Louis the Blind

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Louis the Blind bigraphy, stories - Monarchs

Louis the Blind : biography

– 928

Louis the Blind (c. 880 – 28 June 928) was the king of Provence from January 11, 887, King of Italy from October 12, 900, and briefly Holy Roman Emperor, as Louis III, between 901 and 905. He was the son of Boso, the usurper king of Provence, and Ermengard, a daughter of the Emperor Louis II.Comyn, pg. 79 Through his father, he was a Bosonid, but through his mother, a Carolingian. He was blinded after a failed invasion of Italy in 905.

Early Reign

As a boy of seven, Louis succeeded to the throne of his father Boso, the King of Provence upon Boso’s death on 11 January 887.Mann III, pg. 382 The kingdom Louis inherited was much smaller than his father’s, as it did not include Upper Burgundy (lost to Rudolph I of Burgundy), nor any of French Burgundy, absorbed by Richard the Justiciar, Duke of Burgundy. This meant that the kingdom of Provence was restricted to the environs of Vienne. The Provençal barons elected Ermengard to act as his regent, with the support of Louis’s uncle, Richard the Justiciar.

In May, Ermengard traveled with Louis to the court of her relative, the emperor Charles the Fat, and received his recognition of the young Louis as king.Mann III, pg. 383 Charles adopted Louis as his son and put both mother and son under his protection.Duckett, pg. 12 In May 889, she traveled to the court of Charles’ successor, Arnulf, to make a new submission, while at the same time seeking the blessing of Pope Stephen V. The short work, Visio Karoli Grossi, may have been written shortly after Charles’ death to support Louis’s claim. If so, Louis must have had the support of Fulk the Venerable, Archbishop of Reims. On the other hand, the Visio may have been written later, circa 901, to celebrate (and support) Louis’s imperial coronation.

In August 890, at the Diet of Valence, a council of bishops and feudatories of the realm, after hearing the recommendation of the pope, and receiving notification of Charles the Fat’s previous agreement to the proposition, proclaimed Louis as King of Arles, Provence, and Cisjurane Burgundy. In 894, Louis himself did homage to Arnulf.

In 896, Louis waged war on the Saracens.Canduci, pg. 222 Throughout his reign he fought with these Muslim warriors, who had established a base at Fraxinet in 889, and had been raiding the coast of Provence, alarming the local nobility.

Sources

  • Reuter, Timothy, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. III: c. 900-c. 1024, Cambridge University Press, 2000
  • Duckett, Eleanor (1968). Death and Life in the Tenth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Previté Orton, C. W. " The English Historical Review, Vol. 32, No. 127. (Jul., 1917), pp 335–347.
  • Comyn, Robert. History of the Western Empire, from its Restoration by Charlemagne to the Accession of Charles V, Vol. I. 1851
  • Mann, Horace, K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol III: The Popes During the Carolingian Empire, 858-891. 1925
  • Mann, Horace, K. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Vol IV: The Popes in the Days of Feudal Anarchy, 891-999. 1925

Marriages and heirs

In 899, Louis III was betrothed to Anna, the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise and his second wife, Zoe Zaoutzaina.Shepard, Jonathan, The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pg. 423 This occurred shortly before the fall of Taormina to the Arabs, and was part of extended diplomatic activities meant to strengthen Byzantine alliances with the western powers to preserve Byzantine territory in southern Italy.Shepard, Jonathan, The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pg. 541

The question of whether the betrothal was ever followed up by an actual marriage is still a matter of some controversy. Louis fathered a son called Charles-Constantine, who would become Count of Vienne. Charles’ mother is not named in any sources. There has been modern speculation, most notably by Christian Settipani on his work Nos Ancêtres de l’ Antiquité, that she was Anna, the daughter of Leo VI and Zoe Zaoutzaina, based both upon the documented betrothal, as well on the onomastic evidence, stating that Charles-Constantine’s name points to a Byzantine mother.