| Guy III of Spoleto | |
|---|---|
| Emperor of the Romans | |
 Guy depicted as emperor in the 12th-centurycartulary ofSan Clemente | |
| Emperor inItaly | |
| Reign | 891–894 |
| Coronation | 21 February 891, Rome |
| Predecessor | Charles III (as Emperor of theCarolingian Empire) |
| Successor | Lambert |
| King of Italy | |
| Reign | February 889 – 894 |
| Predecessor | Berengar I |
| Successor | Lambert |
| Died | 12 December 894 Taro River, Italy |
| Burial | |
| Spouse | Ageltrude |
| Issue | |
| House | Guideschi |
| Father | Guy I |
| Mother | Itta of Benevento |
| Signum manus |  |
Guy III of Spoleto (German:Wido,Italian:Guido; died 12 December 894) was the Margrave ofCamerino from 880, and became Duke ofSpoleto andCamerino in 883. He was crowned King ofItaly in 889 andemperor by the pope in 891. Guy died in 894 while campaigning to assert control over theItalian Peninsula.
Guy was married toAgeltrude, daughter ofAdelchis of Benevento, who had a son with him namedLambert.
Guy was the second son ofGuy I of Spoleto[1] and Itta, daughter ofSico of Benevento. Guy I was the son ofLambert I of Nantes and his second wife, Adelaide of Lombardy, who was a daughter ofCharlemagne's second eldest son,Pepin of Italy. In 842, the formerDuchy of Spoleto, which had been donated to thePapacy by Charlemagne, was resurrected by theFranks to be held againstByzantinecatapans to the south, as a Frankish border territory by a dependentmargrave.
Consequently, Guy’s family had been important players in Italian politics since the early ninth century.[2] Although in 876 Guy and his elder brother,Lambert,Duke of Spoleto, had been commissioned byCharles the Bald to accompanyPope John VIII on a trip toNaples in order to break up the alliances that many of the southern Lombard states had made with theSaracens,[3] the family’s interests were generally hostile to the papacy, a policy that Guy initially followed.[4]
With Lambert’s death in 880, he bequeathed to Guy the march ofCamerino, and in 882 Guy supported his nephewGuy II of Spoleto's invasion of thePapal States.[5] This brought him into conflict with the EmperorCharles the Fat, and in 882, at an assembly atVerona, the emperor dispossessed him of his fiefs, together with a significant number of other important, but minor, Italian nobles.[6] Rising up in rebellion, Guy allied himself with the neighbouring Saracens and began acquiring further territory. At this point, at a diet atRavenna, the emperor declared him guilty of high treason, andBerengar of Friuli was commanded to strip him of his fief by force.[7]
In 883, Guy inherited his nephew's title of Spoleto and reunited the dukedom, henceforth as the "Duchy of Spoleto and Camerino" bearing the title ofdux et marchio (and gaining his regnal number III), and by the end of 884, Emperor Charles III was forced to make peace with Guy, where he formally recovered his titles.[8] Then in 885, he fought his occasional allies, the Saracens of theGarigliano.
After the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887, by virtue of being a relative of ArchbishopFulk ofRheims,[9] he had hopes of being crowned King ofWest Francia,[citation needed] and in fact travelled as far asLangres, where the bishop crowned him as such. But because ofOdo's coronation that year (888), he turned and went back with designs on the crown ofItaly and theemperorship, having won the support of Burgundian nobles such asAnscar of Oscheret.[10]
Guy of Spoleto was opposed by Berengar of Friuli for theIron Crown of Lombardy.[11] Although Berengar had the advantage of being allied with theCarolingian family,[12] and of having been crowned as king of Italy in 887, from 888 Guy was closer to Rome, and had already allied himself withPope Stephen V, who had described Guy “as his only son”.[citation needed] Fighting between the rival contenders began, and it was Guy who had himself proclaimed king of Italy in a diet held atPavia at the end of the year 888.[13] He was formally crownedKing of Italy by Pope Stephen V in 889 in Pavia, in theBasilica of San Michele Maggiore,[14] and this was followed by his coronation asRoman Emperor on 21 February 891,[15] together with the crowning of his sonLambert II as King of Italy.
The situation inItaly began to deteriorate with the election of a new pope,Formosus, in 891. Distrustful of Guy, he began to look elsewhere for support against the emperor, as Guy found it increasingly difficult to end the threat of Berengar who still held out in his Duchy of Friuli.[16] To bolster his overall position, atRavenna on 30 April 892, Guy forced Pope Formosus to crown Lambert as co-emperor.[17]
The pope therefore took the next opportunity to oppose Guy by supportingArnulf of Carinthia for the Italian and imperial titles.[citation needed] In 893, Formosus invited Arnulf to come toTrento to overthrow Guy and be crowned himself. Arnulf instead sent his sonZwentibold with an army to join Berengar, the deposed king, and march on Trento. Their joint army surrounded Trento, but Guy probably bribed them to leave him unmolested. The following year, they defeated Guy atBergamo and took Trento andMilan. Berengar was recognised as king and a vassal of Arnulf. Zwentibold returned to Germany, as fever had wreaked havoc on the German armies.[18] Guy retreated in order to regroup at a fortified place on theTaro and died there suddenly in late autumn, leaving his son under the tutelage of his wife. Both would contest the throne with Berengar and Arnulf.
Guy's power never extended over much beyond his hereditary lands, which offered a stark illustration of the fact that the imperial title, with its pretensions of universal rule, had by the end of the ninth century become merely a token of the pope's favour, to be fought over by various Italian nobles. He did not even firmly control the north of Italy, battling other claimants over the throne for much of his reign. He did try to maintain the Carolingian tradition and issuecapitularies as former emperors had. In 891, he demanded the traditional service in the army of allarimanni, whether they owned land or not.
Emperor Guy Died: 12 December 894 | ||
| Regnal titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded byas unopposed king | — DISPUTED — King of Italy 889–894 Disputed byBerengar I | Succeeded by |
| Vacant Title last held by Charles III | Holy Roman Emperor 891–894 | |
| Preceded by | Duke of Spoleto 883–894 | |
| Preceded by | Margrave of Camerino 880–894 withGuy II (880–894) | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| People | |
