The Historians' History of the World 07

[132] [He is believed to have been born on the Main in modern Hesse-Darmstadt. As to his apology for his poor Latinity, it may be said that he was remarkably versed for his time in Latin.]

[133] [We are curiously in the dark as to the date of Charles’ birth. There are reasons for accepting each of the following dates,—742, 743, 744, and 747. The first is probably the correct date.]

[134] [On one of these forays in 772, Charles cut down the sacred idol Irminsul, symbolic of the column which in the Odinic cosmogony supported the world; his army was threatened with destruction by thirst, which the Saxons took as a proof of sacrilege; when a cloudburst however saved the army, many of the Saxons were converted to the more potent deity. Another account states that the army obtained water from the sudden starting of an intermittent spring. There is no doubt that the destruction of the Irminsul cast a great gloom over the Saxon army. Deputies were sent to Charles’ camp with promises that Christian priests would be received and with offers to send twelve hostages for their safety. Charles treated them with great moderation, hoping they would remain quiet under the great blow he had dealt until he could attend to other pressing matters.]

[135] [He was tried the same year, his royal locks shorn, and his person immured in a convent. With him end the Agilolfings.]

[136] [Also spelled Godefrid or Göttrick.]

[137] [Aix-la-Chapelle, the Aquisgranum or Civites Aquensis of the Romans.]

[138] [Hodgkinc calls him the son of Charles’ wife Himiltrud. But this conspiracy took place in 972. See the later remarks on the state of concubinage.]

Cathedral at Aachen, where Charlemagne was buried

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE’S SUCCESSORS TO THE TREATY OF VERDUN

[814-843 A.D.]

LOUIS LE DÉBONNAIRE, OR PIOUS (814-840 A.D.)

Charlemagne’s successor, Louis le Débonnaire,[139] did not restore vanished prestige by any of his own. We may praise his goodness, his virtue, the purity of his morals, the efforts he made from the beginning of his reign to rid the court of that license which Charlemagne had allowed to enter, and his re-establishment of the necessary discipline among the monks and secular clergy; but he had not the firmness required to maintain authority. From the beginning he showed a deference to the pope that Charlemagne would have felt excessive. He allowed Stephen IV (816) to be elected and take possession of the pontificate without his consent, and was pacified by tardy excuses. When Stephen came to crown him in France, he permitted him to pronounce words which revealed the tendency of the holy see to arrogate to itself the free disposal of the imperial crown: “Peter glorifies himself in making you this present because you assure him the enjoyment of his just rights.”

[817-822 A.D.]

The papacy was already working for its second deliverance, eager to reject the authority of the Western emperors as it had rejected that of the Eastern. If Charlemagne had judged it expedient to divide authority with his sons on account of the extent of the empire, a still stronger necessity existed for Louis le Débonnaire to do the same. But his division of the states, accomplished at the Reichstag held at Aachen in July, 817, did not differ in any respect from that made by Charlemagne, and neither brought imperial unity into doubt or peril. Two subordinate kingdoms—Aquitaine and Bavaria—were created for Pepin and Louis [Ludwig]. Lothair, the eldest son, was associate emperor, or co-regent.b

Louis did not attribute the appointment of Lothair as co-regent and his own future successor to his own will and choice alone, but also to that of his people. Agobardusd does not make any mention of Bernhard and Italy, though, in the records, they have not been entirely omitted. The chronicle narrates that the kingdom of Italy shall stand in the same relation to the empire under his son as it did under his father and himself. The arrangements concerning the two younger sons of the emperor Louis were carefully weighed and considered. Pepin, the elder, received Aquitaine, Gascony, the mark of Toulouse, and a few west-Frankish and Burgundian countries. To the younger, Ludwig, were assigned Boiaria (Bavaria) and Carentania (Carinthia) with the mark of the Slavonic Avars. Each received the title of king, but great stress was laid upon the fact that they were vassals of the emperor, and neither in war nor peace, nor in any foreign relations whatsoever, should the two younger brothers act independently of the elder. Their territories, again, should not be divided up among their descendants; even the voice of their people was essential to the choice of their successors.