Duchy of Bavaria

Duchy of Bavaria Herzogtum Baiern
Stem duchy of the German kingdom State of the Holy Roman Empire (from 962)
← 907–1623 →
Coat of arms
Bavarian lands after 1392 partition
Capital	Regensburg (until 1255) Munich (from 1505)
Government	Principality
Historical era	Medieval Europe
- Margrave Arnulf    assumed ducal title	907
- Split off    Duchy of Carinthia	976
- Split off    Duchy of Austria	1156
- To House of    Wittelsbach	1180
- Raised to Electorate	1623

The Duchy of Bavaria was the only one of the stem duchies from the earliest days of East Francia and the Kingdom of Germany to preserve both its name and most of its territorial extent.

Although in the line of Holy Roman Emperors only Louis IV (1328–1347) was associated with it, Bavaria was the source of much opposition, especially in the form of the Welf dukes between 1070 and 1180. In the final showdown of Duke Henry the Lion with the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Frederick was triumphant and deprived Henry of his fiefs. Bavaria then passed on to the House of Wittelsbach, who held it henceforth, actually all the way until 1918.

Older stem duchy

See also: History of Bavaria

The origins of the elder's Bavarian duchy can be traced back to the year 551/555. In his Getica the chronicler Jordanes says: "That area of the Swabians has the Bavarii in the east, the Franks in the west ..." Until the end of the first duchy all rulers descended from the family of the Agilolfings. The Bavarians then colonised the area from the March of the Nordgau along the Naab river (the later Upper Palatinate) up to the Enns in the east and southward across the Brenner Pass to the Upper Adige in present-day South Tyrol. First documented duke was Garibald, a scion of the Frankish Agilolfings, who ruled from 555 onwards as largely independent Merovingian vassals.

Bavaria about 788

On the eastern border changes occurred by the departure of the East Germanic Lombard tribes from the Pannonian basin to northern Italy (568) and the succession of the Avars, as well as by the settlement of West Slavic Czechs on the adjacent territory beyond the Bohemian Forest at about the same time. Around 743 the Bavarian duke Odilo vassalised the Slavic princes of Carantania (roughly corresponding with the later March of Carinthia), who had asked him for protection against the invading Avars. The residence of the largely independent Agilolfing dukes then was Regensburg, former Roman Castra Regina, on the Danube river.

During Christianization, Bishop Corbinian before 724 laid the foundations for the later Diocese of Freising; Saint Kilian in the 7th century had been a missionary of the Franconian territory in the north, then ruled by the Dukes of Thuringia, where Boniface founded the Diocese of Würzburg in 742. In the adjacent Alamannic (Swabian) lands west of the Lech river, Augsburg was a bishop's seat. When Boniface established the Diocese of Passau in 739, he could already take up local Early Christian traditions. In the south Saint Rupert in 696 had founded the Diocese of Salzburg, probably after he had baptized Duke Theodo of Bavaria at his court in Regensburg, becoming the "Apostle of Bavaria". In 798 Pope Leo III created the Bavarian ecclesiastical province with Salzburg as metropolitan seat and Regensburg, Passau, Freising and Säben (later Brixen) as suffragan dioceses.

With the rise of the Frankish Empire under the Carolingian dynasty, the autonomy of the Bavarian dukes under the Merovingians finally was terminated: In 716 the Carolingians had incorporated the Franconian lands in the north formerly held by the Dukes of Thuringia, whereby the Bishops of Würzburg gained a dominant position. In the west, the Carolingian mayor of the palace Carloman had suppressed the last Alamannic revolt at the 746 Blood court at Cannstatt. The last tribal stem duchy to be incorporated was Bavaria in 788, after Duke Tassilo III had tried in vain to maintain his independence through an alliance with the Lombards. The conquest of the Lombard Kingdom by Charlemagne entailed the fall of Tassilo, who was deposed in 788. Bavaria was then administrated by Frankish prefects.

Younger stem duchy

Charlemagne's son and successor Emperor Louis the Pious by his 817 Ordinatio Imperii tried to maintain the unitiy of the Carolingian Empire: while the Imperial authority upon his death should pass to his eldest son Lothair I, the younger brothers were to receive subordinate realms. From 825 Louis the German styled himself "King of Bavaria" in the territory that was to become the centre of his power. When the brothers finally divided the Empire by the 843 Treaty of Verdun, Bavaria became part of East Francia under King Louis the German, who upon his death bequested the Bavarian royal title to his eldest son Carloman in 876. Carloman's natural son Arnulf of Carinthia, raised in the former Carantanian lands, secured the possession of the March of Carinthia upon his father's death in 880, he became King of East Francia in 887. Carinthia and Bavaria were the bases of his power, with Regensburg as the seat of his government.

Bavaria in 976, with the marches of Austria, Carinthia and Verona

Luitpoldings and Ottonians

The reign of the Carolingians in East Francia came to an end, when Arnulf's son King Louis the Child died without heirs in 911. The discontinuation of the central authority led to a new strengthening of the German stem duchies. At the same time, East Francia was exposed to the rising threat from Hungarian invasions, especially in the Bavarian March of Austria (marchia orientalis) beyond the Enns river. In 907 the army of Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Pressburg. Luitpold himself was killed in action and his son Arnulf the Bad assumed the ducal title, becoming the first Duke of Bavaria from the Luitpolding dynasty. However, the Austrian march remained occupied by the Hungarians and the Pannonian lands were irrecoverably lost.

Nevertheless the self-confidence of the Bavarian dukes was an ongoing matter of dispute in the newly established Kingdom of Germany: Duke Arnulf's son Eberhard was deposed by King Otto I of Germany in 938, he was succeeded by his younger brother Berthold. In 948 King Otto finally disempowered the Luitpoldings and implemented his younger brother Henry I as Bavarian duke. Late Duke Berthold's minor heir, Henry III was fobbed off with the office of a Bavarian Count palatine. The last attempt of the Luitpoldings to regain power by joining the rebellion of King Otto's son Duke Liudolf of Swabia was crushed in 954.

In 952 Duke Henry I also received the Italian March of Verona Otto I had seized from King Berengar II of Italy. He still had to deal with the Hungarian threat, which was not eliminated until King Otto's victory at the 955 Battle of Lechfeld. The Magyars retreated behind the Leitha and Morava rivers, serving a second wave of the German Ostsiedlung into the areas of today's Lower Austria, Istria and Carniola. Although ruled by the Ottonian descendants of Henry I, a cadet branch of the Saxon royal dynasty, the conflict of the Bavarian dukes with the German (from 962: Imperial court continued: in 976 Emperor Otto II deposed his rebellious cousin Duke Henry II of Bavaria and established the Duchy of Carinthia on former Bavarian territory, granted to the former Luitpolding Count palatine Henry III, who also became Margrave of Verona. Though Henry II reconciled with Emperor Otto's widow Theophanu in 985 and regained his duchy, the power of the Bavarian dukes was diminuished, furthermore by the rise of the Franconian House of Babenberg, ruling as Margraves of Austria (Ostarrichi), who became increasingly independent.

House of Welf

The last Ottonian duke, Henry II's son Henry III, was elected King of the Romans in 1002; at times the duchy was ruled by the German kings in personal union, by implemented dependent dukes or even the emperor's sons, a tradtition maintained by Henry's Salian successors. This period saw the rise of many aristocratic families, such as the Counts of Andechs or the House of Wittelsbach. In 1061 the dowager empress Agnes of Poitou enfeoffed the Saxon count Otto of Nordheim, nevertheless her son King Henry IV again seized the duchy on fallacious grounds, which ultimately led to the Saxon Rebellion of 1073. Henry entrusted Bavaria to Welf, a scion of the Veronese margravial House of Este and progenitor of the Welf dynasty, which intermittently ruled the duchy for the next 110 years.

Only with the establishment of Guelph from 1070 as dukes by Henry IV, there was a re-emergence of the Bavarian dukes. This period is characterized by the Investiture Controversy between Emperor and Pope coined. It could strengthen the Guelph ruling by siding with the pope's position.

A conflict with the Swabian dynasty of Hohenstaufen in the election of the king led the discretion of the Hohenstaufen Conrad III. to the king but to the fact that Bavaria was given to the Babenbergs 1139th The Swabian area was with the reign of the Staufer king largely country. Increasingly, Franken also became the center Staufer power. Franken went into the dominant position of the Bishop of Würzburg by the founding of the diocese of Bamberg, and new secular rulers lost 1007th The Hohenstaufen Frederick I Barbarossa attempted reconciliation with the Guelph and in 1156 gave us the Marcha Orientalis scaled to Bavaria the Guelph Henry the Lion back.

The detached Marcha Orientalis was the Babenbergs as the new Duchy of special privileges to the nucleus of the later Austria ( Ostarrichi ). Henry the Lion founded numerous cities, including 1158 Munich . Through its strong position as ruler of the two duchies of Saxony and Bavaria, but he came into conflict with Frederick I Barbarossa. With the banishment of Henry the Lion and the separation of Styria as a private Duchy in 1180 ended the "younger Baier's tribal duchy.

Imperial State

From 1180 to 1918, the Wittelsbacher were the rulers of Bavaria, as Duke, later as electors and Kings. When 1180 count Palatine Otto VI. of Wittelsbach as Otto I of Duke of Bavaria, the Treasury of Wittelsbach was rather low. In the following years was updated but significantly by purchase, marriage, inheritance. Newly acquired land was no longer given as a fief, but managed by their own servants. Also, powerful counts families, such as that of the counts of Andechs and bow died out during this period. his son Ludwig I of Wittelsbach with the County of Palatine of the Rhine was enfeoffed in 1214.

Since there was no preference of the succession of the firstborn in the Wittelsbach as many Governments in this time, there were 1255 the Division into Upper Bavaria with Palatinate and the Nordgau (headquartered in Munich) and lower Bavaria (with the seats in Landshut, Burghausen). It is still today the distinction between upper and lower Bavaria (cf. Regierungsbezirke) back.

Despite renewed division after a short time of the reunification of Bavaria gained new heights of power with Louis IV. the Bayern, as this was the Emperor in 1328 as the first Wittelsbach. The newly gained his areas of Brandenburg (1323), Tyrol (1342), the Dutch provinces Holland, Zeeland and Friesland and the Hainaut (1345) were again lost however under his successors. Tyrol fell already 1369 the Treaty from Schärding to the Habsburgs, in Brandenburg, the Luxemburgish rider followed 1373, and the Dutch counties fell to Burgundy in 1436. In the Treaty of Pavia from 1329, Emperor Louis divided on ownership in a Palatine place, with the Rhine Palatinate and the later so-called Upper Palatinate and in a line onwards. Thus, also the electoral dignity for the line onwards to the Palatinate was lost. Until 1777, Bavaria and the Palatinate should be reunited. With the recognition of the limits of domination by the Bavarian Duke in the year 1275, replace Salzburg of Bavaria went into their final phase. As the Salzburg Archbishop had issued own country regulations then in 1328, Salzburg had become a largely independent State within the "Holy of Roman Empire".

In the 14th and 15th century, upper and lower Bavaria was itself repeatedly divided. Four Duchies existed after the Division of 1392: Lower Bavaria Straubing, lower Bavaria-Landshut, Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Bavaria-Munich, whose Herzöge war led not rarely against each other. Duke Albrecht IV. of Bavaria-Munich United again 1506 succession of 1504/05 Altbayern after the devastating Landshut. By an act of primogeniture, he finished the divisions. However, the originally Bavarian offices Kufstein, Kitzbühel and Rattenberg in Tirol were lost in 1504.