This had been clearly perceived as early as the time of Louis the Pious, when, on the morrow of Lothar's usurpation (833), the Bishops, alleging the obligation laid on them by their "priestly office," had plainly asserted their right to examine and punish the conduct of a prince who had incurred guilt by "refusing to obey," as the official record declares, "the warnings of the clergy." For, although Louis the Pious was already looked upon as deposed at the time of the ceremony in St Medard's at Soissons, the course which the Bishops had adopted without hesitation was in point of fact to bring him to trial for his conduct as a sovereign, imposing on him the most humiliating of penances, "after which," as the record concludes, "none can resume his post in the world's army."
Louis the Pious, as already seen[1], did, nevertheless, return to "the world's army," and was even reinstated in the imperial dignity. Yet this decisive action taken by the Bishops in the crisis of 833 shewed clearly that the parts had been inverted. Louis the Pious was the king of the priests, but no longer in the same sense as Charles the Great: he was at their mercy.
The precedent thus set was not forgotten. During the fratricidal struggle which, on the morrow of the death of Louis the Pious, broke out amongst Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald, the Bishops more than once took occasion to interfere, and to make themselves masters of the situation. In March 842, in particular, when Charles the Bald and Louis the German had encamped in the palace of Aix-la-Chapelle whence their brother had precipitately fled at their approach, the clergy, as Nithard, an eye-witness, relates, "reviewing Lothar's whole conduct, how he had stripped his father of power, how often, by his cupidity, he had driven Christian people to commit perjury, how often he had himself broken his engagements to his father and his brothers, how often he had attempted to despoil and ruin the latter since his father's death, how many adulteries, conflagrations and acts of violence of every description his criminal ambition had inflicted on the Church, finally, considering his incapacity for government, and the complete absence of good intentions in this matter shewn by him, declare that it is with good reason and by a just judgment of the Almighty that he has been reduced to take flight, first from the field of battle, and then from his own kingdom." Without a dissentient voice the Bishops proclaimed the deposition of Lothar, and after having demanded of Louis and Charles whether they were ready to govern according to the Divine Will the States abandoned by their brother, "Receive them," they bade them, "and rule them according to the Will of God; we require it of you in His Name, we beseech it of you, and we command it you."
In thus encroaching on the domain of politics, the Bishops were persuaded that they were only acting in the interest of the higher
- ↑ See Chapter I. p. 19.
