Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)

Kingdom of Italy Regnum Italiae (Latin) Regno d'Italia (Italian) Königreich Italien (German)
962–1801
Top: Banner (c. 1430–1806) Bottom: Ghibelline flag (12th–13th centuries) Coat of arms Lombards Crown
The Kingdom of Italy within the Holy Roman Empire in 962
Capital	Pavia (at least to 1024)
Government	Non-sovereign elective monarchy
King
• 962–973	Otto I
• 1519–1556	Charles V1
• 1792–1801	Francis II
Arch-Chancellor2
• 962–965 (first)	Bruno of Lotharingia
• 1784–1801 (last)	Maximilian Francis of Austria
Historical era	Middle Ages Early modern period
• Treaty of Prüm (Kingdom partitioned from Middle Francia)	19 September 855
• Investiture Controversy	1075–1122
• Diet of Roncaglia	1158
• Guelph–Ghibelline wars	1216–1392[1]
• Italian Wars	1494–1559
• Treaty of Lunéville	9 February 1801
ISO 3166 code	IT
Preceded by Succeeded by Middle Francia Italian Republic Kingdom of Etruria
Today part of	Italy
Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned king of Italy, with subsequent emperors removing it from their titles;[2] however, they continued to claim the crown of Italy until 1801. The archbishop of Cologne was the Arch-Chancellor of Italy, one of the highest dignitaries of the empire.[3]

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The Kingdom of Italy (Latin: Regnum Italiae or Regnum Italicum; Italian: Regno d'Italia; German: Königreich Italien), also called Imperial Italy (Italian: Italia Imperiale; German: Reichsitalien), was one of the constituent kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, along with the kingdoms of Germany, Bohemia, and Burgundy. It originally comprised large parts of northern and central Italy. Its original capital was Pavia until the 11th century.

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the brief rule of Odoacer, Italy was ruled by the Ostrogoths and later the Lombards. In 773, Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, crossed the Alps and invaded the Lombard kingdom, which encompassed all of Italy except the Duchy of Rome, the Republic of Venice and the Byzantine possessions in the south. In June 774, the kingdom collapsed and the Franks became masters of northern Italy. The southern areas remained under Lombard control, as the Duchy of Benevento was changed into the independent Principality of Benevento. Charlemagne called himself king of the Lombards and in 800 was crowned emperor in Rome. Members of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule Italy until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887, after which they once briefly regained the throne in 894–896.

In 951, King Otto I of Germany, already married to Queen Adelaide of Italy, invaded the kingdom and proclaimed himself king.^[4] Otto defeated the previous king and conquered Pavia in 961, and then continued on to Rome, where he had himself crowned emperor in 962. The union of the crowns of Italy and Germany with that of the so-called "Empire of the Romans" proved stable. Burgundy was added to this union in 1032, and by the twelfth century the term "Holy Roman Empire" had come into use to describe it. The emperor was usually also king of Italy and Germany, although emperors sometimes appointed their heirs to rule in Italy and occasionally the Italian bishops and noblemen elected a king of their own in opposition to that of Germany. The absenteeism of the Italian monarch led to the rapid disappearance of a central government in the High Middle Ages, but the idea that Italy was a kingdom within the Empire remained and emperors frequently sought to impose their will on the evolving Italian city-states. The resulting wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the anti-imperialist and imperialist factions, respectively, were characteristic of Italian politics in the 12th–14th centuries. The Lombard League was the most famous example of this situation; though not a declared separatist movement, it openly challenged the emperor's claim to power.

The century between the Humiliation of Canossa (1077) and the Treaty of Venice of 1177 resulted in the formation of city states independent of the Germanic emperor. A series of wars in Lombardy from 1423 to 1454 reduced the number of competing states. The next forty years were relatively peaceful in Italy, but in 1494 the peninsula was invaded by France.

After the Imperial Reform of 1495–1512, the Italian kingdom corresponded to the unencircled territories south of the Alps. Juridically the emperor maintained an interest in them as nominal king and overlord, but the "government" of the kingdom consisted of little more than the plenipotentiaries the emperor appointed to represent him and those governors he appointed to rule his own Italian states. The 250 to 300 lesser feudal lords of the Reichsitalien nonetheless frequently appealed to the imperial courts and jurisdiction to settle conflicts with the prominent princes.^[5]

The Habsburg rule in several parts of Italy continued in various forms but came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–1797, when a series of sister republics were set up with local support by Napoleon and then united into the Italian Republic under his presidency. In 1805 the Italian Republic became the Kingdom of Italy with Napoleon as the new king. This state was disbanded with the collapse of Napoleonic rule in 1814.