LUDOVICO II, king of Italy, ROMAN EMPEROR. — Son of the Emperor Lothair I, b. around 820, d. near Brescia on 12 August 875. In 844 his father sent him to Italy, assisted by his great-uncle Drogone, bishop of Metz, with the title of king of the Lombards: he was charged with reaffirming imperial authority, especially in Rome, in relation to the popes and the local aristocracy, and with providing for the defence of the peninsula against the persistent danger of Arab invasions. After asserting his authority at Pavia, he continued on to Rome: there he imposed upon Pope Stephen IV and the Roman people an oath of loyalty to the emperor; the Pope consecrated and crowned him king of Italy. On this occasion the prince of Salerno, Siconolfo, paid him homage. He then went to establish himself in the Italian capital, Pavia, but the worsening Arab danger forced him to return to France in order to arrange important military preparations.
The expedition organized in the following years succeeded in driving back the Saracens threatening Benevento; however, Bari and the Aranto remained firmly in the enemy’s hands. Pope Leo IV himself took part in an expedition in 849 to drive the Saracens from Ostia. L. managed to organize the two principalities of Salerno and Benevento so as to use them as bulwarks. Returning to Rome in the spring of 850, L., by his father’s arrangement, was crowned emperor by Leo IV, and in the following years governed Italy as his father’s associate, but in his own name. Assemblies of bishops and counts gave him the opportunity to examine the condition of the Kingdom and provide for the needs of the administration; his marriage to an Italian patrician, Ermengard, integrated him more fully into the life of the country. In accordance with Lothair’s instructions, he consistently took care to supervise the papal Curia, controlling the elections of Benedict III and Nicholas I. After his father’s death, in 855, he remained sole emperor, but he was unable to obtain from his brothers an equitable distribution of the domains or to impose his authority upon them. Only Lothair II ceded to him in 859 the bishoprics of Geneva, Lausanne, and Sion in order to receive his assistance in his matrimonial dispute with the Pope; when his other brother Charles died in 862, he took part in the partition of the domains, occupying Arles, Emburn, and Grenoble. In his brother Lothair’s matrimonial affair, L. first attempted to compel Pope Nicholas I, even by violence, to support Lothair’s demands for separation from his lawful consort, but he then reconciled himself with the Pope and contented himself with seeking a peaceful agreement. The Saracen threat compelled him to undertake a new major expedition in Apulia in 866, and he then sought to secure the alliance of the Byzantine Emperor, but negotiations for a matrimonial agreement failed. In 851 L. succeeded in wresting Bari from the Arabs, but an uprising in Benevento immobilized him; taken prisoner, he regained his freedom on condition that he never return. He had the Pope release him from the oath imposed upon him and in 872 was crowned once again in Rome.