Both Louis the German (806-876) and Charles the Bald (823-877), sons of Emperor Louis the Pious (778-840), have received considerable scholarly attention, including modern biographies, not least because of their perceived roles in establishing Germany and France, respectively. By contrast, their elder brother Lothair I has suffered from comparative neglect. Similarly neglected has been Pippin (797-838), Louis the Pious' other son who reached adulthood and was appointed as king of Aquitaine. The lack of a modern biography of Lothair I, however, is particularly striking because of his immensely important role in the Carolingian Empire.
Lothair I not only served as sub-king in Bavaria and Italy, the latter throughout the 820s and 830s, he also held office as co-emperor under Louis the Pious from 817-840, and then as both the ruler of the Frankish Middle Kingdom and as sole emperor up through 852. In this year, he had his own son Louis II (825-875) anointed as co-emperor by the pope. In her lengthy study of the life and times of Lothair I, Maria Schäpers, Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Deutsche Bergbau-Museum in Bochum, seeks to fill this significant lacuna in the scholarship. As Schäpers explains in her introduction, many of the basic facts of Lothair I's reign, much less their interpretation, remained unsettled as she began this study. As a consequence, the great length of this book is explained, in large part, by a need to lay out the tangled historiographical traditions on many questions, bring to bear the pertinent sources (sometimes for the first time), and finally to draw conclusions about a great many matters that long have been open to dispute.
The volume is organized in seven chapters, each sub-divided into numerous parts and sub-parts, with a lengthy introduction and conclusion. Schäpers, as is fitting for a study that is at least partly a biography, organizes this book chronologically. She begins with Lothair I's birth in Aquitaine circa 795 during Charlemagne's reign, and ends with Lothair's entry as a monk into the monastery of Prüm in September 855 just days before his death. In the first chapter, which functions as the introduction, Schäpers discusses the bifurcation in contemporary views of Lothair I, ranging from very positive to very negative, and subsequent adoption by modern scholars of the most negative interpretations of this ruler's reign. She then turns to a lengthy discussion of the wide range of written sources that are available for Lothair's life and rule, including charters, capitularies, letters, treatises on contemporary politics and morality, and narratives.
She emphasizes, however, the lack of any contemporary biographical accounts of Lothair I such as those that we have for other Carolingian kings and emperors. In addition, Schäpers observes that the authors of narrative works that were focused on the Lothair's middle kingdom (after the division of Verdun in 843), such as the Annals of Xanten, do not provide a court-informed narrative that we have, for example, from the Annals of St. Bertin in the West and the Annals of Fulda in the East. Notably absent from Schäpers' discussion of sources is any reference to material information developed through archaeological investigations, which is essential for understanding contemporary economic and military history. This absence is keenly felt in Schäpers' brief discussions of the military campaigns conducted by Lothair I and his son Louis II, and also of his supposed lack of economic policies.
Chapter 2 covers the period 795-829. Here Schäpers addresses the limitations of sources regarding Lothair I's life up through his late teenage years. The first concrete notice we have of Lothair is upon his appointment as sub-king of Bavaria in 815. This chapter treats in detail the historiographical consideration of the role of Carolingian sub-kings under both Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, as well as the way in which Lothair fulfilled this role in Bavaria (815-817) and subsequently in Italy during the 820s. In this context, Schäpers stresses that although Carolingian sub-kings had important political and administrative roles to play, both Charlemagne and Louis the Pious retained ultimate control over policy in the various regna to which their sons were appointed. Nevertheless, Schäpers argues that Lothair undertook several high-level initiatives on his father's behalf, particularly in Italy, and performed quite well. In addition to Lothair's service as a sub-king, Schäpers also devotes considerable attention to the Ordinatio Imperii of 817 that envisioned the role of Louis the Pious' eldest son as emperor, holding a superior position to his brothers. The implications of and struggle over the OrdinatioImperii subsequently appear as a leitmotif throughout the remainder of the book.
In chapter 3, Schäpers examines the period from Lothair's first revolt against Louis the Pious in 830 until the death of the latter in 840. This story has been told from a variety of perspectives in numerous scholarly works, and Schäpers' account here largely echoes earlier studies, albeit with a more positive interpretation of the role played by Lothair. Contemporaries were unhappy with Louis the Pious' handling of political affairs in the wake of the series of military difficulties and climatological disasters of the late 820s. Louis the Pious' decision to carve out a kingdom for his son Charles, born from his second wife Judith, as well as his decision to appoint Bernard of Septimania as his chamberlain, also caused significant political turmoil. The initial revolt against Louis the Pious in 830 was a failure. According to Schäpers, and here against much of the previous scholarship, Lothair did not instigate this rebellion and ultimately gave up when he realized that the emperor retained the support of most of the aristocracy. She rejects the notion that it was Lothair's diffidence and failure to take decisive action that led to the failure of this first revolt. In her discussion of the revolt in 833, which culminated in the capitulation by Louis the Pious to his sons at the Field of Lies, Schäpers argues that Lothair's rigid insistence on adhering to the terms of the Ordinatio Imperii cost him the support of his brothers, and led to the reinstatement of Louis the Pious in 834. In the final part of this chapter, Schäpers considers in some detail the evidence for Lothair's rule in Italy, drawing largely on his charters in the absence of contemporary narrative texts. Here, Schäpers presents Lothair acting like a standard Carolingian king, developing relationships with important magnates, finding offices and lands for his northern supporters, who came into exile with him after 834, and supporting the development of strong church institutions.
Chapter 4 focuses on the period of civil war within the Carolingian Empire, 840-843, following the death of Louis the Pious. Schäpers ascribes to Lothair what amounts to an idee fixe with respect to the terms of the Ordinatio Imperii, and his unwillingness to give up claims to a unitary empire under his own rule. Much of the chapter is devoted to the individual movements of Lothair and his brothers Louis and Charles as they maneuvered their armies and sought support. There is, however, no discussion here of Lothair's overall strategy or plan of action, other than the assertion that Lothair sought to avoid battles and did not want to kill his brothers. In this context, Schäpers seeks to absolve Lothair of any responsibility for the slaughter that took place at the battle of Fontenoy.
Chapter 5, which covers the period 843-855, focuses ostensibly on the government of the newly established middle kingdom and Lothair's relationships with his brothers. Schäpers emphasizes again that we lack sources that have insight regarding Lothair's perspective and that much of what we do have reflects the varying biases of external sources. Schäpers describes in this chapter the various crises that Lothair overcame, including a rebellion in Provence in 845, the Saracen attack on Rome in 846, the kidnapping of his daughter by Count Gislebert of Maasgau, a fidelis of Charles the Bald, as well as an increasing tempo of Viking raids along the coasts of the Carolingian Empire. Schäpers also discusses the significant role played by Lothair's son Louis II as an all but independent ruler in Italy, particularly after 847.
In the final sections of this chapter, Schäpers turns to an all-too brief discussion of Lothair's court and government, emphasizing the limited information that is available from the sources. With respect to his court, for example, Schäpers concludes that we have little evidence about how it operated or who was involved, but that we can be confident that it was organized on principles and on a scale set out by Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims in his updated version of the text De ordine palatii (573). Similarly, Schäpers assures her readers that Irmingard, Lothair's queen, played a major role in his decision-making, but that overall there is little information about the role of women at his court (581).
In taking this minimalist approach Schäpers misses several opportunities to draw conclusions about the nature and scale of Lothair's government. For example, she does not consider the types and volume of information required by Lothair I to rule his realm after making the decision to base himself more or less permanently at the imperial capital of Aachen. Nor does Schäpers consider the manner in which Lothair might have obtained and analyzed this information. Schäpers also limits her discussion of the economic resources available to Lothair to the observation that the court never lacked supplies. However, there are considerable numbers of detailed studies dealing with the Carolingian fisc in the middle kingdom that permit much more far-reaching conclusions about the resources available to Lothair to pursue his various policies.
This lack of attention to the royal fisc also is connected to one of the few direct missteps in the book, when Schäpers discusses the overall economy of the middle kingdom and the approach of Lothair's government to economic policy. Schäpers points out the widely divergent views among scholars regarding agricultural productivity in this period, but does not appreciate what a difference in yields between 1:1.5 and 1:4 would have meant for our understanding of demography and economic growth. The former, postulated by some scholars in the immediate post-war period would have entailed periodic starvation and virtually no surpluses, while the latter would have supported robust population growth and extensive surpluses that could be tapped by both private and governmental agents for a wide range of purposes. In this context, Schäpers is missing most of the scholarship of the last 30 years that emphasizes very rapid population growth, particularly within the northern parts of Lothair I's realm, and the concomitant economic expansion throughout this region. Similarly, Schäpers' claim (619) that Lothair, supposedly following the tradition of his father and grandfather, did not have any economic policies intended to stimulate trade is at odds with much of the contemporary scholarship on economic matters.
Chapter 6, the briefest of the volume, focuses on Lothair's entry into Prüm as a monk shortly before his death and his decisions regarding the distribution of his kingdom among his three sons Louis II, Lothair II (835-869), and Charles of Provence (845-863). The conclusion, styled chapter 7, provides a lengthy recapitulation of the main points raised in each of the previous chapters. The volume as a whole is equipped with an extensive scholarly apparatus of notes, bibliography of sources and scholarship, and an index. There are, however, no maps or images.
Overall, Schäpers offers a very useful synthesis and analysis of the scholarship regarding important elements of the reign of Lothair I, as well as a clearly written chronological account of his life and actions. However, after almost 700 pages of text Lothair remains a cipher. Was it really the case that Lothair was driven from the time he was 22 years old by the idee fixe of implementing the terms of the Ordinatio Imperii? What of Lothair's relationships with his sons? Schäpers does a good job of showing how much responsibility Lothair gave to Louis II, and how much trust he placed in him, but does not draw any conclusions from these realities about Lothair's personality. We also do not learn very much at all about Lothair's relationship with his namesake Lothair II. As a Carolingian ruler, one of Lothair's main roles was to provide protection to his people from external aggressors, but we learn very little about Lothair as a military leader, or the nature of warfare in this period. Overall, Schäpers' Lothair is not really a person in the way that Louis the German emerges from the pen of Eric Goldberg or Charles the Bald from Janet Nelson's account. Rather, he is presented here as a collection of actions with the reader left to draw conclusions.