877) was the youngest son of Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, and his first wife, Ermentrude.
He was intended for an ecclesiastical career from an early age, but in 870 rebelled against his father and tried to claim a part of the kingdom as an inheritance.
Born in 848, Carloman was tonsured as a child in 854 in furtherance of his father's policy of preventing a partition of the kingdom (as had happened at Verdun in 843) by placing his younger sons in the church.
In the following decade he acquired the abbacies of Saint-Amand d'Elnon, Saint-Riquier, Lobbes and Saint-Arnould de Metz.
[1] In 873, Carloman was re-tried and blinded, but avoided imprisonment by escaping to East Francia, where his uncle, King Louis the German, gave him protection.