Duchy of Spoleto - Imperial Fief

Imperial Fief

In 776, two years after the fall of Pavia, Spoleto fell likewise to Charlemagne and his Carolingian Empire, and he assumed the title King of the Lombards. Though he granted the territory to the Church, he retained the right to name its dukes, an important concession that can be compared to the as-yet uncontested Imperial right to invest territorial bishops, and perhaps at times a matter of contention between Emperor and Papacy, for Pope Adrian I had recently named a duke of Spoleto.

In 842 the former duchy was resurrected by the Franks to be held as a Frankish border territory by a dependent margrave. Among the more outstanding of the Frankish dukes, Guido I divided the duchy between his two sons Lambert and Guido II, who received as his share the lordship of Camerino, which was made a duchy. Lambert was a doughty fighter against Saracen raiders, but who equally massacred Byzantines (as in 867), and was deposed in 871, restored in 876, and finally excommunicated by Pope John VIII. In 883 Guido II reunited the dukedom, henceforth as the Duchy of Spoleto and Camerino. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, Guido had himself crowned Roman Emperor and King of Italy by Pope Stephen V (891). The following year Pope Formosus crowned Guido's son Lambert II as duke, king and emperor.

The dukes of Spoleto continued to intervene in the violent politics of Rome. Alberico I, Duke of Camerino (897), and afterwards of Spoleto, married the notorious Roman noblewoman Marozia, mistress of Pope Sergius III (904–911), and was killed by the Romans in 924. His son Alberico II overthrew the senatrix in 932 though her son, his half-brother, was Pope John XII. About 949 Berengar II, the Frankish King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor, retook Spoleto from its final margrave.

At this time the Emperor Otto I detached from the Duchy of Spoleto the lands called Sabina Langobardica and presented them to the Holy See. Now the control of Spoleto became increasingly a gift of the Emperors. In 967, Otto II briefly united the Duchy of Spoleto with that of Capua and Benevento, which was then ruled by Pandolfo Testa di Ferro; but after Pandolfo's death he detached Spoleto, which in 989 he granted to Hugo, Margrave of Tuscany. The duchy was united with Tuscany a second time in 1057 and it remained so until the death of the Countess Matilda.

During the Investiture controversy with the papacy the Emperor Henry IV named other dukes of Spoleto. After this the dukedom was in the family of the Werner (Guarnieri) of Urslingen, Margraves of Ancona. The city was destroyed by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1155, but was soon rebuilt. In 1158 the emperor gave the duchy to Guelf VI of Este; Henry VI invested Conrad of Urslingen with it, upon whose death in 1198 it was ceded to Pope Innocent III, but then was occupied by Otto of Brunswick in 1209, who made Dipold von Vohburg duke.