Louis the Pious

Louis the Pious (also known as Louis I, Louis the Fair, and Louis the Debonaire, German: Ludwig der Fromme, French: Louis le Pieux or Louis le Débonnaire, Italian: Luigi il Pio or Ludovico il Pio, Spanish: Luis el Piadoso or Ludovico Pío) (June/August, 778 – June 20, 840) was Emperor and King of the Franks from 814 to his death 840.

Rule in Aquitaine

Born in Casseuil-sur-Garonne, in today's Gironde, France, the third son of Charlemagne by his third wife, Hildegard of Savoy, Louis was crowned king of Aquitaine as a child in 781 and sent there with regents and a court to rule in order to quiet rebellions which were forming after Charlemagne's defeat by the Moors in Spain (778). Charlemagne's intention was to see his all sons brought up as natives of their given territories, wearing the national costume of the region and ruling by the local customs. Thus were the children sent to their respective realms at so young an age. Each kingdom had its importance in keeping some frontier, Louis's was the Spanish March. In 797, Barcelona, the greatest city of the Marca, fell to the Franks when Zeid, its governor, rebelled against Córdoba and, failing, handed it to them. The Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799. However, Louis marched the entire army of his kingdom over the Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800 to 801, when it capitulated. The sons were not given independence from central authority, however, and Charlemagne ingrained in them the concepts of empire and unity by sending them on military expeditions far from their home bases. Louis campaigned in the Mezzogiorno against the Beneventans at least once.

Louis was one of Charlemagne's four legitimate sons, but the eldest, Pepin the Hunchback, had consented to a rebellion against his father and was banished to a monastery. That left three in active life and, like most Frankish men, Louis had expected to share his inheritance with his brothers, Charles the Younger, king of Neustria, and Pepin, king of Italy. In the Divisio Regnorum of 806, Charlemagne had slated Charles the Younger as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Frankish heartland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the Iron Crown of Lombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis's kingdom of Aquitaine, he added Septimania, Provence, and part of Burgundy.

But in the event, Charlemagne's other legitimate sons died — Pepin in 810 and Charles in 811 — and Louis alone remained to be crowned co-emperor with Charlemagne in 813. On his father's death in 814, he inherited the entire Frankish kingdom and all its possessions (with the sole exception of Italy, which remained within Louis' empire, but under the direct rule of Bernard, Pepin's son).

Emperor

He was in Doué, Anjou, when he received news of his father's passing. Hurrying to Aachen, he crowned himself and was proclaimed by the nobles with shouts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus.

As a motto of his reign, he minted the reverse of his coins with the legend Renovatio Regni Francorum. In this, he intended to signify the renewal of the empire to a lost moral grandeur. He quickly enacted a "moral purge", in which he sent all of his unmarried sisters to nunneries, forgoing their diplomatic use as hostage brides in favour of the security of avoiding the entanglements that powerful brothers-in-law might bring. He spared his illegitimate half-brothers and tonsured his father's cousins, Adalard and Wala, shutting them up in Noirmoutier and Corbie, respectively, despite the latter's initial loyalty.

His chief councillors were Bernat, margrave of Septimania, and Ebbo, whom, born a serf, Louis would raise to the archbishopric of Rheims but who would ungratefully betray him later. He retained some of his father's ministers, such as Elisachar, abbot of St Maximin near Trier, and Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne. Later he replaced Elisachar with Hildwin, abbot of many monasteries.

He also used Benedict of Aniane (the Second Benedict), a Septimanian Visigoth and monastic founder, to help him reform the Frankish church. One of Benedict's primary reforms was to ensure that all religious houses in Louis' realm adhered to the Rule of St Benedict, named for its creator, the First Benedict, Benedict of Nursia (480-550).

In 816, Pope Stephen V, who had succeeded Leo III, visited Rheims and again crowned Louis. The Emperor thereby strengthened the papacy by recognising the importance of the pope in imperial coronations.

Ordinatio imperii

In 817, Louis and his court were crossing a wooden gallery from the cathedral to the palace in Aachen when the gallery collapsed and took the lives of many. Louis, having barely survived and feeling the imminent danger of death, issued an Ordinatio Imperii, a decree that laid out plans for an orderly succession. In 815, he had already given his two eldest sons a share in the government, when he had given Bavaria to Lothair as king and Aquitaine to Pepin, though without the royal title. Now, he proceeded to divide the empire between his three sons:

Lothair, already a king, was proclaimed co-emperor and was given the largest part of the Empire, including all of Italy, as his heritage. After his father's death he was supposed to succeed as Emperor and as overlord over his brothers.
Pepin was proclaimed king and retained Aquitaine and some neighboring counties
Louis, the youngest son, was also proclaimed king and received Bavaria and the neighbouring marches, hitherto the realm of Lothair.

With this settlement, Louis tried to combine his sense for the Empire's unity, supported by the clergy, with the traditional Frankish principle of partition. Instead of treating his sons equally in status and land, he elevated his first-born son Lothair above his younger brothers and gave him the largest part of the Empire as his share. Lothair would turn out conscious of his status as co-emperor and proved a staunch defender of his share.

Bernard's rebellion and Louis' penance

The first challenge to the Partition of Aachen came from Italy, which the settlement had given to Lothair. Emperor's nephew Bernard still ruled Italy and in 818, he rebelled against his uncle at the instigation of Theodulf, bishop of Orléans. Bernard then went, by invitation, to Chalon-sur-Saône to plead his case. Bernard was sentenced to death, but Louis alleviated the sentence to blinding and imprisonment. Bernard's anguish and pain was such that he died the next year. The fate of his nephew deeply marked Louis's conscience for the rest of his life.

In 822, as a deeply religious man, Louis performed penance for causing Bernard's death, at his palace of Attigny near Vouziers in the Ardennes, before Pope Paschal I, and a council of ecclesiastics and nobles of the realm, that had been convened for the reconciliation of Louis with his three younger half-brothers, Hugo whom he soon made abbot of St-Quentin, Drogo whom he soon made bishop of Metz, and Theodoric, all sons of Charlemagne's concubines, whom he had caused to be violently tortured and whom he had intended to put to death. This act of contrition, partly in emulation of Theodosius I, had the effect of greatly reducing his prestige as a Frankish ruler, for he also recited a list of minor offences about which no secular ruler of the time would have taken any notice. He also made the egregious error of releasing Wala and Adalard from their monastic confinements, placing the former in a position of power in the court of Lothair and the latter in a position in his own house.

Frontier wars

At the start of Louis's reign, the many tribes— Danes, Obotrites, Slovenes, Bretons, Basques—which inhabited his frontierlands were still in awe at the power of the Frankish emperor and dared not stir up any trouble. In 816, however, the Sorbs rebelled and were quickly followed by Slavomir, chief of the Obotrites, who was captured and abandoned by his own people, being replaced by Ceadrag in 818. Soon, Ceadrag too had turned against the Franks and allied with the Danes, who were to become the greatest menace of the Franks in a short time.

A greater Slavic menace was gathering on the southeast. There, Ljudevit Posavski, duke of the Pannonia, was harassing the border at the Drava and Sava rivers. The margrave of Friuli, Cadolah, was sent out against him, but he died on campaign and, in 820, his margarvate was invaded by Slovenes. In 821, an alliance was made with Borna, duke of the Dalmatia, and Ljudevit was brought to heel. Peace continued until 827, when the younger Louis had to deal with a Bulgar horde descending on Pannonia.

On the far southern edge of his great realm, Louis had to control the Lombard princes of Benevento whom Charlemagne had never subjugated. He extracted promises from Princes Grimoald IV and Sico, but to no effect.

On the southwestern frontier, problems commenced early when, in 815, Séguin, duke of Gascony, revolted. He was defeated and replaced by Lupus III, who was dispossessed in 818 by the emperor. An 820 assembly at Quierzy-sur-Oise decided to send an expedition against the Cordoban caliphate. The counts in charge of the army, Hugh, count of Tours, and Matfrid, count of Orléans, were slow in acting and the expedition came to naught.

First civil war

In 818, as Louis was returning from a campaign to Brittany, he was greeted by news of the death of his wife, Ermengarde. Ermengarde was the daughter of Ingerman, the duke of Hesbaye. Louis had been close to his wife, who had been involved in policymaking. It was rumoured that she had played a part in her nephew's death and Louis himself believed her own death was divine retribution for that event. It took many months for his courtiers and advisors to convince him to remarry, but eventually he did, in 820, to Judith, daughter of Welf, count of Altdorf. In 823 Judith gave birth to a son, who was named Charles.

The birth of this son damaged the Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attempts to provide for his forth son met with stiff resistance from his older sons, and the last two decades of his reign were marked by civil war.

At Worms in 829, Louis gave Charles Alemannia with the title of king or duke (historians differ on this), thus enraging Lothair, whose partition was thereby diminished. An insurrection was soon at hand. With the urging of the vengeful Wala and the cooperation of his brothers, Lothair accused Judith of having an affair with Bernat of Septimania, of which liaison Charles was the issue, thus a bastard. Ebbo and Hildwin abandoned the emperor at that point, Bernard having risen to greater heights than either of them. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, and Jesse, bishop of Amiens, too, opposed the redivision of the empire and lent their episcopal prestige to the rebels.

In 830, at Wala's insistence that Bernat of Septimania was plotting against him, Pepin of Aquitaine led an army of Gascons, with the support of the Neustrian magnates, all the way to Paris. At Verberie, Louis the German joined him. At that time, the emperor returned from another campaign in Brittany to find his empire at war with itself. He marched as far as Compiègne, an ancient royal town, before being surrounded by Pepin's forces and captured. Judith was forced to take the veil at Poitiers and Bernat fled to Barcelona.

Then Lothair finally set out with a large Lombard army, but Louis had been work on his son Louis and the latter had reversed his position and convinced Pepin to do likewise. The rebellion thus failed when the Lothair tried to call a general council of the realm in Nijmegen, in the heart of Austrasia, where their support was least. The Austrasians and Rhinelanders came to Nijmegen with a following of armed retainers, and the disloyal sons were forced to free their father and bow at his feet (831). Reconciled to their father, Pepin and Louis had their shares of the inheritance increased, while Lothair was stripped of his position as co-emperor and banished to Italy. Pepin returned to Aquitaine and Judith to Louis's court. Only Wala was severely dealt with, making his way to a secluded monastery on the shores of Lake Geneva. Though Hilduin, abbot of Saint Denis, was exiled to Paderborn and Elisachar and Matfrid were deprived of their honours north of the Alps; they did not lose their freedom.

Second civil war

The next revolt occurred a mere two years later (832). The disaffected Pepin was summoned to his father's court, where he was so poorly received he left against his father's orders. Immediately, fearing that Pepin would be stirred up to revolt by his nobles and desiring to reform his morals, Louis the Pious summoned all his forces to meet in Aquitaine in preparation of an uprising, but Louis the German garnered an army of Slav allies and conquered Swabia before the emperor could react. Once again the elder Louis divided his vast realm. At Jonac, he declared Charles king of Aquitaine and deprived Pepin (he was less harsh with the younger Louis), restoring the whole rest of the empire to Lothair, not yet involved in the civil war. Lothair was, however, interested in usurping his father's authority and his ministers had been in contact with Pepin and may have convinced him and Louis the German to rebel, promising the latter Alemannia, promising him Alemannia, the kingdom of Charles.

Soon Lothair, with the support of Pope Gregory IV, whom he had confirmed in office without his father's support, joined the revolt in 833. While Louis was at Worms gathering a new force, Lothair marched north. Louis marched south. The armies met on the plains of the Rothfeld. There, Gregory met the emperor and may have tried to sow dissension amongst his ranks. Soon much of Louis's army had evaporated before his eyes, and he ordered his few remaining followers to go, because "it would be a pity if any man lost his life or limb on my account." The resigned emperor was taken to Saint Médard at Soissons, his son Charles to Prüm, and the queen to Tortona. The despicable show of disloyalty and disingenuousness earned the site the name Field of Lies, or Lügenfeld, or Campus Mendacii, ubi plurimorum fidelitas exstincta est ^*.

On November 13, Ebbo of Rheims presided over a synod in the Church of Saint Mary in Soissons which deposed Louis and forced him to publicly confess many crimes, none of which he had, in fact, committed. In return, Lothair gave Ebbo the Abbey of Saint Vaast. Men like Rabanus Maurus, Louis' younger half-brothers Drogo and Hugh, and Emma, Judith's sister and Louis the German's new wife, worked on the younger Louis to, for the sake of the unity of the empire, make peace with his father. The humiliation to which Louis was then subjected at Notre Dame in Compiègne turned the loyal barons of Austrasia and Saxony against Lothair, and the usurper fled to Burgundy, skirmishing with loyalists near Châlons-sur-Saône. Louis was restored the next year (1 March 834).

On Lothair's return to Italy, Wala, Jesse, and Matfrid, formerly count of Orléans, died of a pestilence and, on 2 February 835, the Synod of Thionville deposed Ebbo, Agobard, Bernard, bishop of Vienne, and Bartholomew, archbishop of Narbonne. Lothair himself fell ill; events had turned completely in Louis favour once again.

In 836, however, the family made peace and Louis restored Pepin and Louis, deprived Lothair of all save Italy, and gave it to Charles in a new division, given at the diet of Crémieux. At about that time, the Vikings terrorised and sacked Utrecht and Antwerp. In 837, they went up the Rhine as far as Nijmegen and their king, Rorik, demanded the wergild of some of his followers killed on previous expeditions before Louis the Pious mustered a massive force and marched against them. They fled, but it would not be the last time they harried the northern coasts. In 838, they even claimed sovereignty over Frisia, but a treaty was confirmed between them and the Franks in 839. Louis the Pious ordered the construction of a navy and the sending of missi dominici into the Frisia to establish Frankish sovereignty there.

Third civil war

In the year 837, Louis crowned Charles king over all of Alemannia and Burgundy and gave him a portion of his brother Louis's land. Louis the German promptly rose in revolt, and the emperor redivided his realm again at Quierzy-sur-Oise, giving all of the young king of Bavaria's lands, save Bavaria itself, to Charles. Emperor Louis did not stop there, however. His devotion to Charles knew no bounds. When Pepin died in 838, Louis declared Charles the new king of Aquitaine. The nobles, however, elected Pepin's son Pepin II. When Louis threatened invasion, the third great civil war of his reign broke out. In the spring of 839, Louis the German invaded Swabia, Pepin II and his Gascon subjects fought all the way to the Loire, and the Danes returned to ravage the Frisian coast (sacking Dorstad for a second time). Lothair, for the first time in a long time, allied with his father and pledged support at Worms in exchange for a redivision of the inheritance. By a final placitum issued there, Louis gave Louis the German Bavaria and disinherited Pepin II, leaving the entire remainder of the empire to be divided roughly into an eastern part and a western. Lothair was given the choice of which partition he would inherit and he chose the eastern, including Italy, leaving the western for Charles. The emperor quickly subjugated Aquitaine and had Charles recognised by the nobles and clergy at Clermont-en-Auvergne in 840. Louis then, in a final flash of glory, rushed into Bavaria and forced the younger Louis into the Ostmark. The empire now settled as he had declared it at Worms, he returned in July to Frankfurt am Main, where he disbanded the army. The final civil war of his reign was over.

Death

Louis fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns and went to his summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine, by his palace at Ingelheim. On 20 June 840, he died, in the presence of many bishops and clerics and in the arms of his brother Drogo, but not of Charles and Judith, who were in Poitiers. Soon dispute plunged the surviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, the kernels of later France and Germany. The dispute over the kingship of Aquitaine was not fully settled until 860.

Family

By his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye (married 794, 795, or 798), he had three sons and three daughters:

Lothair (795 – 855), king of Middle Francia
Pepin (797 – 838), king of Aquitaine
Adelaide (b.c.799), perhaps married Robert the Strong
Rotrude (b.800)
Hildegard (or Matilda) (b.c.802), married Gerard, count of Auvergne
Louis the German (c.805 – 875), king of East Francia

By his second wife, Judith of Bavaria, he had a daughter and a son:

Gisela, married Eberhard I of Friuli
Charles the Bald, king of West Francia

Sources

Vita Hludovici Imperatoris, the main source for his reign, written c. 840 by an unknown author usually called "the Astronomer"
Vita Hludowici Imperatoris by Thegan of Trier Latin text
Oman, Charles. The Dark Ages 476-918. London, 1914.
Godman, Peter, and Collins, Roger, editors. Charlemagne's Heir. Oxford University Press: New York, 1990.

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