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According to long-standing historiographical tradition, the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious (814-840) provoked a dramatic crisis which brought his empire to the brink of civil war in June 833. As Frankish armies confronted each other on the Rotfeld--later called the "Field of Lies"--in Alsace, Louis's men deserted him, many joining the army led by his rebellious son, Pope Gregory IV, and a number of bishops. Then, in October, after several months in captivity, a group of bishops presided over Louis's public penance in the monastic church of St. Médard in Soissons. Watched by Lothar, his eldest son and would-be successor, lay magnates, clergy, and others, Louis confessed his sins and renounced his imperial office. Yet, as the rebellion foundered in 834, Louis recovered his throne and ruled until his death, in 840. Even so, historians often insist that the crisis of 833 weakened imperial power irrevocably. The decline and fall of the Carolingian empire was inevitable.
Booker argues that this historiographical tradition arose out of unthinking reliance on Carolingian narratives vindicating Louis, Enlightenment fascination with theater, and organic metaphors applied to the body politic. Historians often describe Louis's empire as senescent, prone to crisis, dissolution, and decay. Booker notes that the recent historiographical trend attempting to dispel this gloom may go too far in depicting the Carolingians as pragmatic and successful in adapting...