Kingdom of Italy (medieval)

Kingdom Of Italy (medieval)

The Kingdom of Italy (Latin: Regnum Italiæ or Regnum Italicum) was a political entity that came under the control of the Carolingian dynasty of Francia, after the defeat of the Lombards in 774. It later reestablished a somewhat independent identity after the breakup of the Frankish Empire in 888. It was finally incorporated as a part of the Holy Roman Empire in 961.

The Lombard kingdom proved to be more stable than its Ostrogothic predecessor, but in 774, on the pretext of defending the Papacy, it was conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne. They kept the Italo-Lombard realm separate from their own, but the kingdom shared in all the partitions, divisions, civil wars, and succession crises of the Carolingian Empire of which it became a part until, by the end of the ninth century, the Italian kingdom was an independent, but highly decentralised, state.

In 951 the Italian throne was claimed by King Otto I of Germany. The personal union of the two thrones and Otto's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor at St. Peter's Basilica in 962 formed a basis for the Holy Roman Empire. Central government in Italy disappeared rapidly in the High Middle Ages, but the idea of the kingdom carried on. By the Renaissance it was little more than a legal fiction but it may have lasted in titulo as late as the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, by which time Napoleon Bonaparte had established his own Regno d'Italia with no regard for the medieval ghost.