Emma Capet

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: LZ33-4H6
• Initiatory (LDS): 28 Nov 1933, ARIZO

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: 9H6Q-VVW
• Initiatory (LDS): 9 Feb 1932, ARIZO

Robert + Beatrice Karling. Beatrice (daughter of Herbert Karling, I Count of Vermandois and Bertha de Morvois) was born in 880 in Vermandois, Nuesria; died after 26 Mar 931. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

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• FamilySearch ID: 9HPT-832
• Initiatory (LDS): 22 Jun 1932, LOGAN

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: 9H6Q-VVW
• Initiatory (LDS): 9 Feb 1932, ARIZO

Robert married Adalaide Karling in 825 in République française. Adalaide (daughter of Louis "The Pious" Karling, King of the Franks and Ermengarde, Queen of the Franks) was born in 799 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, Centre, République française; died in 866 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, Centre, République française. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

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• Initiatory (LDS): COMPLETED
• FamilySearch ID: LDHS-6CV

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• FamilySearch ID: KT4G-S84
• Initiatory (LDS): 10 Feb 1933, LOGAN

Herbert + Bertha de Morvois. Bertha was born about 845 in Vermandois, Nuesria. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: LZT6-KB5
• Initiatory (LDS): 2 Aug 1923, LOGAN

Notes:

Louis the Pious (778-20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonai r e, was the King of the Franks and co-Emperor (as Louis I) with his fath er , Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781.

As the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he becam e t he sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a positi on w hich he held until his death, save for the period 833-34, during whi ch h e was deposed.

During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of t h e empire's southwestern frontier. He conquered Barcelona from the Musli m s in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basque s so uth of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor he included his adult sons, L othai r, Pepin, and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a su itabl e division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign w as cha racterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the br utal tr eatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy, for which Louis atoned i n a publi c act of self-debasement.

In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons, only exac e rbated by Louis's attempts to include his son Charles by his second wi f e in the succession plans. Though his reign ended on a high note, wit h or der largely restored to his empire, it was followed by three years o f civ il war. Louis is generally compared unfavourably to his father, tho ugh th e problems he faced were of a distinctly different sort.

«b»Birth and rule in Aquitaine«/b»
Louis was born while his father Charlemagne was on campaign in Spain , a t the Carolingian villa of Cassinogilum, according to Einhard and th e ano nymous chronicler called Astronomus; the place is usually identifie d wit h Chasseneuil, near Poitiers. He was the third son of Charlemagne b y hi s wife Hildegard. His grandfather was King Pepin the Younger.

Louis was crowned King of Aquitaine as a child in 781 and sent there wi t h regents and a court. Charlemagne constituted the sub-kingdom in orde r t o secure the border of his kingdom after the destructive war agains t th e Aquitanians and Basques under Waifer (capitulated c. 768) and late r Hun ald II, which culminated in the disastrous Battle of Roncesvalles ( 778) . Charlemagne wanted his son Louis to grow up in the area where he w as t o reign. However, in 785, wary of the customs his son may have bee n takin g in Aquitaine, Charlemagne sent for him to Aquitaine and Louis p resente d himself at the Royal Council of Paderborn dressed up in Basqu e costume s along with other youths in the same garment, which may have m ade a goo d impression in Toulouse, since the Basques of Vasconia wer e a mainstay o f the Aquitanian army.

In 794, Charlemagne settled four former Gallo-Roman villas on Louis, i n t he thought that he would take in each in turn as winter residence: Do ué-l a-Fontaine in today's Anjou, Ebreuil in Allier, Angeac-Charente, an d th e disputed Cassinogilum. Charlemagne's intention was to see all hi s son s brought up as natives of their given territories, wearing the nat iona l costume of the region and ruling by the local customs. Thus were t he ch ildren sent to their respective realms at so young an age. Each kin gdom h ad its importance in keeping some frontier, Louis's was the Spanis h March . In 797, Barcelona, the greatest city of the Marca, fell to th e Franks w hen Zeid, its governor, rebelled against Córdoba and, failing , handed i t to them. The Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799. However , Louis mar ched the entire army of his kingdom, including Gascons with t heir duke Sa ncho I of Gascony, Provençals under Leibulf, and Goths unde r Bera, over t he Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering ther e from 800 to 80 1, when it capitulated. The sons were not given independ ence from centra l authority, however, and Charlemagne ingrained in the m the concepts of e mpire and unity by sending them on military expeditio ns far from their ho me bases. Louis campaigned in the Italian Mezzogiorn o against the Beneven tans at least once.

Louis was one of Charlemagne's three legitimate sons to survive infanc y . He had a twin brother, Lothair who died during infancy. According t o Fr ankish custom, Louis had expected to share his inheritance with hi s broth ers, Charles the Younger, King of Neustria, and Pepin, King of It aly. I n the Divisio Regnorum of 806, Charlemagne had slated Charles th e Younge r as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Fr ankish he artland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the Iro n Crown of L ombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis' s kingdom of A quitaine, he added Septimania, Provence, and part of Burgu ndy. However, C harlemagne's other legitimate sons died Pepin in 810 an d Charles in 811 a nd Louis alone remained to be crowned co-emperor wit h Charlemagne in 813 . On his father's death in 814, he inherited the ent ire Frankish kingdo m and all its possessions (with the sole exception o f Italy, which remain ed within Louis's empire, but under the direct rul e of Bernard, Pepin's s on).

«b»Emperor«/b»
While at his villa of Doué-la-Fontaine, Anjou, Louis received news of h i s father's death. He rushed to Aachen and crowned himself emperor to sh ou ts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus by the attending nobles.

Upon arriving at the imperial court in Aachen, one of Louis' first act s w as to purge the palace of its "filth." He destroyed the old Germani c paga n tokens and texts which had been collected by Charlemagne. He fur ther ex iled members of the court he deemed morally "dissolute," includin g some o f his own relatives.

From start of his reign, his coinage imitated his father Charlemagne's p o rtrait, which gave it an image of imperial authority and prestige. He q ui ckly sent all of his unmarried sisters to nunneries, to avoid any poss ibl e entanglements from overly powerful brothers-in-law. Sparing his ill egit imate half-brothers, he forced his father's cousins, Adalard and Wal a t o be tonsured, placing them in Noirmoutier and Corbie, respectively , desp ite the latter's initial loyalty.

His chief counsellors were Bernard, margrave of Septimania, and Ebbo, Ar c hbishop of Reims. The latter, born a serf, was raised by Louis to tha t of fice, but betrayed him later. He retained some of his father's minis ters , such as Elisachar, abbot of St. Maximin near Trier, and Hildebold , Arch bishop of Cologne. Later he replaced Elisachar with Hildwin, abbo t of man y monasteries.

He also employed Benedict of Aniane (the Second Benedict), a Septimani a n Visigoth and monastic founder, to help him reform the Frankish churc h . One of Benedict's primary reforms was to ensure that all religious ho us es in Louis' realm adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, named for it s c reator, Benedict of Nursia (480-550), the First Benedict.

In 816, Pope Stephen IV, who had succeeded Leo III, visited Reims and ag a in crowned Louis (Sunday 5 October).

«b»Ordinatio imperii«/b»
On Maundy Thursday 817 (9 April), Louis and his court were crossing a wo o den gallery from the cathedral to the palace in Aachen when the galler y c ollapsed, killing many. Louis, having barely survived and feeling th e imm inent danger of death, began planning for his succession; three mon ths la ter he issued an Ordinatio Imperii, an imperial decree that laid o ut plan s for an orderly succession. In 815, he had already given his tw o eldes t sons a share in the government, when he had sent his elder son s Lothai r and Pepin to govern Bavaria and Aquitaine respectively, thoug h withou t the royal titles. Now, he Preceded to divide the empire amon g his thre e sons:

* Lothair was proclaimed and crowned co-emperor in Aachen by his fathe r . He was promised the succession to most of the Frankish dominions (exc lu ding the exceptions below), and would be the overlord of his brother s an d cousin.

* Pepin was proclaimed King of Aquitaine, his territory including Gascon y , the march around Toulouse, and the counties of Carcassonne, Autun, Av al lon and Nevers.

* Louis, the youngest son, was proclaimed King of Bavaria and the neighb o uring marches.

If one of the subordinate kings died, he was to be succeeded by his son s . If he died childless, Lothair would inherit his kingdom. In the even t o f Lothair dying without sons, one of Louis the Pious' younger sons wo ul d be chosen to replace him by "the people". Above all, the Empire woul d n ot be divided: the Emperor would rule supreme over the subordinate ki ngs , whose obedience to him was mandatory.

With this settlement, Louis tried to combine his sense for the Empire' s u nity, supported by the clergy, while at the same time providing posit ion s for all of his sons. Instead of treating his sons equally in statu s an d land, he elevated his first-born son Lothair above his younger bro ther s and gave him the largest part of the Empire as his share.

«b»Bernard's rebellion and Louis's penance«/b»
The ordinatio imperii of Aachen left Bernard of Italy in an uncertain a n d subordinate position as king of Italy, and he began plotting to decla r e independence upon hearing of it. Louis immediately directed his arm y to wards Italy, and betook himself to Chalon-sur-Saône. Intimidated b y the e mperor's swift action, Bernard met his uncle at Chalon, under inv itation , and surrendered. He was taken to Aachen by Louis, who there ha d him tri ed and condemned to death for treason. Louis had the sentence c ommuted t o blinding, which was duly carried out; Bernard did not surviv e the ordea l, however, dying after two days of agony. Others also suffer ed: Theodul f of Orléans, in eclipse since the death of Charlemagne, wa s accused of h aving supported the rebellion, and was thrown into a monas tic prison, dyi ng soon afterwards; it was rumored that he had been poiso ned. The fate o f his nephew deeply marked Louis's conscience for the res t of his life.

In 822, as a deeply religious man, Louis performed penance for causing B e rnard's death, at his palace of Attigny near Vouziers in the Ardennes , be fore Pope Paschal I, and a council of ecclesiastics and nobles of th e rea lm that had been convened for the reconciliation of Louis with hi s thre e younger half-brothers, Hugo whom he soon made abbot of St-Quenti n, Drog o whom he soon made Bishop of Metz, and Theodoric. This act of co ntrition , partly in emulation of Theodosius I, had the effect of greatl y reducin g his prestige as a Frankish ruler, for he also recited a lis t of minor o ffences about which no secular ruler of the time would hav e taken any not ice. He also made the egregious error of releasing Wala a nd Adalard fro m their monastic confinements, placing the former in a pos ition of powe r in the court of Lothair and the latter in a position in h is own house.

«b»Frontier wars«/b»
At the start of Louis's reign, the many tribes Danes, Obotrites, Slovene s , Bretons, Basques which inhabited his frontierlands were still in aw e o f the Frankish emperor's power and dared not stir up any trouble. I n 816 , however, the Sorbs rebelled and were quickly followed by Slavomir , chie f of the Obotrites, who was captured and abandoned by his own peop le, bei ng replaced by Ceadrag in 818. Soon, Ceadrag too had turned again st the F ranks and allied with the Danes, who were to become the greates t menace o f the Franks in a short time.

A greater Slavic menace was gathering on the southeast. There, Liudewi t , duke of Pannonia, was harassing the border at the Drava and Sava rive rs . The margrave of Friuli, Cadolah, was sent out against him, but he di e d on campaign and, in 820, his margarvate was invaded by Slovenes. In 8 21 , an alliance was made with Borna, duke of the Dalmatia, and Liudewi t wa s brought to heel. In 824 several Slav tribes in the north-western p art s of Bulgaria acknowledged Louis's suzerainty and after he was reluct an t to settle the matter peacefully with the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag, i n 82 7 the Bulgarians attacked the Franks in Pannonia and regained thei r lands .

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

On the southwestern frontier, problems commenced early when c. 812, Lou i s the Pious crossed the western Pyrenees 'to settle matters' in Pamplon a . The expedition made its way back north, where it narrowly escaped a n am bush attempt arranged by the Basques in the pass of Roncevaux thank s to t he precautions he took, i.e. hostages. Séguin, duke of Gascony, wa s the n deposed by Louis in 816, possibly for failing to suppress or coll aborat ing with the Basque revolt south of the western Pyrenees, so spark ing of f a Basque uprising that was duly put down by the Frankish empero r in Dax . Seguin was replaced by Lupus III, who was dispossessed in 81 8 by the em peror. In 820 an assembly at Quierzy-sur-Oise decided to sen d an expediti on against the Cordoban caliphate. The counts in charge o f the army, Hugh , count of Tours, and Matfrid, count of Orléans, were sl ow in acting an d the expedition came to naught.

«b»First civil war«/b»
In 818, as Louis was returning from a campaign to Brittany, he was greet e d by news of the death of his wife, Ermengarde. Ermengarde was the daug ht er of Ingerman, the duke of Hesbaye. Louis had been close to his wife , wh o had been involved in policymaking. It was rumoured that she had pl aye d a part in her nephew's death and Louis himself believed her own dea th w as divine retribution for that event. It took many months for his co urtie rs and advisors to convince him to remarry, but eventually he did , in 820 , to Judith, daughter of Welf, count of Altdorf. In 823 Judith g ave birt h to a son, who was named Charles.

The birth of this son damaged the Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attemp t s to provide for his fourth son met with stiff resistance from his old e r 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 o r d uke (historians differ on this), thus enraging his son and co-empero r Lot hair, whose promised share was thereby diminished. An insurrectio n was so on at hand.
With the urging of the vengeful Wala and the cooperation of his brother s , Lothair accused Judith of having committed adultery with Bernard of S ep timania, even suggesting Bernard to be the true father of Charles. Ebb o a nd Hildwin abandoned the emperor at that point, Bernard having rise n to g reater heights than either of them. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, a nd Jess e, bishop of Amiens, too, opposed the redivision of the empire an d lent t heir episcopal prestige to the rebels.

In 830, at Wala's insistence that Bernard of Septimania was plotting aga i nst him, Pepin of Aquitaine led an army of Gascons, with the support o f t he Neustrian magnates, all the way to Paris. At Verberie, Louis the G erma n joined him. At that time, the emperor returned from another campai gn i n Brittany to find his empire at war with itself. He marched as fa r as Co mpiègne, an ancient royal town, before being surrounded by Pepin' s force s and captured. Judith was incarcerated at Poitiers and Bernard f led to B arcelona.

Then Lothair finally set out with a large Lombard army, but Louis had pr o mised his sons Louis the German and Pepin of Aquitaine greater share s o f the inheritance, prompting them to shift loyalties in favour of the ir f ather. When Lothair tried to call a general council of the realm i n Nijme gen, in the heart of Austrasia, the Austrasians and Rhinelander s came wit h a following of armed retainers, and the disloyal sons were f orced to fr ee their father and bow at his feet. Lothair was pardoned, bu t disgrace d and banished to Italy.

Pepin returned to Aquitaine and Judith after being forced to humiliate h e rself with a solemn oath of innocence to Louis's court. Only Wala was s ev erely dealt with, making his way to a secluded monastery on the shore s o f Lake Geneva. Although Hilduin, abbot of Saint Denis, was exiled t o Pade rborn and Elisachar and Matfrid were deprived of their honours nor th of t he Alps; they did not lose their freedom.

«b»Second civil war«/b»
The next revolt occurred a mere two years later. The disaffected Pepin w a s summoned to his father's court, where he was so poorly received he le f t against his father's orders. Immediately, fearing that Pepin would b e s tirred up to revolt by his nobles and desiring to reform his morals , Loui s the Pious summoned all his forces to meet in Aquitaine in prepar ation o f an uprising, but Louis the German garnered an army of Slav alli es and c onquered Swabia before the emperor could react. Once again the e lder Loui s divided his vast realm. At Jonac, he declared Charles king o f Aquitain e and deprived Pepin (he was less harsh with the younger Louis ), restorin g the whole rest of the empire to Lothair, not yet involved i n the civi l war. Lothair was, however, interested in usurping his father 's authorit y. His ministers had been in contact with Pepin and may hav e convinced hi m and Louis the German to rebel, promising him Alemannia , the kingdom o f Charles.

Soon Lothair, with the support of Pope Gregory IV, whom he had confirm e d in office without his father's support, joined the revolt in 833. Whi l e Louis was at Worms gathering a new force, Lothair marched north. Lou i s marched south. The armies met on the plains of the Rothfeld. There, G re gory met the emperor and may have tried to sow dissension amongst hi s ran ks. Soon much of Louis's army had evaporated before his eyes, and h e orde red his few remaining followers to go, because "it would be a pit y if an y man lost his life or limb on my account." The resigned empero r was take n to Saint Médard at Soissons, his son Charles to Prüm, and th e queen t o Tortona. The despicable show of disloyalty and disingenuousne ss earne d the site the name Field of Lies, or Lügenfeld, or Campus Menda cii, ub i plurimorum fidelitas exstincta est.

On 13 November 833, Ebbo of Rheims presided over a synod in the Churc h o f Saint Mary in Soissons which deposed Louis and forced him to public ly c onfess many crimes, none of which he had, in fact, committed. In ret urn , Lothair gave Ebbo the Abbey of Saint Vaast. Men like Rabanus Maurus , Lo uis' younger half-brothers Drogo and Hugh, and Emma, Judith's siste r an d Louis the German's new wife, worked on the younger Louis to make p eac e with his father, for the sake of unity of the empire. The humiliati on t o which Louis was then subjected at Notre Dame in Compiègne turned t he lo yal barons of Austrasia and Saxony against Lothair, and the usurpe r fle d to Burgundy, skirmishing with loyalists near Chalon-sur-Saône. Lo uis wa s restored the next year, on 1 March 834.

On Lothair's return to Italy, Wala, Jesse, and Matfrid, formerly coun t o f Orléans, died of a pestilence and, on 2 February 835, the Synod o f Thio nville deposed Ebbo, Agobard, Bernard, Bishop of Vienne, and Barth olomew , Archbishop of Narbonne. Lothair himself fell ill; events had tur ned com pletely in Louis favour once again.

In 836, however, the family made peace and Louis restored Pepin and Loui s , deprived Lothair of all save Italy, and gave it to Charles in a new d iv ision, given at the diet of Crémieu. At about that time, the Vikings t err orised and sacked Utrecht and Antwerp. In 837, they went up the Rhin e a s far as Nijmegen, and their king, Rorik, demanded the wergild of som e o f his followers killed on previous expeditions before Louis the Piou s mus tered a massive force and marched against them. They fled, but it w ould n ot be the last time they harried the northern coasts. In 838, the y even c laimed sovereignty over Frisia, but a treaty was confirmed betwe en them a nd the Franks in 839. Louis the Pious ordered the constructio n of a Nort h Sea fleet and the sending of missi dominici into Frisia t o establish Fr ankish sovereignty there.

«b»Third civil war«/b»
In 837, Louis crowned Charles king over all of Alemannia and Burgundy a n d gave him a portion of his brother Louis' land. Louis the German promp tl y rose in revolt, and the emperor redivided his realm again at Quierzy -su r-Oise, giving all of the young king of Bavaria's lands, save Bavari a its elf, to Charles. Emperor Louis did not stop there, however. His dev otio n to Charles knew no bounds. When Pepin died in 838, Louis declare d Charl es the new king of Aquitaine. The nobles, however, elected Pepin' s son Pe pin II. When Louis threatened invasion, the third great civil wa r of hi s reign broke out. In the spring of 839, Louis the German invade d Swabia , Pepin II and his Gascon subjects fought all the way to the Loi re, and t he Danes returned to ravage the Frisian coast (sacking Doresta d for a sec ond time).

Lothair, for the first time in a long time, allied with his father and p l edged support at Worms in exchange for a redivision of the inheritance . A t a final placitum held there, Louis gave Bavaria to Louis the Germa n an d disinherited Pepin II, leaving the entire remainder of the empir e to b e divided roughly into an eastern part and a western. Lothair wa s given t he choice of which partition he would inherit and he chose th e eastern, i ncluding Italy, leaving the western for Charles. The empero r quickly subj ugated Aquitaine and had Charles recognised by the noble s and clergy at C lermont-en-Auvergne in 840. Louis then, in a final flas h of glory, rushe d into Bavaria and forced the younger Louis into the Os tmark. The empir e now settled as he had declared it at Worms, he returne d in July to Fran kfurt am Main, where he disbanded the army. The final c ivil war of his re ign was over.

«b»Death«/b»
Louis fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns and went to h i s summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine, by his palace at Inge lh eim. On 20 June 840, he died, at the old age of 62, in the presence o f ma ny bishops and clerics and in the arms of his half-brother Drogo, th oug h Charles and Judith were absent in Poitiers. Soon dispute plunged th e su rviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by th e Tre aty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, t o becom e the kernels of France and Germany, with Burgundy and the Low Co untrie s between them. The dispute over the kingship of Aquitaine was no t full y settled until 860.

Louis was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Arnould in Metz.

«b»Marriage and issue«/b»
By his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye (married ca. 794-98), he had th r ee sons and three daughters:

1.) Lothair (795-855), king of Middle Francia

2.) Pepin (797-838), king of Aquitaine

3.) Adelaide (b. c. 799)

4.) Rotrude (b. 800)

5.) Hildegard (or Matilda) (b. c. 802)

6.) Louis the German (c. 804-876), king of East Francia

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

1.) Gisela, married Eberhard I of Friuli

2.) Charles the Bald, king of West Francia

By Theodelinde of Sens, he had two illegitimate children:

1.) Arnulf of Sens

2.) Alpais

Louis married Ermengarde, Queen of the Franks in 794. Ermengarde (daughter of Ingerman, Count of Hesbaye and Hedwig) was born in 778 in Hesbaye, België; died on 3 Oct 818 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire, République française. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: LZL6-MM6
• Initiatory (LDS): 14 Jul 1932, LOGAN

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: LCZN-T6T
• Initiatory (LDS): 27 Jan 1933, LOGAN

Pepin + Rothaide de Bobbio. Rothaide was born about 820 in République française. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• FamilySearch ID: LCX5-2HB
• Initiatory (LDS): 22 Jun 1932, LOGAN