The Pious King: Thegan, Ermoldus, And The King

De Jong makes a similar argument regarding this. She claims that in 822, Louis “acted from a position of strength, and this was exactly the quality that his behavior must have conveyed to those present-certainly to the clerics. Instead of forcing him into obedience, the bishops followed his ‘most salubrious example.’” While these are all equally important arguments, it is hard to actually grasp the mind of Louis at this point in time. Yes, from the sources it appears that he really strove to be a good example of how a pious person should act, but it is impossible to actually get inside the mind of Louis. Thegan, Ermoldus, and the Astronomer all give him the epithet “the pious emperor,” this would suggest that he was, indeed, striving to aid the people in their lives.
One interesting note to
make is that Thegan, Louis and Notker all write similarly about their respective kings.
Although Notker wrote much later on the life of Charlemagne, his writing concluded that his view of Charlemagne; was quite similar to the positive portrayal of a pious and almost “monkish” king espoused by both Thegan and the Astronomer about Louis. Notker claims that Charlemagne is a God-willed priest in several places as well as stating that control and protection of the Church were fundamental royal duties. Since Notker was writing later in history than either Thegan or the Astronomer, it is possible that he, likewise, employed their practice of calling a king “priestly or monkish.”
The difference between public and private penitence is quite obvious, nevertheless, they both played a much larger role in the Carolingian world than we think. Penitentials became a commodity, which many wished to gain knowledge from, however, because they varied and appear rather contradictory and different from each other. Because of this, they were banned at the council of Paris in 829. However,
a reform on penitentials, led mainly by Ebbo and other likeminded Bishops, began to take place surrounding the controversy of “falsely worded penitential.” Bishop Halitgar of Cambrai became one of the main reformers on penitentials, after Ebbo asked him to write one. The main purpose of Halitgar’s penitential was because Ebbo of Reims asked him to write one because of the confusion among the others. Traditional penance was ordered thusly: a bishop would impose the penance upon the penitent in a solemn public ritual, which involved the penitent being driven from the Church and forced to wear sackcloth. He would then “make amends” in a monastery; “his reconciliation consisted of an equally solemn reentry into the community of the faithful.” However, if the crime by the penitent had not attracted public notice, he would meet “secretly” with a priest and confess; this would then lead him down a path of penance, which would be found in one of the handbooks. However, if the sin was great enough, it did not matter if the penance was a secret one, it would be brought into light; furthermore, the penitent would be forced to make a public confession. Normally this would only occur if the sin was “bad enough.” These sins would include: murders, parricides, incest, heretics, robbers and their like. Public penance was called paenitentia occulta and private was called paenitentia privata. The point in which they differed was finally distinguished at the Council of Rheims in 813.