According to long-standing historiographical tradition, the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious (814–840) provoked a dramatic crisis which brought his empire to the brink of civil war in June 833. As Frankish armies confronted each other on the Rotfeld—later called the “Field of Lies”—in Alsace, Louis's men deserted him, many joining the army led by his rebellious son, Pope Gregory IV, and a number of bishops. Then, in October, after several months in captivity, a group of bishops presided over Louis's public penance in the monastic church of St. Médard in Soissons. Watched by Lothar, his eldest son and would-be successor, lay magnates, clergy, and others, Louis confessed his sins and renounced his imperial office. Yet, as the rebellion foundered in 834, Louis recovered his throne and ruled until his death, in 840. Even so, historians often insist that the crisis of 833 weakened imperial power irrevocably. The decline and fall of the Carolingian empire was inevitable.
Booker argues that this historiographical tradition arose out of unthinking reliance on Carolingian narratives vindicating Louis, Enlightenment fascination with theater, and organic metaphors applied to the body politic. Historians often describe Louis's empire as senescent, prone to crisis, dissolution, and decay. Booker notes that the recent historiographical trend attempting to dispel this gloom may go too far in depicting the Carolingians as pragmatic and successful in adapting to change. To correct these distortions, Booker attempts what he considers a new approach, understanding Carolingian sources on their own terms, without the distortions of modern historiographical preconceptions.
Booker begins by analyzing narratives of the events of 833 from the Carolingian period through the Enlightenment. He concludes that Louis's supporters, Thegan and the Astronomer, had a preponderant influence in determining the historical memory of 833. Their authoritative interpretations of the contested events of 833 affirmed the legitimacy of Louis's imperial authority by shaping the events of 833 into a morality tale of a virtuous king, who, like Job or Christ, suffered injustice at the hands of hypocrites. In comparison, narratives written by the rebellious bishops were rarely copied, and when considered, only served as proof of the rebels' iniquity. After the ninth century, historical narratives represented Louis as a pious, benign ruler, although unable to control factionalism at court. Fascinated by theater and attuned, perhaps, to the Carolingians' own theatrical understanding of events, Enlightenment historians used the drama of 833 to reveal the forces leading to the Carolingian empire's demise, in an effort to trace the progress of civilization.
After this exhaustive historiographical analysis, Booker turns to often misunderstood or neglected sources justifying the rebellion of 833. The bishops' Relatio and an affidavit by Bishop Agobard of Lyon were written in October, 833, to describe Louis's sins and his public penance; during the 850s and 860s, Bishop Ebo of Reims wrote to defend himself against accusations that he was responsible for the rebellion and Louis's enforced penance. Booker traces the origins of the bishops' rebellion to Louis's reform program, which led to an ever more critical evaluation of their emperor's actions, according to one of the program's main components, Benedict's Rule. The bishops believed their ministerium obliged them to correct a negligent, sinful emperor, or bear responsibility for their own negligence at the Last Judgment. The same reform ideology perhaps led Louis into a voluntary public penance in 833. Yet, in Booker's analysis, the bishops who presided over his public penance were uncertain, anxiously confronting an emperor who had already performed penance twice, in 822 and 830, without serious impairment of his imperial authority. As it was, Louis might have performed his penance sincerely, believing that his renunciation of worldly power would be temporary.
Finally, Booker discusses the shared ideology that motivated both Louis and his adversaries. Once again emphasizing the contribution of Benedict's Rule, Booker concentrates on the “binary” opposition between aequitas and iniquitas, which he considers fundamental to Carolingian evaluation of Louis as a Christian emperor. The troubles of the 820s and 830s apparently interacted with this value system, leading to condemnation of the emperor as iniquitous. His failure to correct abuses, despite repeated admonition, led Louis's opponents to conclude that many sinful transgressions, including adultery, witchcraft, and sorcery, originated in the imperial palace itself. Louis's negligence had allowed the devil to roam throughout the empire, threatening the order of a Christian empire closely identified with the church.
Since his primary interests are historiographical and literary, Booker leaves aside the political concerns that accompanied the ideological conflict of the 830s. Louis's bishops had already expressed grievances about the secularization of church property, lay abbacies, and other issues, which, perhaps, might have been linked to dissatisfaction with his extension of imperial lordship over episcopal sees. Future studies will have to consider these real sources of friction in connection with the ideological conflicts Booker analyzes, while avoiding the misleading historiographical traditions he has discredited. Moreover, he has set Carolingian historians the task of discussing this important period, without relying on anachronistic concepts of “church” and “state.” His re-evaluation of Louis the Pious's reign suggests a similar reassessment is necessary for the reign of Louis's father, Charlemagne, whose glory is also the product of a long-standing historiographical tradition.
Booker's wide-ranging study offers a convincing analysis of the foundations of Carolingian ideology, while tracing the influence of that ideology on a major event in Louis the Pious's reign. His study also contributes significantly to understanding of the pitfalls of Carolingian reform, which had very unintended consequences for Louis's empire.
