Pope Stephen IV traveled north and again crowned/anointed Louis (and, in some accounts, his wife Irmingard) at Reims—reinforcing the sacral legitimacy of Louis’s imperial rule and strengthening Carolingian-papal ties.
An agreement between Louis and Pope Paschal I (the Pactum Hludowicianum, concluded shortly after Paschal’s election) addressed governance in central Italy and the relationship of the Papal States to the Carolingian Empire—an important framework for later Carolingian-papal dealings.
A wooden gallery at Aachen collapsed while Louis and his entourage crossed it, killing many and narrowly sparing the emperor. The shock helped precipitate urgent planning for an orderly succession.
Louis issued the Ordinatio imperii (817) to preserve imperial unity while allocating sub-kingdoms: Lothair was elevated as co-emperor, with Aquitaine and Bavaria designated for Louis’s other sons—an attempt to reconcile Frankish partible traditions with an imperial ideal of unity.
Louis moved against his nephew Bernard of Italy after Bernard resisted the post-817 settlement; Bernard was captured and blinded, dying soon after. The episode damaged Louis’s reputation and later fed penitential politics at court.
Louis performed a highly visible act of public penance (at Attigny) that contemporaries associated with atonement for Bernard of Italy’s treatment—an emblematic moment in the reign’s fusion of politics, morality, and ecclesiastical authority.
In 830, Louis’s elder sons—Lothair, Pippin of Aquitaine, and Louis the German—led a palace revolt against their father amid opposition to Judith and to revisions of succession plans. Louis was restored later that year, but the crisis exposed the fragility of imperial unity.
Louis the German and Charles the Bald publicly swore mutual support against Lothair in the Oaths of Strasbourg, a landmark moment for coalition politics in the civil war and famous for its vernacular language forms.
Though signed after Louis’s lifetime, the Treaty of Verdun was the direct outcome of the succession crisis he could not settle permanently: the empire was divided among Lothair I, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald—accelerating the long-term dissolution of Carolingian political unity.
Louis the Pious: Reign, Rebellions, and Succession Crisis (814–840)
