Rudolph II of Burgundy
King of Burgundy from 912 to 937
Rudolph II (c. 880/885 – 12 or 13 July 937) was King of Upper Burgundy from 912 until 933, and then King of the united Kingdom of Burgundy (the polity later known as the Kingdom of Arles) from 933 until his death in 937. He was also King of Italy from 922 to 926. He initially succeeded his father, king Rudolph I, in Upper Burgundy. In 933, Rudolph II acquired the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy (Provence) from King Hugh of Italy in exchange for the waiver of his claims to the Italian crown, thereby establishing the united Kingdom of Burgundy.
Life
A member of the Elder House of Welf, Rudolph was the son of the Upper Burgundian king Rudolph I, and his wife Guilla of Provence. Following his ascent to the throne in 912, Rudolph II entered into a border conflict with the neighbouring dukes of Swabia and campaigned the Thurgau and Zürich estates. Duke Burchard II of Swabia finally defeated him in the 919 Battle of Winterthur; both rulers made peace and Rudolph married Burchard's daughter Bertha in 922.
At the same time, Rudolph was asked by several Italian nobles led by Margrave Adalbert I of Ivrea to intervene in Italy on their behalf against Emperor Berengar. Having entered Italy, he was crowned king at Pavia in the Basilica of San Michele Maggiore. On 17 July 923, he defeated Berengar at the Battle of Fiorenzuola; Berengar was murdered the following year, possibly at the instigation of Rudolph.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Rudolph II of Burgundy” as king of Burgundy from 912 to 937. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as king of Burgundy from 912 to 937. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q442257. VIAF identifies the subject as 15157403. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Rudolph II of Burgundy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.