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Guido I
Duca di Spoleto
(–860)

Biographical

Duca di Spoleto 842–60†
Conte di Spoleto 842–60†
Marchese di Camerino
Signore degli Abruzzi 842–60†

Guido, who arrived in Italy in 834 with his father after his county was confiscated, came in the retinue of Lothar, king of Italy, exiled by Emperor Louis the Pious. Following Louis’s death in 840, Guido returned briefly to France, reclaiming the monastery of Mettlach as family patrimony and likely participating in the Battle of Fontenay alongside Lothar against Louis the German and Charles the Bald, a defeat that curtailed Lothar’s influence in France and Germany. Guido was afterwards invested with the Duchy of Spoleto, a territory with a significant Frankish presence, displacing the Supponid dynasty and becoming the centre of his political and dynastic strategy, which included alliances with the dukes of Benevento and the Adalbertingi of Tuscany, cemented by his marriage to Itta of Benevento and the later marriage of their daughter Rothildis to Adalberto of Tuscany. Guido participated in the royal coronation of Louis II in Rome in 844 and led military campaigns against Saracens, including an expedition in 846 that, according to later sources such as Benedetto del Soratte, involved both Roman and Frankish forces, culminating in the retreat of Saracens to Gaeta. In October 847, he was appointed missus by Lothar in the capitulary De expeditione contra sarracenos, mediating disputes between Siconolfo and Radelchi over Benevento, securing payments from both rivals, and facilitating the eventual division of the Duchy into the Principalities of Salerno and Benevento, thus advancing Carolingian control of southern Italy. Guido continued to influence regional politics, supporting Prince Ademario of Salerno against Landolfo and Landonolfo around 858, capturing key cities in the upper Liri Valley and extending the Duchy of Spoleto toward the Tyrrhenian Sea. His death occurred shortly before March 860, when his son Lambert is recorded as count, though the precise date remains uncertain.

Son of Lambert and a daughter of Pepin I, King of Italy (Carolingians), he married Itta or Ida N (possibly of Carolingian descent), and had issue (including Rothildis, †>884, who married Adalberto I of Tuscany (Bonifacii) before 863, and had issue.