 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Lotharingia" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Kingdom of Lotharingia Duchy of Lotharingia | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 855–959 | |||||||||||||
 The Kingdom of Lotharingia (purple) and other Carolingian kingdoms following theTreaty of Prüm, 855 | |||||||||||||
| Status | Kingdom (855–869, 895-900) Duchy (903–959) | ||||||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||||
| King or Duke | |||||||||||||
• 855–869 | Lothair II | ||||||||||||
• 953–965 | Bruno the Great | ||||||||||||
| Historical era | Medieval | ||||||||||||
| 855 | |||||||||||||
• Division | 959 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Lotharingia[1] was ahistorical region and anearly medieval polity that existed during the lateCarolingian and earlyOttonian,[2] from the middle of the 9th to the middle of the 10th century.[3] It was established in855 by theTreaty of Prüm as a distinctkingdom within theCarolingian Empire,[4] but abolished already in869-870 when it was divided by theTreaty of Meerssen.[5] It was territorially reunited in880 by theTreaty of Ribemont, and reestablished as a kingdom from895 to900.[6] Since903 it was organized as aduchy, which existed up to959, when it was divided into two distinct duchies:Upper Lotharingia (southern half), andLower Lotharingia (northern half). The regional nameLotharingia means, approximately, "the land of Lothair", and was derived from the name of its first ruler, kingLothair II, who received this territory as his share of the Kingdom ofMiddle Francia. The region comprised present-dayLorraine (France),Luxembourg, parts of modernGermany west of theRhine, most ofBelgium, andthe Netherlands.[7]
Lotharingia resulted from the tripartite division in855 of the kingdom of Middle Francia, which itself was formed after the threefold division of the Carolingian Empire by theTreaty of Verdun of843. Conflict between East and West Francia over Lotharingia was based on the fact that these were the oldFrankish homelands ofAustrasia, so possession of them was a matter of great prestige to their kings as true claimant of Frankish imperial legacy.
 |
| Part ofa series on |
| Lorraine |
|---|
 Flag of Lorraine since the 13th century |
Administrative divisions
|
Lorraine in theEU |
Part ofa series on the |
|---|
| History of the Netherlands |
 |
 Netherlands portal |
Lotharingia was known asregnum quondam Lotharii orregnum Lotharii ("kingdom [once] Lothair's").
Its inhabitants were known asLotharii (fromLotharius),Lotharienses (fromLothariensis), orLotharingi (which gives the modern Dutch, German, and Luxembourgish names for the provinceLotharingen, Lothringen, andLoutrengen respectively). The latter term, formed with the Germanic suffix-ing, indicating ancestral or familial relationships, gave rise to the Latin termLotharingia (from the Latin suffix-ia, indicating a country) in the 10th century.
Later French terms such as "Lorraine" and "Lothier" are derived from the Latin term.
In 817, EmperorLouis the Pious made plans for division of theCarolingian Empire among his three sons after his death. Unforeseen in 817 was a further heir besides Louis's three grown sons. A fourth son,Charles the Bald, was born to Louis's second wifeJudith of Bavaria in 823. When Louis tried in 833 to re-divide the empire for the benefit of Charles, he met with opposition from his adult sons,Lothair,Pepin, andLouis. A decade of civil war and fluctuating alliances followed, punctuated by brief periods of peace.
Pepin died in 838, and Louis the Pious in 840. The remaining three brothers made peace and divided the Empire with the 843Treaty of Verdun. Lothair, as the eldest, kept the imperial title and received a long strip of territories stretching from the North Sea to southern Italy. The logic of the division was that Lothair had the crown of theKingdom of Italy, which had been his subkingdom underLouis the Pious, and that as emperor he should rule inAachen, the capital of the first Carolingian emperor,Charlemagne, and inRome, the ancient capital of emperors. Middle Francia (LatinFrancia media) thus included all the land between Aachen and Rome, and it has sometimes been called by historians the "Lotharingian axis".
In 855, when Lothair I was dying inPrüm Abbey, he divided his kingdom among his three sons with theTreaty of Prüm. To the eldest son,Louis II, went Italy, with the imperial title. To the youngest,Charles, still a minor, wentProvence. To the middle son,Lothair II, went the remaining territories to the north of Provence, a kingdom which lacked ethnic or linguistic unity.
Lothair II ruled fromAachen and did not venture outside his kingdom. When he died in 869, Lothair II left no legitimate children, but one illegitimate son -Hugh, Duke of Alsace. His uncles, the kings ofEast FranciaLouis the German andWest FranciaCharles the Bald (who wanted to rule the whole of Lotharingia) agreed to divide Lotharingia between them with the 870Treaty of Meerssen - the western half went to West Francia and the eastern half to East Francia.[8] Thus, Lotharingia, as a united kingdom, ceased to exist for some years. In 876, Charles the Bald invaded eastern Lotharingia with the intent to capture it, but was defeated nearAndernach by Louis's son,Louis the Younger.
In 879,Louis the Younger was invited by a faction of the West Frankish nobility to succeed kingLouis the Stammerer, Charles's son, on the throne of West Francia. After a brief war, Louis the Stammerer's young sons,Carloman II andLouis III, ceded western Lotharingia to Louis. The border between the two kingdoms was established atSaint-Quentin in 880 by theTreaty of Ribemont.
In November 887,Arnulf of Carinthia called a council of East Frankish nobility to depose emperorCharles the Fat, who by 884 had succeeded to the thrones of all the kingdoms of the Empire. The Lotharingian aristocracy, in an attempt to assert its right to elect a sovereign, joined the other East Frankish nobles in deposingCharles the Fat in 887 and elected Arnulf as their king. The rule of Arnulf in East Francia was initially opposed byGuy III of Spoleto, who became king of Italy, and byRudolph I of Burgundy, who was elected king in the southern half of former Middle Francia -Upper Burgundy. Rudolph had intended to make himself king over the whole of Lothair II's former kingdom, but had to be content with Burgundia.
Arnulf defeated the Vikings in 891 and dislodged them from their settlements at Louvain. In 895, he appointed his illegitimate sonZwentibold as the king of Lotharingia who ruled semi-independently until he was overthrown and killed byReginar on August 13, 900. The kingdom then ceased to exist and became a duchy.
The young king ofEast Francia,Louis the Child, appointedGebhard to be the duke of Lotharingia in 903. His title was recorded in contemporary Latin asdux regni quod a multis Hlotharii dicitur: "duke of the kingdom that many call Lothair's". He died in 910 fightingHungarian invaders.
When non-CarolingianConrad I of Germany was elected king ofEast Francia in 911, Lotharingian nobles under the new dukeReginar voted to attach their duchy to West Francia, still ruled by the Carolingian dynasty. In 915,Charles the Simple rewarded him by granting him the title ofmargrave. Reginar was succeeded by his sonGilbert who used the titledux Lotharingiae: "duke of Lotharingia".
When the West Franks deposed Charles in 922, he remained king in Lotharingia, from where he attempted to reconquer his kingdom in 923. He was captured and imprisoned byHeribert II of Vermandois until his death in 929. In 923, kingHenry the Fowler ofEast Francia used this opportunity and invaded Lotharingia (includingAlsace). In 925, Lotharingians under Gilbert elected Henry the Fowler to be their king. In 930, Gilbert's loyalty was rewarded and he received the prestigious hand of Henry's daughterGerberga in marriage.
On Henry's death in 936, Gilbert rebelled and tried to swap Lotharingian allegiance to the West Franks, since their kingRudolph was weak and would interfere less in local affairs. In 939, Henry's son and successor,Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, invaded Lotharingia, and at theBattle of Andernach defeated Gilbert, who drowned trying to flee across the Rhine.
The dukes of Lotharingia were thereafter royal appointees.Henry I, Duke of Bavaria was duke for two years, followed in 941 by dukeOtto, who, in 944, was followed byConrad. Lotharingia was turned into a juniorstem duchy whose dukes had a vote in royal elections. While the other stem duchies had tribal or historic identities, Lotharingia's identity was solely political.
KingLouis IV of West Francia tried to maintain a claim to Lotharingia by marrying Gilbert's widow and Otto's sister Gerberga. In his turn, Otto I accepted homage from West Francia'sHugh the Great andHerbert II, Count of Vermandois atAttigny in 942. The weak Louis IV had no choice but to agree to Otto's continued suzerainty over Lotharingia.[9] In 944, West Francia invaded Lotharingia, but retreated after Otto I responded with mobilization of a large army underHerman I, Duke of Swabia.
In 953, Duke Conrad rebelled against Otto I, and was removed from power and replaced by Otto's brotherBruno the Great, who finally pacified Lotharingia in 959 by dividing it intoLotharingia superior (Upper Lorraine or Southern Lorraine) underFrederick I, andLotharingia inferior (Lower Lotharingia, Lower Lorraine or Northern Lotharingia) underGodfrey I.
In 978, kingLothair of West Franciainvaded the region and captured Aachen, butOtto II, Holy Roman Emperor, counterattacked and reached the walls of Paris. In 980, Lothair renounced his rights to Lotharingia.
Except for one brief period (1033–44, underGothelo I), the division was never reversed and the margraves soon raised their separate fiefs into duchies. In the twelfth century the ducal authority in Lower Lotharingia (or Lower Lorraine) fragmented, causing the formation of theDuchy of Limburg and theDuchy of Brabant, whose rulers retained the titleDuke of Lothier (derived from "Lotharingia"). With the disappearance of a "lower" Lorraine, the duchy of Upper Lorraine became the primary referent for "Lorraine" within theHoly Roman Empire.
After centuries of French invasions and occupations, Lorraine was finally ceded to France at the close of theWar of the Polish Succession (1737). In 1766, the duchy was inherited by the French crown and becameLorraine. In 1871, after theFranco-Prussian War, the northern portions of Lorraine were merged withAlsace to become the province ofAlsace-Lorraine in theGerman Empire, which became French territory again afterWorld War I. Today the greater part of the French side of the Franco-German border belongs to theGrand Estregion of France.
 Lorraine topics | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Departments |
|  | ||||||||
| Culture | ||||||||||
| Sports | ||||||||||
| History |
| |||||||||
