Tassilo II, Duke of Bavaria

TASSILO II, Duke of Bavaria. - Son of Chiltrude, sister of Pepin the Short, he succeeded his father Odilo thanks to the intervention of his uncle (748); d. ca. 13 Dec. 798.

Although he had sworn fidelity at Compiègne (757), T. nevertheless did not abandon the thought of making himself independent. During the Aquitanian campaign, he suddenly left the army of the Franks (763) to return to Bavaria. His reconciliation with Pepin took place in 765 through the mediation of the Pope; but it was not sincere. Charlemagne, distrusting this vassal of his, wished him to swear an oath to him at Worms (781) and to hand over twelve hostages. T. revealed himself in 786, when his wife Liutberga, daughter of Desiderius, the last King of the Lombards, urged him to betray the Emperor and to avenge the defeat of Arechis, duke of Benevento, her brother. T. came to an agreement with the Avars and urged them to fight the Franks; but Charlemagne summoned him to appear at Worms to answer for the crime of lese-majesty (787). The Duke refused to obey, but the invasion of his states by the Frankish army forced him to submit, and at Ingelheim (788) he was condemned to death as a traitor. The sentence, however, was commuted to relegation in a monastery, perhaps that of St. Goar, near Coblenz. In 794 he solemnly renounced all his rights over the Duchy of Bavaria, both in his own name and in the name of his sons, who were moreover already confined in a monastery (cf. Capitularia regum Francorum, in MGH. ed. A. Boretius-V. Krause, I. Hannover 1883, p. 74, n. 28, art. 3). It is uncertain whether, after this, T. retired to the abbey of Jumièges, in Normandy. The chalice offered by T. to Kremsmünster is reproduced at v. CALICE.

Guglielmo Mollat