Guerin of Provence

Guerin, Garin, Warin, or Werner ( or Guarnarius; died 845 or 856) was the Count of Auvergne, Chalon, Mâcon, Autun, Arles and Duke of Provence, Burgundy, and Toulouse. Guerin established the region against the Saracens from a base of Marseille and fortified Chalon-sur-Saône. He took part in many campaigns during the civil wars that marked the reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) and after his death until the Treaty of Verdun (843). The primary sources for his life are charters and chronicles like the Vita Hludovici.

There is a good deal of confusion amongst authors over the exact identity of this person. He has been allocated as a son of William of Gellone and his second wife Guitbergis (or Vuithbergis) on the basis of the Liber Manualis of Dhuoda, wife of Bernard of Septimania, one of William's sons by his first wife. Otherwise, he has been recently hypothesised as the son or grandson of Adalard, Count of Chalon, who defended that site against Waifer of Aquitaine. Warin was thus Count of Chalon by heredity or by grateful gift of the king on account of his father's service. This latter theory hinges on the assumption that there were two Guerins who have been subsequently confused: Guerin I and his son Guerin II. Neither descent from William of Gellone nor the two persons hypothesis are universally accepted. His proximity, in extant documents of the time, to Bernard of Septimania has been used as evidence for a relationship to that family, as has the existence of a related "Count Guerin" in later charters of the 850s and 860s. Guerin has been suggested as a brother of Bernard I of Auvergne, whose relationships are unknown.

In 818, Louis the Pious granted him the Auvergne, probably because of a connection of his wife's, for she was possibly the daughter of the previous count Ithier. In 825, he received the town of Cluny from Hildebald, Bishop of Mâcon, in an exchange.

In 819, he and Berengar of Toulouse invaded Gascony to put down a rebellion of Lupus III Centule, as recorded by both the Annales regni Francorum and the Vita Hludowici. By 820, Gascony was pacified and Carolingian authority restored, but not across the Pyrenees in Navarre. In 844, he received Autun, which had been stripped from Bernard's heir William. The French historian Pierre Andoque asserts that Bernard was captured in 843 by Guerin in Uzès and brought before Charles to be executed in 844. He was succeeded in 845 by Fulcrad as duke, with Marseille going to a count Adalbert.

Guerin married Albane (or Ava) and was the father of Isembard, Count of Autun, and perhaps of Ermengarde mother of William I, Duke of Aquitania.