Gandulf of Piacenza

His father, Gamenulf, was a gastald in the county of Piacenza in the third quarter of the ninth century, and Gandulf's birth can probably be placed in that period.

[1] Gandulf's father held land in two areas: in a region called super argele in the immediate vicinity of Piacenza and in the towns of Ziano Piacentino and Rossago in the Oltrepò Pavese.

Gandulf extended his own landholdings by purchases in the Oltrepò: a curtis in Fabbiano with a mill on the Tidone, some estates in Viadano and Santa Maria della Versa and also the castrum (fortified town) of Vigalone.

[1] Gandulf was one of several low-ranking nobleman, like Milo of Verona, who profited from the wars and anarchy in Italy that followed the deposition of the Emperor Charles the Fat in 887.

In the royal capital of Pavia on 2 June 907, he witnessed a concession made by the abbot of Nonantola to one Lambert, a Frankish vassal of Marquis Adalbert I of Ivrea.

In 927, Milo of Verona foiled a plot by two dissident judges, Walpert and Everard Gezo, to assassinate Hugh during a visit to Pavia.

These men, who owed their promotion to high rank to the king's favour, were expected, not always correctly, to be loyal out of gratitude.

[1] In the summer of 929, the count of Piacenza, Raginer, was injured by a fall from his horse while fleeing Pavia, where he had been summoned on accusations of usurping lands from the abbey of Bobbio.

His primary residence was the castrum of Nibbiano on the upper Tidone, from which he controlled an extensive lordship in the west of the county of Piacenza.