The Punishment Imperative and the Construction of Political Authority in the Carolingian Empire of Louis the Pious (814–840)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Historians of the Carolingian empire have generally neglected judicial violence as a means of constructing political authority, partly because the wergild system seems to exclude the significance of public punishment, partly because military violence is such a dominant factor in our view of the Carolingians. This is certainly true for the early Carolingians, but judicial violence gained in importance during the reign of Charlemagne, after the military expansion of the empire had come to an end. In contrast to his father Charlemagne, who pushed for the implementation of new forms of corporal punishment, Louis the Pious was committed to such a high degree of clemency towards rebels, criminals and evildoers that his political authority was questioned and that a discussion was triggered about the respective merits of clemency and severity. In this paper, I want to assess the conundrum of conscience which was inflicted upon Louis the Pious by the “double-bind” of a monastic abhorrence of punishment and the Frankish royal legacy of judicial violence.