Who Married Whom? Carloman and Gerberga, Charlemagne and Hildegard, and the Supposed Marriage to a Lombard Princess
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/1593-2214/6276Keywords:
Middle Ages, 8th Century, Carloman, Charlemagne, Desiderius, Gerberga, Hildegard, Pippin, pope Stephen III, MarriageAbstract
Recent studies on Charlemagne and Desiderius have prompted reflections on the controversial issue, which has been long debated by historians, of the supposed marriage between Charlemagne and one of the daughters of the last King of the Lombards. The aim of this article is to overturn the conclusions that the most historians have drawn about this marriage, and to demonstrate that it did not take place between the Lombard princess and Charles, but between the former and Charles’ brother Carloman. Einhard’s Vita Karoli is the first source to claim that the Lombard princess married Emperor Charles. After a critical analysis of this biography, the article assesses all those sources that are chronologically closer to the event, and which until now have either received little attention or not been explored at all. A picture emerges that completely contradicts the traditional understanding of the Lombard-Frankish marriage. This new hypothesis of a marriage between the Lombard princess Gerberga and Carloman is supported by several clues that provide a far more nuanced and less linear interpretation of the political relationship among the Franks, the papacy and the Lombard Kingdom between 768 and 772.
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