard League was the most famous example of this situation. The century between the Humiliation of Canossa 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 in Italy; the next forty years were peaceful in Italy, but in 1494 the peninsula was invaded by France. After the Imperial Reform of 1495–1512, the Italian kingdom corresponded to 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 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 united into the Italian Republic under his Presidency.
In 1805 the Republic became a new Kingdom of Italy, in personal union with France. After the Battle of Taginae, in which the Ostrogoth king Totila was killed, the Byzantine general Narses captured Rome and besieged Cumae. Teia, the new Ostrogothic king, gathered the remnants of the Ostrogothic army and marched to relieve the siege, but in October 552 Narses ambushed him at Mons Lactarius in Campania, near Mount Vesuvius and Nuceria Alfaterna; the battle lasted Teia was killed in the fighting. Ostrogothic power in Italy was eliminated, but according to Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea, Narses allowed the Ostrogothic population and their Rugian allies to live peacefully in Italy under Roman sovereignty; the absence of any real authority in Italy after the battle led to an invasion by the Franks and Alemanni, but they too were defeated in the battle of the Volturnus and the peninsula was, for a short time, reintegrated into the empire. The Kings of the Lombards ruled that 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. Upon the Lombard defeat at the 774 Siege of Pavia, the kingdom came under the Frankish domination of Charlemagne; the Iron Crown of Lombardy was used for the coronation of the Lombard kings, the kings of Italy thereafter, for centuries. The primary sources for the Lombard kings before the Frankish conquest are the anonymous 7th-century Origo Gentis Langobardorum and the 8th-century Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon; the earliest kings listed in the Origo are certainly legendary. They purportedly reigned during the Migration Period; the actual control of the sovereigns of both the major areas that constitute the kingdom – Langobardia Major in the centre-north 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
Berengar I of Italy
Berengar I was the King of Italy from 887. He became Holy Roman Emperor after 915, until his death in 924, he is known as Berengar of Friuli, since he ruled the March of Friuli from 874 until at least 890, but he had lost control of the region by 896. Berengar rose to become one of the most influential laymen in the empire of Charles the Fat, he was elected to replace Charles in Italy after the latter's deposition in November 887, his long reign of 36 years saw him opposed by no less than seven other claimants to the Italian throne. His reign is characterised as "troubled" because of the many competitors for the crown and because of the arrival of Magyar raiders in Western Europe, he was the last emperor after a 38-year interregnum. His family was called the Unruochings after his grandfather, Unruoch II. Berengar was a son of Eberhard of Friuli and Gisela, daughter of Louis the Pious and his second wife Judith, he was thus of Carolingian extraction on his mother's side. He was born at Cividale. Sometime during his margraviate, he married Bertilla, daughter of Suppo II, thus securing an alliance with the powerful Supponid family.
She would rule alongside him as a consors, a title denoting her informal power and influence, as opposed to a mere coniunx, "wife." When his older brother Unruoch III died in 874, Berengar succeeded him in the March of Friuli. With this he obtained a key position in the Carolingian Empire, as the march bordered the Croats and other Slavs who were a constant threat to the Italian peninsula, he was a territorial magnate with lordship over several counties in northeastern Italy. He was an important channel for the men of Friuli to get access to the emperor and for the emperor to exercise authority in Friuli, he had a large degree of influence on the church of Friuli. In 884 -- 885, Berengar intervened with the emperor on behalf of Bishop of Belluno. When, in 875, the Emperor Louis II, King of Italy, having come to terms with Louis the German whereby the German monarch's eldest son, would succeed in Italy, Charles the Bald of West Francia invaded the peninsula and had himself crowned king and emperor.
Louis the German sent first Charles the Fat, his youngest son, Carloman himself, with armies containing Italian magnates led by Berengar, to possess the Italian kingdom. This was not successful until the death of Charles the Bald in 877; the proximity of Berengar's march to Bavaria, which Carloman ruled under his father, may explain their cooperation. In 883, the newly succeeded Guy III of Spoleto was accused of treason at an imperial synod held at Nonantula late in May, he made an alliance with the Saracens. The emperor Charles the Fat, sent Berengar with an army to deprive him of Spoleto. Berengar was successful before an epidemic of disease, which ravaged all Italy, affecting the emperor and his entourage as well as Berengar's army, forced him to retire. In 886, Bishop of Vercelli, took Berengar's sister from the nunnery of San Salvatore at Brescia in order to marry her to a relative of his. Berengar and Liutward had a feud that year, which involved his attack on Vercelli and plundering of the bishop's goods.
Berengar's actions are explicable if his sister was abducted by the bishop, but if the bishop's actions were justified Berengar appears as the initiator of the feud. Whatever the case and margrave were reconciled shortly before Liutward was dismissed from court in 887. By his brief war with Liutward, Berengar had lost the favour of his cousin the emperor. Berengar came to the emperor's assembly at Waiblingen in early May 887, he made peace with the emperor and compensated for the actions of the previous year by dispensing great gifts. In June or July, Berengar was again at the emperor's side at Kirchen, when Louis of Provence was adopted as the emperor's son, it is sometimes alleged that Berengar was pining to be declared Charles' heir and that he may in fact have been so named in Italy, where he was acclaimed king after Charles' deposition by the nobles of East Francia in November that year. On the other hand, his presence may have been necessary to confirm Charles' illegitimate son Bernard as his heir, a plan which failed when the pope refused to attend, to confirm Louis instead.
Berengar was the only one of the reguli to crop up in the aftermath of Charles' deposition besides Arnulf of Carinthia, his deposer, made king before the emperor's death. Charter evidence begins Berengar's reign at Pavia between 26 December 887 and 2 January 888, though this has been disputed. Berengar was not the undisputed leading magnate in Italy at the time, but he may have made an agreement with his former rival, Guy of Spoleto, whereby Guy would have West Francia and he Italy on the emperor's death. Both Guy and Berengar were related to the Carolingians in the female line, they represented different factions in Italian politics: Berengar the pro-German and Guy the pro-French. In Summer 888, who had failed in his bid to take the West Frankish throne, returned to Italy to gather an army from among the Spoletans and Lombards and oppose Berengar; this he did, but the battle they fought near Brescia in the fall was a slight victory for Berengar, though his forces were so diminished that he sued for peace nevertheless.
The truce was to last until 6 January 889. After the truce with Guy was signed, Arnulf of Germany endeavoured to invade Italy through Friuli. Berengar, in order to prevent a war, sent dig
Bavaria
Bavaria the Free State of Bavaria, is a landlocked federal state of Germany, occupying its southeastern corner. With an area of 70,550.19 square kilometres, Bavaria is the largest German state by land area comprising a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With 13 million inhabitants, it is Germany's second-most-populous state after North Rhine-Westphalia. Bavaria's main cities are Nuremberg; the history of Bavaria includes its earliest settlement by Iron Age Celtic tribes, followed by the conquests of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC, when the territory was incorporated into the provinces of Raetia and Noricum. It became a stem duchy in the 6th century AD following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, it was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, became an independent kingdom, joined the Prussian-led German Empire while retaining its title of kingdom, became a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Duchy of Bavaria dates back to the year 555. In the 17th century AD, the Duke of Bavaria became a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Kingdom of Bavaria existed from 1806 to 1918. In 1946, the Free State of Bavaria re-organised itself on democratic lines after the Second World War. Bavaria has a unique culture because of the state's Catholic majority and conservative traditions. Bavarians have traditionally been proud of their culture, which includes a language, architecture, festivals such as Oktoberfest and elements of Alpine symbolism; the state has the second largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, giving it a status as a rather wealthy German region. Modern Bavaria includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia; the Bavarians emerged in a region north of the Alps inhabited by Celts, part of the Roman provinces of Raetia and Noricum. The Bavarians spoke Old High German, unlike other Germanic groups, they did not migrate from elsewhere. Rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by the Roman withdrawal late in the 5th century; these peoples may have included the Celtic Boii, some remaining Romans, Allemanni, Thuringians, Scirians, Heruli.
The name "Bavarian" means "Men of Baia" which may indicate Bohemia, the homeland of the Celtic Boii and of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources circa 520. A 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the diocese was named after an ancient Bohemian king, Boiia, in the 14th century BC. From about 554 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the Duchy of Bavaria, ending with Tassilo III, deposed by Charlemagne. Three early dukes are named in Frankish sources: Garibald I may have been appointed to the office by the Merovingian kings and married the Lombard princess Walderada when the church forbade her to King Chlothar I in 555, their daughter, became Queen of the Lombards in northern Italy and Garibald was forced to flee to her when he fell out with his Frankish overlords. Garibald's successor, Tassilo I, tried unsuccessfully to hold the eastern frontier against the expansion of Slavs and Avars around 600. Tassilo's son Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616.
After Garibald II little is known of the Bavarians until Duke Theodo I, whose reign may have begun as early as 680. From 696 onwards he invited churchmen from the west to organize churches and strengthen Christianity in his duchy, his son, led a decisive Bavarian campaign to intervene in a succession dispute in the Lombard Kingdom in 714, married his sister Guntrud to the Lombard King Liutprand. At Theodo's death the duchy was reunited under his grandson Hugbert. At Hugbert's death the duchy passed from neighboring Alemannia. Odilo issued a law code for Bavaria, completed the process of church organization in partnership with St. Boniface, tried to intervene in Frankish succession disputes by fighting for the claims of the Carolingian Grifo, he was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748. Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Tassilo III succeeded his father at the age of eight after an unsuccessful attempt by Grifo to rule Bavaria.
He ruled under Frankish oversight but began to function independently from 763 onwards. He was noted for founding new monasteries and for expanding eastwards, fighting Slavs in the eastern Alps and along the River Danube and colonising these lands. After 781, his cousin Charlemagne began to pressure Tassilo to submit and deposed him in 788; the deposition was not legitimate. Dissenters attempted a coup against Charlemagne at Tassilo's old capital of Regensburg in 792, led by his own son Pépin the Hunchback; the king had to drag Tassilo out of imprisonment to formally renounce his rights and titles at the Assembly of Frankfurt in 794. This is the last appearance of Tassilo in the sources, he died a monk; as all of his family were forced into monasteries, this was the end of the Agilolfing dynasty. For the next 400 years numerous families held the duchy for more than three generations. With the revolt of duke Henry the Quarrelsome in 976, Bavaria lost large territories in the south and
San Clemente Abbey
The Abbey of San Clemente a Casauria is an abbey in the territory of Castiglione a Casauria, in the province of Pescara, central Italy. The abbey was founded in 871 by Louis II, grand-grandson of Charlemagne, after a vow made during his imprisonment in the Duchy of Benevento. Entitled to the Holy Trinity, it was dedicated to St. Clement when the latter's remain were brought here in 872. In its history the abbey was plundered several times: by the Saracens in 920 and by the Norman count Malmozzetto between 1076 and 1097. After this destructive episode, the Benedictine abbot Grimoald promoted the rebuilding of the church, reconsecrated in 1105. However, the works ended only in the late 12th century under abbot Leonate; the façade is precede by a portico with capitals. In the centre of the tympanum is the figure of San Clemente in his Papal clothing, with Saints Fabio and Cornelius at his right side and Abbot Leonate, to his left, presenting a model of the rebuilt abbey to its patron; the bronze doors were made when Abbot Iole was in charge and are divided into 72 rectangular panels depicting various images such as crosses, rose patterns and 14 castles that were subjects of the Abbey.
Inside the church there are a beautiful paschal candelabrum and a massive ambo dating from the 11 hundreds. The configuration is two aisles with semicircular apse; the high altar is a Palaeo-Christian sepulchre, surmounted by a 14th-century ciborium. Next to this is a large marble casket containing the relics of San Clemente. In the crypt two apse railings divide the primitive church from that rebuilt the Benedictines in the 12th century. San Liberatore a Maiella Gavini, Ignazio Carlo. Storia dell'architettura in Abruzzo. Milan: Bestetti e Tumminelli. Guida all'Abruzzo. Touring Club Italiano. L'Italia. Istituto Geografico De Agostini. Signage and descriptive material at the site. Abbazia di San Clemente a Casauria Web Site San Clemente a Casauria Pages in Paradoxplace
