Lothair I

So people like Alexander of Hills Bonaventure would say that it was not instituted by Christ or his apostles, right? But by the church at the Council of Mew.

um, which was held under Lotharius.

Even Scotus himself would say that he, he does not disagree that Christ and his apostles, um, did not establish it.

He concedes that, but the same arguments Scotus and the others use is that, Hey, we know we have divine revelation, but again, it's a two tier system where you have apostolic tradition that goes back to the apostles, right? And, um, Yeah, they are both of divine authority.

I see Judith as a fairly impressive person, however, clearly fighting the corner of her son Charles, while running a lot of the day-to-day operations of the court of her husband.

By the middle of the 820s, Lothair, Louis the Pious's eldest son, was a powerful man.

Born in 795 AD, he was in his late 20s and had already been invested with control of Italy after his cousin Bernard's blinding and death.

In 817 AD, he had been declared heir and joint emperor of the Frankish realms with his father's Ordinatio Imperii, and in 823 AD, he was crowned as King of Italy with the Iron Crown.

The Iron Crown of Lombardy, now housed in Monza Cathedral in Italy, is an ancient symbol of power on the peninsula, and legend has it that Saint Helena, Constantine's mother, had it wrought around a nail from the True Cross, but its current parts are from different periods, some of which might date to the time of Constantine.

It had been used to crown Charlemagne as King of Lombardy back in 774 and is one of the great treasures of the medieval world passed down to us.

So Lothair was a powerful figure in the court and looked every inch the heir apparent to the entire empire after his father died or possibly retired to a monastery, which is not something out of the realms of possibility considering the amount of time Louis was spending in prayer.

In 823 AD, the young son of Louis the Pious, Charles, was born.

And acting upon that principle, we find the bishops of France in the ninth century deposing Louis, the son of Charlemagne.

An ecclesiastical council in the same kingdom afterwards adjudged his son, Lothair, unworthy of the crown and conferred it on his brother, Charles the Bald.

A subsequent council deposed him when the pusillanimous monarch complained, I ought not to have been deposed, or at least not before I had been judged by the bishops who gave me royal authority.

I have always submitted to their correction and am ready to do so now.

In 817, he arranged the portions which each one of his three sons should have as a kingdom after his own death.

The eldest, Lothair, was to have the lion's share and was made co-emperor with his father.

Soon after this division, the empress died.

Louis fell into a fit of despondency and talked of abdicating in order to spend the rest of his life as a monk.

They had one son, who was known later as Charles the Bald.

Judith soon acquired great influence over the emperor and used it to procure a kingdom for her son.

In 829, when the boy was seven years old, Louis was persuaded to make a new division, taking away a portion of Lothair's share and giving it to Charles.

All the older sons were angry and fearful that their father, in his partiality for Charles, would give him still more.