Pepin I of Aquitaine

Pepin I (797 – December 13, 838) was King of Aquitaine. He was the second son of Emperor Louis the Pious and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye.

When his father assigned to each of his sons a kingdom (within the Empire) in August 817, he received Aquitaine, which had been Louis's own subkingdom during "his" father Charlemagne's reign. Ermoldus Nigellus was his court poet and accompanied him on a campaign into Brittany in 824.

Pepin rebelled in 830 at the insistence of his brother Lothair's advisor Wala. He took an army of Gascons with him and marched all the way to Paris, with the support of the Neustrians. His father marched back from a campaign in Brittany all the way to Compiègne, where Pepin surrounded and captured him. The rebellion, however, broke up.

In 832, Pepin rebelled again and his brother Louis the German soon followed. Louis the Pious was in Aquitaine to subdue any revolt, but the younger Louis' Bavarian insurrection drew him off. Pepin took Limoges and other Imperial territories. The next year, Lothair joined the rebellion and, with the assistance of Ebbo, archbishop of Rheims, they deposed their father in 833. Lothair's later behaviour alienated him and he was on his father's side when Louis the Pious was reinstated on 1 March 834. Pepin was restored to his former status.

Pepin died scarcely four years later and was buried in Sainte-Croix in Poitiers. Louis the Pious named Charles, his son by a second wife, king. The Aquitainians, however, elected Pepin's son, Pepin II.

In 822, he married Ingeltrude, [Also called Engelberga, Rigarde, Hringard, or Ringart.] daughter of Theodobert, count of Madrie, with whom he had two sons: Pepin (823-after 864), his successor in Aquitaine,and Charles (b.825-830, d.4 June 863), who became archbishop of Mainz and briefly claimed the kingdom. Both died childless.

Notes

ources

*Collins, Roger. "Pippin I and the Kingdom of Aquitaine." "Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious", edd. P. Godman and Roger Collins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Reprinted in "Law, Culture and Regionalism in Early Medieval Spain". Variorum, 1992. ISBN 0 86078 308 1.