Name Ermengard Italy Parents Louis II of Italy | Children Louis the Blind | |
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Cousins Bertha, daughter of Lothair II Similar People | ||
Ermengard of Italy, also Ermengarda, Ermengarde, or Irmingard (852/855 – 897) was a queen and regent of Provence. She was the only surviving daughter of Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor.
Life
Born in around 852 or 855, in the reign of her grandfather Lothair I, she was the daughter of Louis II , was the eldest son and co-emperor of Lothair I. In 855, when she was 3, Emperor Lothair I died at the age of 60, and her father became Holy Roman Emperor. One could assume she was privileged as daughter of the emperor, who would rule for 20 years, Shing in 875 when Ermengard was a young woman at 23.
In 876, aged 24, which was also the year her great uncle Louis the German died at the advanced age of 72, she married Boso, a Frankish nobleman of similar age coming from the Bosonid family who was related to the Carolingian dynasty and who rose to become King of Lower Burgundy and Provence in 879.
In May 878, she and her husband sheltered Pope John VIII, who was taking refuge from the Saracens, in Arles. After her husband's coup d'état in October 879, she helped defend his cities from her Carolingian relatives. In 880, she successfully defended Vienne itself, the capital, from the combined forces of Charles the Fat and the co-ruling kings of France, Louis III and Carloman. In August 881, the newly crowned Emperor Charles the Fat pillaged and burned Vienne, forcing Ermengard and her children to take refuge in Autun with her brother-in-law Richard, Duke of Burgundy. Meanwhile, Boso fled into Provence.
On Boso's death in January 887, the Provençal barons elected Ermengard to act as his regent, with the support of Richard. In May, Ermengard travelled with her son Louis to the court of Charles the Fat, and received his recognition of the young Louis as king. Charles adopted Louis as his son and put both mother and son under his protection. In May 889, she travelled to Charles' successor, Arnulf, to make submission anew.
Through her marriage to Boso, it is thought that Ermengard had two daughters and a son These were:
Ermengard died on 2 June 896 in Vienne, then part of the Frankish Empire, and was buried in the town's first Cathedral of Saint-Maurice. Her husband had been buried in the same cathedral in 887.