split them between Louis the German and Charles the Bald. The boundaries thus formed
are the basis for those between France and Germany today.
Emperor Louis II died in 875, leaving no male heirs, and Charles the Bald gained the
title of emperor and the realm of Italy. Since Louis II’s brothers also had lacked sons who
could inherit (the church had thwarted Lothair II’s attempt to divorce his wife and marry
a mistress who had borne him a son), the rule of Lothair I’s line ceased.
The political chaos of the decades after 840 was offset, in Charles the Bald’s kingdom,
by the continued flourishing of artistic and intellectual activity. Charles’s court rivaled
those of his father and grandfather in the renown of the theologians it attracted, among
them Hincmar of Reims and Johannes Scottus Eriugena, and in the impressive artwork
associated with his reign, but this was the last great center of learning and art linked with
the Carolingian dynasty. Toward the end of the 9th century, continued Viking raids and
the rising power of local aristocracy speeded the disintegration of the central
administrations in the eastern and western kingdoms. When the death of the West
Frankish king in 884 left only an infant as heir, the great clerics and laymen of that realm
turned to the emperor Charles the Fat, king of the East Franks, who thereby reunited
virtually the entire area of Charlemagne’s empire, but when Charles the Fat was deposed
in 887 the West Frankish nobility gave the crown to a non-Carolingian. The Carolingians
returned to power in the western territory with the enthronement there of Charles the
Simple (r. 898–922) and later with the reigns of Louis IV d’Outremer (r. 936–54), his son
Lothair (r. 954–86), and his grandson Louis V (r. 986–87). Louis V was the last ruler of
the line, and after his death the kingdom passed to Hugh Capet.
In the East Frankish realm, Charles the Fat was succeeded in 887 by Arnulf of
Carinthia (r. 887–99), the illegitimate son of Charles’s older brother, Carloman, and then
by Louis the Child (r. 899–911), Arnulf’s son and a minor when he came to the throne.
When Louis died, the nobles elected Conrad of Franconia.
Celia Chazelle
[See also: CAPITULARY; CAROLINGIAN ART; CHARLEMAGNE; CHARLES II
THE BALD; CHARLES MARTEL; LATIN POETRY, CAROLINGIAN; LOTHAIR I
(EMPEROR); LOTHAIR I (KING); LOUIS I THE PIOUS]
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University Press, 1991.
Ganshof, François L. The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy: Studies in Carolingian
History, trans. Janet Sondheimer. London: Longman, 1971.
Godman, Peter. Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry. Oxford:
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——, and Roger Collins, eds. Charlemagne’s Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the
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Halphen, Louis. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, trans. Giselle de Nie. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1977.
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McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895. London:
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——. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751–987. London: Longman, 1983.
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The Encyclopedia 333