13 - The kingdom of Burgundy, the lands of the house of Savoy and adjacent territories

Summary

THE ‘middle kingdom’ created by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 for Charlemagne’s eldest grandson, Lothar, underwent many transformations in the course of the centuries, and by the thirteenth century it was known by many names, none of which made entirely clear what territories were included. Geographically, the region in question is bounded on the west by the valleys of the Rhone and Saône rivers, on the north and north-east by Lorraine and Switzerland, on the east by Lombardy and the Maritime Alps, and on the south by the Mediterranean sea. This part of the medieval Holy Roman Empire had traditionally been known as the ‘kingdom of Burgundy’, but by the thirteenth century it had become increasingly common to apply the term ‘Burgundy’ only to the northern part, and to refer to the regions from the Viennois southward as the ‘kingdom of Arles’, the ‘kingdom of Arles and Vienne’, or even as the ‘kingdom of Provence’. In 1193, for example, Emperor Henry VI sought to soften the impact of the ransom imposed upon Richard Lionheart by proposing to crown him ‘king of Provence’ after his release from prison. According to Roger of Howden, this kingdom was to consist of ‘Provence, Vienne and the Viennois, Marseilles, Narbonne, Arles and Lyons to the Alps, and whatever the emperor possessed in Burgundy… [a kingdom containing] five archbishoprics and thirty-three bishoprics’. Apart from the inclusion of Narbonne, this description is a reasonably accurate one of what in the thirteenth century was usually called the ‘kingdom of Arles’, although, as Howden also quite correctly noted, ‘the emperor was never able to establish his dominion over the said territories and subjects, nor would they, upon the nomination of the emperor, accept any superior lord’.