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Jarry, E. La vie politique de Louis de France, duc d’Orléans. Paris: Picard, 1889.
LOUIS I THE PIOUS
(778–840). King of the Franks and emperor. Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s third son by
his second wife, Hildegarde, was named king of Aquitaine at the age of three. In 806, the
Divisio regnorum arranged for the succession by dividing the empire among
Charlemagne’s legitimate sons, Charles the Younger (d. 811), Pepin (d. 810), and Louis.
No plan was then announced concerning the imperial title bestowed on Charlemagne in
800, but with the deaths of his brothers, Louis became co-emperor in September 813. He
inherited the entire empire upon Charlemagne’s death in January 814.
In ca. 794, Louis married Irmengarde, who bore him Lothair I (795–855), Pepin of
Aquitaine (800–838), and Louis the German (804–876). She died in 818, a year after
Louis the Pious had proclaimed the terms of his sons’ inheritance in the Ordinatio
imperii. An effort to ensure the empire’s unity after his death, the document provided that
while each son would exercise royal authority over a portion of the Carolingian territories
Lothair I would receive the most important lands, including Aix-la-Chapelle and Rome,
and he was immediately named co-emperor. After his father’s death, he would exercise
supremacy over his brothers. Bernard, a nephew of Louis the Pious, would retain the
throne of Italy given him by Charlemagne, but he, too, would be subject to Lothair.
Tensions among aristocratic groups aroused by Louis’s program of ecclesiastical
reforms and disaffection with his plans for the succession underlay the political strife that
marked the second half of his reign. The first threat to the emperor’s authority came in
817 with a revolt by Bernard, who died after being blinded as punishment. Lothair I was
then given Italy to rule, and Louis did penance for Bernard’s death at Attigny in 822.
More significant for the succession, in 823 Louis’s second wife, Judith, gave birth to
Charles the Bald (d. 877). In provision for Charles’s inheritance, lands previously
assigned to his three half-brothers were designated for him to rule. This revision to the
Ordinatio imperii, in addition to tensions among court factions, precipitated rebellions in
the early 830s by Lothair I, his supporters, and his brothers. In 833, Louis the Pious was
forced from the throne. Although he regained power in 834 and confined his eldest son to
Italy, until Louis’s death in 840 the empire remained in turmoil. Its unity survived only
until the Treaty of Verdun (843) divided it into separate kingdoms for Lothair I, Louis the
German, and Charles the Bald.
Louis the Pious deserves a better reputation than he has generally enjoyed, especially
for his efforts to maintain the empire’s unity. More clearly than Charlemagne, who
initially made no provisions for the imperial succession, Louis held a vision of the office
of emperor as a permanent institution in the West. Moreover, it was during his reign that
there occurred the true flowering of the Carolingian renaissance begun by Charlemagne.
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