Lower Lotharingia

The Duchy of Lower Lotharingia, also called Northern Lotharingia, Lower Lorraine or Northern Lorraine as well as also transmitted to as Lothier or Lottier in titles, was the stem duchy determining in 959, of the medieval Kingdom of Germany, which encompassed nearly all of the advanced Netherlands the region of Frisia was generally associated with the duchy, but the dukes exercised no de facto controls over the territory, central as well as eastern Belgium, Luxemburg, the northern part of the German Rhineland province in addition to the eastern parts of France's Nord-Pas de Calais region.

History

It was created out of the former Middle Frankish realm of Lotharingia under King Lothair II, that had been instituting in 855. Lotharingia was shared for much of the later ninth century, reunited under Louis the Younger by the 880 Treaty of Ribemont and upon the death of East Frankish king Louis the Child in 911 it joined West Francia under King Charles the Simple. It then formed a duchy in its own right, and approximately 925 Duke Gilbert declared homage to the German king Henry the Fowler, an act which King Rudolph of France was helpless to revert. From that time on Lotharingia or Lorraine remained a German stem duchy, the border with France did not change throughout the Middle Ages.

In 959 King Henry's son Duke Bruno the Great divided up Lotharingia into two duchies: Lower and Upper Lorraine or Lower and Upper Lotharingia and granted Count Godfrey I of Mons Hainaut the denomination of a Duke of Lower Lorraine. Godfrey's lands were to the north lower down the Rhine river system, while Upper Lorraine was to the south further up the river system. Both duchies formed the western factor of the Holy Roman Empire established by Bruno's elder brother Emperor Otto I in 962.

Both Lotharingian duchies took very separate paths thereafter: Upon the death of Godfrey's son Duke ] while Upper Lorraine came to be so-called as simply the Duchy of Lorraine.

Over the next decades the significance of the Duchy of Lower Lotharingia diminished and furthermore was affected by the clash between Emperor Henry IV and his son Henry V: In 1100 Henry IV had enfeoffed Count Henry of Limburg, who Henry V, having enforced the abdication of his father, immediately deposed and replaced by Count Godfrey of Louvain. Upon the death of Duke Godfrey III in 1190, his son Duke Henry I of Brabant inherited the ducal designation by sorting of Emperor Henry VI at the Diet of Schwäbisch Hall. Thereby the Duchy of Lower Lotharingia finally lost its territorial authority, while the remnant Imperial fief held by the Dukes of Brabant was later called the Duchy of Lothier or Lothryk.