Lower Burgundy

Lower Burgundy, also called the Kingdom of Provence, was a Frankish realm of the early Middle Ages that existed from 879 to 933. It covered the whole Cisjuran Burgundy, the land of Vienne, and the southern country around Arles, with the ecclesiastical provinces of Arles, Aix, Vienne and Lyon and the dioceses of Tarentaise, Uzes and Viviers under its churchmen. The realm was born of the breakdown of the Carolingian order: after the division of Middle Francia at the Treaty of Prum in 855 had put the youngest son of Lothair I over Lower Burgundy and Provence, the line died out and West Francia absorbed the lands. In 879 count Boso of Vienne, refusing allegiance to the boy kings of the Franks, had bishops and nobles of the Rhone and Saone country gathered at the Synod of Mantaille, which elected him king and made him the first non-Carolingian king of the west in more than a century. The kingdom was never secure, and Carloman of West Francia took most of it back in 882. Boso's son Louis, later called the Blind, was crowned emperor in Rome and was then defeated, blinded and driven out of Italy in 905; blind and failing, he made Hugh of Arles his regent. Louis died in 928 and Hugh, elected king of Italy, gave up Lower Burgundy to Rudolph of Upper Burgundy in 932-933, so that the two Burgundies were combined into the reunited Kingdom of Burgundy, later known as the Kingdom of Arles.