Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

The Kingdom of Italy, also called Imperial Italy, was one of the kingdoms in the Holy Roman Empire, along with Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It covered large parts of northern and central Italy and had its capital at Pavia until the 1100s.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Italy was ruled by different groups, including the Ostrogoths and the Lombards. In 773, Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, invaded Italy and took control. He was later crowned emperor in Rome in 800. His family, the Carolingian dynasty, ruled Italy until the late 800s.

Later, in 951, Otto I of Germany took control of Italy and became its king. He was crowned emperor in Rome in 962, uniting the crowns of Italy, Germany, and later Burgundy. This union became known as the Holy Roman Empire. Even though emperors often ruled from Germany, they still claimed authority over Italy. This led to conflicts among Italian cities and factions supporting or opposing the emperor.

By the late 1400s, the Kingdom of Italy as a central government had mostly disappeared, though emperors still had a legal claim to the land. Italian states often settled disputes by appealing to imperial courts. The kingdom’s history changed dramatically when French forces arrived in the 1790s, leading to new governments set up by Napoleon.

Lombard Kingdom

Main article: Kingdom of the Lombards

After a big battle called the Battle of Taginae, the Byzantine general Narses took control of Rome. The new Ostrogothic king tried to help but was killed. This ended the power of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Narses allowed the Ostrogoths to live peacefully.

The Lombards, a group of Germanic people, entered Italy and set up their own kingdom. Their kings sometimes called themselves Kings of Italy. Later, the Lombard kingdom was taken over by the Franks led by Charlemagne, who said he was protecting the Papacy.

Carolingian Kingdom of Italy

After taking control of the Lombard Kingdom in 774, Charlemagne became the ruler of Lombardy, creating a special area in his Italian lands within the larger Carolingian Empire. In 781, his young son Pepin was made king of Lombardy to rule this Italian area. When Pepin died in 810, his son Bernard took over but was removed in 817 by their uncle, Emperor Louis the Pious. The Italian lands then went to Louis’s son Lothair I, who ruled from 817 to 855.

After the Treaty of Verdun in 843, Carolingian Italy became part of the Middle Frankish Kingdom under Emperor Lothair I. When Lothair I died in 855, his lands in Middle Francia were divided among his three sons through the Treaty of Prüm. The eldest, Louis II, became the emperor and ruler of Carolingian Italy. His lands stretched across northern and central Italy, reaching as far south as Rome and Spoleto, while the rest of southern Italy was ruled by the Lombard Principality of Benevento or the Byzantine Empire. After Louis II died in 875 without a son to inherit, the rule over Italy and the imperial crown were fought over by leaders from West Francia (France) and East Francia (Germany), with both Charles the Bald and later Carloman of Bavaria and Charles the Fat claiming the title.

Main article: Carolingian Empire
Main articles: Treaty of Verdun, Treaty of Prüm

Post-Carolingian Kingdom of Italy

After the emperor Charles the Fat died in 888, several local nobles, like Berengar of Friuli, Guy of Spoleto, and Lambert of Spoleto, argued over who should rule Italy. Kings from other places, such as Arnulf of Eastern Francia and Louis of Provence, also wanted to rule Italy. Other rulers included Rudolph II of Burgundy, Hugh of Arles, his son Lothair II, and their rival Berengar II.

During this time, Italy faced attacks from Arab groups coming from Sicily and North Africa. Things became calmer when the German king Otto I came into Italy and took control of both Italy and the Imperial throne in 961-962.

Imperial Italy

In 951, King Otto I of Germany married Adelaide of Burgundy, the widow of late King Lothair II of Italy. Otto became king of Italy at Pavia, even though another leader, Berengar of Ivrea, wanted the job. In 952, the March of Verona became part of the Duchy of Bavaria and stayed with the Kingdom of Germany until it broke up. When Berengar attacked the Papal States in 960, King Otto, asked by Pope John XII, took over the Italian kingdom and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome on 2 February 962. After that, the kings of Italy were also kings of Germany, and Italy became part of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the Kingdom of Germany (regnum Teutonicorum) and, from 1032, Burgundy. The German king (Rex Romanorum) would be crowned in Pavia before going to Rome to be crowned Emperor by the Pope.

Usually, the ruler spent most of his time in Germany and did not stay in Italy much. Italy did not have strong leaders to help rule it. One place, the Margraviate of Tuscany, owned land in Tuscany, Lombardy, and the Emilia, but it ended when Matilda of Canossa died in 1115 and left no heirs. This created a problem, and the Pope, bishops, and wealthy Italian cities began to have more power. After Emperor Otto III died in 1002, one of Berengar’s successors, Margrave Arduin of Ivrea, became king of Italy and beat the emperor’s army led by Duke Otto I of Carinthia. It was not until 1004 that the new German King Henry II of Germany, helped by Bishop Leo of Vercelli, could go to Italy and be crowned rex Italiae. Arduin was the last king from Italy until Victor Emmanuel II became king in 1861.

Henry’s successor Conrad II tried to keep control over Italy against Archbishop Aribert of Milan and other leaders. While surrounding Milan in 1037, he made a rule called the Constitutio de feudis to gain support from smaller lords, whose fiefs he said could be passed down in families. Although Conrad made his rule stronger, the Holy Roman Emperor’s power in Italy was still challenged.

Staufer

The cities showed their growing power during the rule of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190). He tried to strengthen the emperor’s control in Italy, but this led to war with the Lombard League, a group of cities in northern Italy, led most of the time by Milan. They fought a big battle at the Battle of Legnano in 1176, led by the Milanese Guido da Landriano. This forced Frederick to make concessions to the cities, ending his try to control northern Italy. After this, Italy became a mix of independent areas and cities that were only loosely connected to the Holy Roman Empire.

This situation was similar to what happened between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor at Canossa a hundred years earlier. The question was the same as in the Concordat of Worms. Did the Holy Roman Emperor have the right to choose the pope and bishops? The Investiture controversy from earlier times had been settled with the Concordat of Worms and confirmed by the First Council of the Lateran. Now it happened again, but in a slightly different way. Frederick had to humiliate himself before Pope Alexander III at Venice. The emperor recognized the pope’s control over the Papal States, and the pope recognized the emperor’s rule over the Imperial Church. In the Treaty of Venice, they agreed to a truce with the Lombard cities in August 1178. A lasting peace was not made until 1183 in the Peace of Constance, when Frederick allowed the cities to choose their leaders freely. With this, Frederick kept his loose control over Italy, which helped him put pressure on the pope.

Frederick’s son Henry VI took over Hohenstaufen control in Italy by conquering the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which included Sicily and all of Southern Italy. Henry’s son, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, tried to continue his father’s work of strengthening the emperor’s rule in northern Italy. But this faced strong opposition from a new Lombard League and the Popes, who were worried about the Hohenstaufen emperors wanting too much power.

Frederick II was one of the most important leaders of the Middle Ages. He ruled from Sicily in the south all the way to Germany in the north. He was called Stupor mundi (‘Wonder of the World’) by people at the time. Frederick tried to build a united Italian state, like the leaders in the 19th century. In Sicily, he built on what his Norman ancestors did and created a state with a strong government. Frederick’s control in Sicily survived attacks, plans against him, and wars with his enemies in Lombardy and the pope.

From his base in Sicily, called the Regno, the emperor could use wealth and people to push his goals in northern Italy. In 1237, Frederick II won a big victory over the Lombard League at the Battle of Cortenuova, and imperial power in Lombardy seemed stronger than ever. Even with ongoing fights with the pope and a few stubborn cities in Lombardy, Frederick stayed in a strong position. From 1240, Frederick II made big plans to unite the Sicilian kingdom and Imperial Italy with a central government. He had already named his son Enzo of Sardinia to lead all of Italy the year before, and now he named several imperial leaders to govern the areas. These leaders acted like military commanders and governors, chosen for their loyalty and skill, similar to leaders under Napoleon.

Frederick also put loyal Sicilian nobles to lead the cities in northern and central Italy. The emperor and his trained officials took over the government across all of Italy. A new High Court of Justice was created to oversee both the Kingdom of Sicily and Imperial Italy. A central office was set up at Melfi to handle money. Frederick also tried to improve education, trade, and medicine, like he did earlier in Sicily. For the rest of his rule, he worked to build and improve this new united system, with himself leading the way.

Even with these big efforts, Frederick’s united Italian state did not last. When he died in December 1250, although he had faced losses at the Battle of Parma and the Battle of Fossalta in the past two years, imperial power in Italy was still strong, and the emperor was gaining against his enemies. But after the emperor’s death, his work fell apart. Without him, his plans for Italy stopped, and Italy did not become united until the 19th century. Even so, the leaders he appointed became models for later powerful rulers in Italy. Each, like Charles of Anjou, the Neapolitan kings Robert, Ladislaus, and Ferrante of Naples, or the Visconti in Milan, tried to be like Frederick, claiming some of his great power and status—some even kept the title of imperial leader. It was not until the times of Emperor Charles V and, later, Napoleon that one ruler again controlled all of Italy.

Decline

The Holy Roman Emperors did not fight as much in Italy after this, but the kingdom was still important. In 1310, the Luxembourg King Henry VII of Germany led 5,000 men into Italy, went to Milan, and had himself crowned king of Italy (using a copy of the Iron Crown). This caused a rebellion led by Lord Guido della Torre. Henry put Matteo I Visconti back in power and went to Rome, where he was crowned emperor by three cardinals instead of the pope in 1312. His plans to restore imperial rule in northern Italy and expand the empire by attacking the Kingdom of Naples ended when he died suddenly the next year.

Later emperors in the 14th and 15th centuries were caught between the fighting Habsburg and Wittelsbach families. In fighting with Frederick the Fair, King Louis IV was crowned emperor in Rome by Antipope Nicholas V in 1328. His successor Charles IV also went to Rome to be crowned in 1355. The emperors never forgot their right to rule as kings of Italy. The Italians also remembered the emperors’ claims to rule everything: writers like Dante Alighieri (died 1321) and Marsilius of Padua (c. 1275 – c. 1342) supported the idea of one emperor ruling all and the claims of Emperors Henry VII and Louis IV.

The emperors’ claims to rule Italy were shown mainly by giving titles to strong leaders who had taken control of the old republican cities. Most importantly, the emperors supported the Visconti of Milan, and King Wenceslaus made Gian Galeazzo Visconti the duke of Milan in 1395. Other families who got titles from the emperors were the Gonzaga of Mantua, and the Este of Modena and Reggio.

Imperial fiefs in the modern period

By the early modern period, the Kingdom of Italy still existed officially but had split into independent and self-governing Italian city-states. Its land had shrunk – the Republic of Venice had taken most of northeastern and central Italy outside the Empire’s control, along with the Papal States.

In many ways, the Empire’s claims to rule over Italian lands had become less important: the real power to govern, collect taxes, and spend money was with the Italian princes and dukes. But the Empire’s feudal system in Italy still had some effect on the history of the area. It gave emperors Sigismund and Maximilian I a reason to get involved in Italy. Also, the Empire’s rights were used during the Italian Wars by Charles V (who was also king of Spain, Naples and archduke of Austria). He pushed the French out of Milan after the Battle of Pavia, and stopped an attempt by Italian princes, with French help, to gain independence in the League of Cognac. His soldiers sacked Rome and, after making peace with the Medici Pope Clement VII, took over Florence and put the Medici back in power as dukes of Florence after a siege. Charles V was crowned king of Italy with the Iron Crown in the old way and, after the Sforza family in Milan ended in 1535, he claimed Milan directly as an Imperial fief. After Charles split his lands between a Spanish and Austrian branch, Milan became part of the Spanish Empire of his son Philip II of Spain, while the title of Holy Roman Emperor and the rights to Imperial Italy went to Charles’s brother, Ferdinand I. Milan stayed part of the Holy Roman Empire so that, as duke of Milan, Philip II was, officially, a vassal of Emperor Ferdinand. But after Charles V, no Austrian Habsburg emperor was crowned king of Italy, and the title was not used for two and a half centuries.

In 1559, the Kingdom of France gave up its claims to Savoy and Milan and left Tuscany and Genoese Corsica by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. The major imperial lands in Italy were known as "Feuda latina", while the smaller ones were "Feuda Minora". Italian princes did not send representatives to the Imperial Diet, but their armies joined the Imperial Army, like in the Hungarian campaign of Maximilian II against Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566.

Even though they were not part of the Reichstag, the Italian states were still considered under the emperor, like other states in the empire, and had to follow some rules and laws. A special Italian part of the Aulic Council (one of the two highest courts of the Empire) was created in 1559. It dealt with 1,500 cases from Imperial Italy between 1559 and 1806 (out of 140,000 total), with most of those cases happening later. Italian states helped a lot in all the Empire’s wars during this time, either under their own princes or as part of the Habsburg lands (like the Imperial Free City of Trieste, the County of Gorizia and Gradisca, the Duchy of Milan, and later the Grand Duchy of Tuscany). Unlike most German states, the Italian states’ help went straight to the Imperial army and treasury, not through the Reichstag or other groups. The Italian states were mostly independent, but not having a voice in the Reichstag let the emperor act more freely with them than with the German states, like when he added the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (officially an imperial land) to his family’s lands after the Medici family ended in 1737. Besides the Prince-Bishopric of Trent, Piedmont-Savoy was the only independent Italian state in the Reichstag and also the only one in the circle system (in the Upper Rhenish Circle; the Habsburg lands of Trieste and Gorizia-Gradisca were in the Austrian Circle, as was Trent). Even though it opposed the Habsburg family, it still used its imperial rights to control smaller areas around it. In 1713, the dukes of Savoy also became kings by controlling lands outside the Empire (first getting the Kingdom of Sicily in 1713, then swapping it in 1720 for the Kingdom of Sardinia).

Imperial power was used by the Austrian Habsburgs to get involved in Italy during the War of Mantuan Succession part of the Thirty Years' War and to take over empty Italian imperial lands during the European Wars of Succession in the 1700s: after the Spanish Habsburgs ended in 1700, the emperor said Milan was an empty Imperial land and added it to his Austrian lands in 1707 (confirmed by the Treaty of Rastatt after the War of the Spanish Succession); the Gonzaga of Mantua were removed by the Imperial Diet in 1708 on charges of felony against the Holy Roman Emperor; after the Florentine House of Medici ended in 1737, Francis of Lorraine was made Grand Duke of Tuscany by Imperial command; a similar use of Imperial rights let the Habsburgs control the Duchy of Parma between 1735 and 1748, although this led to a fight with the Papacy, which said it was a Papal fief.^{[citation needed]}

Emperor Leopold I more strongly used his rights over the imperial lands in Italy from the 1660s as Spanish power weakened and the French got more involved. In 1687, a new leader for Italy was appointed, a job that had been empty for over a hundred years (its powers had been used irregularly by the Aulic Council). In 1690, Prince Eugene of Savoy tried to collect an imperial tax from Italy to pay for wars, the first time this had been done. Then, in 1696, Leopold ordered all his Italian vassals to promise their loyalty again within a year or lose their lands. This upset the pope, whose own vassals found old papers claiming they were vassals of the Emperor. Smaller states in Italy saw the Emperor as a protector against bigger areas like Savoy and the pope. Imperial power grew through the 1700s, with the duchies of Milan and Mantua going to the Habsburg family as empty imperial lands during the War of the Spanish Succession, the end of the War of the Quadruple Alliance confirming the status of Tuscany, Modena-Reggio, and Parma-Piacenza as imperial lands, and the Habsburgs continuing to rule the Italian parts of their hereditary lands (about the modern areas of Trentino-Alto Adige and the Austrian Littoral). Piedmont-Savoy, however, mostly refused Habsburg control even though the duke was given the title of "Royal Highness" by the Emperor in 1693, but it still recognized the Empire as a real institution and officially took part in the diet.

Dissolution

The status of Imperial Italy was mostly stable until 1789. There was even a serious attempt by the Savoy leaders (supported by Prussia) to make Savoy an electorate in 1788, which would have made it only the second non-German state to become one (after Bohemia, which was, after the crushing of Bohemian estates in 1620, mostly ruled by German-speaking nobles). But this came to nothing because the French Revolution of 1789 quickly ended the old order.

During the French Revolutionary Wars, the Austrians were driven from Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte, who set up republics across northern Italy, and by the Treaty of Campo Formio of 1797, Emperor Francis II gave up any claims to the lands of the Kingdom of Italy. The imperial reorganization of 1799–1803 left no place for Imperial claims to Italy – even the Archbishop of Cologne was removed, secularized along with the other church leaders. Napoleon’s win in the War of the Second Coalition confirmed this in the Treaty of Lunéville. In 1805, while the Holy Roman Empire still existed, Napoleon, now Emperor of the French as Napoleon I, took the crown of the new Kingdom of Italy for himself, putting the Iron Crown on his head in Milan on 26 May 1805. He also took most of the old Imperial Italy (including Piedmont-Savoy, Genoa and Tuscany) and made it part of France. The Empire itself was abolished the next year on 6 August 1806. The Congress of Vienna after Napoleon’s defeat did not bring back the Holy Roman Empire or the Kingdom of Italy, and the restored Italian kingdoms and duchies were either fully independent or became part of the new Austrian Empire (which also annexed the old Venetian Republic).

Demographics