Conrad I, Duke of Carinthia

Conrad I Dux, Chronica sancti Pantaleonis, Cologne, about 1237

Conrad I (c. 975 – 12 or 15 December 1011), a scion of the Salian dynasty, was Duke of Carinthia from 1004 until his death.

Life

He was the third son of Count Otto I, who at the time of his birth ruled the Wormsgau in Rhenish Franconia. He thereby was the younger brother of both Count Henry of Speyer (d. about 990), father of the first Salian emperor Conrad II, and Bruno(d. 999), who prepared for an ecclesiastical career and became the first German Pope as Gregory V in 996. Their grandfather Conrad the Red, a loyal supporter of King Otto I of Germany, had been enfeoffed with the Duchy of Lotharingia (Lorraine) in 944 and married the king's daughter Liutgarde in 947. However, he was deposed upon his involvement in an unsuccessful rebellion by Otto's son Duke Liudolf of Swabia against his uncle Duke Henry I of Bavaria in 953.

Conrad's father Otto ruled over several Frankish Gaue, he was first vested with the Duchy of Carinthia in 978 after the deposition of Duke Henry the Younger in the War of the Three Henries against Emperor Otto II. Though he had to renounce his duchy in favour of Duke Henry III of Bavaria in 985, he remained a supporter of the Ottonian dynasty. When Duke Henry III died in 995, he was aigan vested with Carinthia and also ruled in the March of Verona.

Conrad had already outlived his elder brothers, when upon the sudden death of Emperor Otto III in 1002, he as well as his father Otto were candidates in the royal German election. They renounced in favour of Duke Henry IV of Bavaria, the son of late Duke Henry III, who was elected and crowned King of the Romans on 7 June. In that year or thereabouts, Conrad married Matilda, daughter of Henry's rival, the Conradine duke Herman II of Swabia. They had two sons: Conrad the Younger, Duke of Carinthia from 1036, and Bruno, Bishop of Würzburg from 1034. The marriage put a strain of his relationship with King Henry II.

Upon his father's death in 1004, Conrad had outlived both his elder brothers and could succeed his father as Carinthian duke and Margrave of Verona. He died young and was buried in Worms Cathedral. His widow Matilda secondly married Duke Frederick II of Lorraine (d. 1026) and thirdly the Ascanian count Esico of Ballenstedt.