LOTHAIR the Saxon, German king and Roman emperor, was originally count of Suplinburg. In 1106 he was made duke of Saxony by the emperor Henry V., against whom he afterwards repeatedly rebelled. After the death of Henry V. in 1125, the party which supported imperial in opposition to papal claims wished to grant the crown to Duke Frederick of Swabia, grandson of Henry IV. The papal party, however, headed by Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, managed to secure the election of Lothair, who obtained their favour by making large concessions by which he was afterwards seriously hampered. In 1133 he was crowned emperor in Rome by Innocent II., whom he had supported in a disputed papal election. In later times the church pretended that he had done homage to the pope for the empire, but what he really received in fief was the hereditary territory of the Countess Matilda. Meanwhile he had been engaged in bitter strife with the Hohenstaufen family, from whom he had demanded the allodial lands which they had inherited from the emperor Henry V. Duke Frederick of Swabia, and his brother Conrad, had resisted these pretensions; and Conrad had even been crowned king in Milan. The quarrel was ultimately settled by the lands in dispute being granted in fief to the house of Hohenstaufen. In order to strengthen his position, Lothair had given his daughter Gertrude (a child of eleven) in marriage to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, whom he made also duke of Saxony. Henry was further enriched by receiving the hereditary and imperial territories of the Countess Matilda, so that the Guelphs became by far the most powerful family in the empire. Lothair secured other important adherents by giving North Saxony (afterwards Brandenburg) to Albert the Bear, and Thuringia (which he took from Landgrave ...

LOTHAIR I., Roman emperor, eldest son of Louis the Pious, was born in 795. At a diet held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817 he received Austrasia with the greater part of Germany, and was associated with his father in the empire, while separate territories were granted to his brothers Louis and Pippin. This arrangement being modified in favour of Louis’s youngest son Charles (afterwards Charles the Bald), the three brothers repeatedly rebelled, and for a time Lothair usurped supreme power. After the death of Louis in 840, Lothair, as his successor, claimed the right to govern the whole empire. His brothers Louis and Charles (Pippin being dead) united against him, and in 841 he was defeated in the great battle of Fontenay. On the 11th of August 843 the war was brought to an end by the treaty of Verdun, by which Lothair was confirmed in the imperial title, but received as his immediate territory only Italy (which he had ruled from 822) with a long narrow district reaching past the Rhone and the Rhine to the North Sea. His subsequent reign was full of trouble, for many of his vassals had become virtually independent, and he was unable to contend successfully with the Norsemen and the Saracens. In 855, weary of the cares of government, he divided his kingdom among his sons, and retired to the monastery of Prüm, where he died on the 28th of September of the same year. As emperor he was succeeded by his son Louis II.