LUDOVICO the Pious, King of the Franks, EMPEROR. — The dominant characteristics of the character and reign of the son (b. at Chasseneuil in 778) and successor of
LUDOVICO THE PIOUS, KING OF THE FRANKS, EMPEROR — Portrait of the Emperor, miniature (ca. 8.40) in the codex containing the Laudes sanctae Crucis by Rabanus Maurus, from the monastery of Fulda — Vatican Library, cod. Reg. lat. 124, f. 4°.
Charlemagne were ecclesiastical influence and weakness of authority. Although endowed with physical strength and a solid Greco-Latin culture, acquired at the school of St. Benedict of Aniane, L. lacked the resoluteness indispensable to a statesman. Preferring monastic humility, he forgot the grandeur of imperial dignity to the point of accepting, at Attigny (822), a public confession of his repentance for the punishment inflicted on his nephew Bernard of Italy. He allowed himself to be manipulated by the court, and rivalries degenerated into open civil wars.
The structure of the Empire undoubtedly remained similar to what it had been under the previous reign: identical geographical extent, same organization. But from the fact that Charlemagne’s work had remained unfinished there arose a crisis: Charlemagne had made himself protector of the Holy See; L., docile to the clergy who had educated him, had himself crowned by Stephen V (Oct. 816) and renounced all jurisdiction over Rome (privilege of 817); but later (824), under the influence of the imperialist Walter, abbot of Corbie, he withdrew the concessions previously made and demanded from the Pope an oath of fealty. The bishops, however, affirmed the preeminence of the priesthood over the Empire and imposed a reform of the clergy (829).
The imperialist ideal of unity was countered by the persistence of the practice of territorial partitions, by ambitions and individual interests that reached the point of exasperation, and by regional particularisms: the Ordinatio of 817 had associated Lothar, the Emperor’s eldest son, with the throne and assigned Aquitaine and Germany to the two younger sons, Pepin and Louis. To please his second wife Judith, whom he had married in 819, the Emperor made a fourth share for the son she bore him, Charles (later called the Bald), in the territories already assigned to the other sons (829): these sons, with the help of Wala, who had been banished from court to favor Bernard of Septimania, plotted against their father. For a moment Lothar even wrested power from him (830). But L. managed to remove him, and in a third partition he took Aquitaine from Pepin and gave it to Charles. L.’s sons rose against him a second time, and the forces of the two sides clashed in Italy. Abandoned by his soldiers at Retfeld (the field of lies), near Colmar, on 24 June 833, L. was made prisoner by his own sons, despite the efforts at mediation by Pope Gregory IV.
In the abbey of St. Medard at Soissons, before a diet presided over by Lothar, the Emperor was accused of having disturbed the peace and violated his oaths; forced into a public confession, he had to strip off his royal garments and insignia, put on the garb of a penitent, and was confined in a prison (Oct. 833). The excess of this humiliation changed the feelings of his sons Louis and Pepin toward their father; they restored him to the throne and helped him to repel Lothar in Italy, whose preeminence they did not view favorably.
Re-crowned in 835, L. reigned until his death, which occurred in 839. If on the one hand he still had to endure the hostility of his son Louis the German, on the other he reconciled with Lothar and, after Pepin’s death in 839, was able to make a final partition. Louis, always in revolt, received nothing beyond what he had previously held; Lothar, made emperor, divided the rest of the Empire with Charles, following a demarcation line constituted by the Meuse, the Saône, and the Rhône. A fragile solution, since to the rivalries of the princes were now added the tendencies toward autonomy of Italy, Aquitaine, and Catalonia, and at the frontier the incessant incursions of the Saracens and the Normans.