hastened to build the monastery of Inden in the woods around Aix-la-Chapelle and to set him at its head.
It was, no doubt, to the influence of the Abbot of Inden that the measures were due which were taken a few years later (817) to establish one uniform rule, that of St Benedict of Nursia, in all monasteries throughout the Frankish Empire. Other regulations were to be applied to the canons of cathedral churches, in order to complete the work formerly begun by St Chrodegang; and in a long capitulary, de rebus ecclesiasticis, the rights and duties of bishops and clerks were defined with the special object of preserving them from the secularisation of their property which had too often befallen them at the hands of the lay power, since the days of Charles Martel.
The Emperor's care for the interests of the Church, and the importance he attached to its good administration, were in harmony both with the traditions set up by Charles and also with the universal conception of an empire in which the civil and ecclesiastical powers were intimately connected, although the imperial authority could not be said to be subjected to that of the Church. As early as the first year of his reign, Louis had had occasion to shew that he intended in this matter to maintain his rights inviolate even against the Pope himself. A conspiracy among the Roman nobility against Leo III had been discovered and punished by that Pope. The culprits had been put to death without consulting the Emperor or his representative. Louis, conceiving that his rights had been infringed by these indications of independence, directed Bernard of Italy and Gerold, Count of the Eastern March, to hold an inquiry into the affair. Two envoys from the Holy See were obliged to accompany them to the Emperor bearing the excuses and explanations of the Pope (815). In the same year a revolt of the inhabitants of the Campagna against the papal authority was by order of Bernard suppressed by Winichis, the Duke of Spoleto. Leo III died on 12 June 816 and the Romans chose as his successor in the Chair of Peter Stephen IV, a man of noble family who seems to have been as much devoted to the Frankish monarchy as his predecessor had been hostile to it. His first care was to exact from the Romans an oath of fealty to the Emperor. At the same time he sent an embassy to Louis with orders to announce the election to him, but also to request an interview at a place suited to the Emperor's convenience. Louis gladly consented and sent an invitation to Stephen to come to meet him in France escorted by Bernard of Italy. It was at Rheims, where Charlemagne had formerly had a meeting with Leo III, that the Emperor awaited the Sovereign Pontiff. When Stephen drew near, Louis went a mile out of the city to meet him, in his robes of state, helped him to dismount from his horse, and led him in great pomp as far as the Abbey of Saint-Remi a little beyond the city. On the morrow he gave him a solemn reception in Rheims itself, and after several
