LOUIS I

born April 16, 778, Chasseneuil, near Poitiers, Aquitaine [now in France] died June 20, 840, Petersau, an island in the Rhine River near Ingelheim [now in Germany] The Carolingian empire and (inset)divisions after the Treaty of Verdun, byname Louis the Pious, or the Debonair, French Louis le Pieux, or le Dbonnaire, German Ludwig der Fromme Carolingian ruler of the Franks who succeeded his father, Charlemagne, as emperor in 814 and whose 26-year reign (the longest of any medieval emperor until Henry IV [10561106]) was a central and controversial stage in the Carolingian experiment to fashion a new European society. Commonly called Louis the Pious, he was known to his contemporaries by the Latin names Hludovicus or Chlodovicus, which echo the Latin name of Clovis (c. 466511), the illustrious founder of the Merovingian dynasty. Louis was appointed king of Aquitaine in 781 and was already a seasoned 35-year-old politician and military commander when he became coemperor with Charlemagne in 813. He was the fourth monarch of the Carolingian dynasty, preceded by his father; his uncle, Carloman; and his grandfather, Pippin III, the Short. born July 23, 1339, Vincennes, Fr. died Sept. 20, 1384, Bisceglie, Apulia, Kingdom of Sicily duke of Anjou, count of Maine, count of Provence, and claimant to the crown of Sicily and Jerusalem, who augmented his own and France's power by attempting to establish a French claim to the Sicilian throne and by vigorously fighting the English in France. A son of John II of France, Louis in 1356 fought ably at Poitiers against the English. He was sent to England as one of the hostages under the Treaty of Brtigny (1360) but soon escaped. In 1360 his father created the hereditary duchy of Anjou for him, having already given him the county of Maine (1356). Having been made lieutenant general of the provinces of Languedoc and Guyenne by his brother Charles V, who had become king of France in 1364, Louis spent many years fighting the English and harshly subduing those areas sympathetic to the English, especially Brittany. Upon his brother's death (1380) Louis became regent. Primarily interested in extending his own personal realm, he agreed to support the antipope Clement VII, who promised him Itria, a kingdom to be created in central Italy. In 1380 Joan I, queen of Sicily and an ally of Clement, adopted Louis as her heir. A rival claimant, Charles of Durazzo, took over Sicily and had Joan murdered before Louis could come to her aid. He was, nevertheless, crowned king of Sicily and Jerusalem by Clement at Avignon (May 1382). Moving into southern Italy against Charles, Louis died before a decisive battle had been fought. born Dec. 23, 1174, Kelheim, Bavaria died Sept. 15, 1231, Kelheim second Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria, who greatly increased his family's territory and influence. Succeeding his father, Otto I, as duke in 1183, Louis enlarged the Bavarian domains and founded the cities of Landshut, Landau, Iser, and Straubing. In the struggle between Otto IV (of Brunswick) and Frederick of Hohenstaufen (Emperor Frederick II) for the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, he sided first with Otto, then switched to Frederick, who gave him control of the Rhenish Palatinate for his son (also named Otto) in 1214. He participated in the Fifth Crusade in Egypt (1221), and from 1225 to 1228 he was Frederick II's regent in Germany. Louis rebelled against Frederick's son Henry in 1228 and was murdered three years later, perhaps at the Emperor's instigation. born March 5, 1326 died Sept. 10, 1382, Nagyszombat, Hung. byname Louis the Great, Hungarian Lajos Nagy, Polish Ludwik Wielki king of Hungary from 1342 and of Poland (as Louis) from 1370, who, during much of his long reign, was involved in wars with Venice and Naples. Louis was crowned king of Hungary in succession to his father, Charles I, on July 21, 1342. In 1346 he was defeated by the Venetians at Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), an Adriatic port city that had been under Hungarian protection. In 1347 he led an expedition against the kingdom of Naples to avenge the murder (1345) of his younger brother, Andrew, consort of Joan I of Naples, whose new husband, Louis of Taranto, was a suspected accomplice in the murder. Louis I occupied Naples in 1348, but a plague soon forced him to retire; a later invasion (1350) also led to no permanent results. In 1351 Louis I confirmed the Golden Bull of 1222, a charter of liberties, which he modified somewhat by the law of entail, providing that estates of nobles were to be inherited by the male line and could neither be cut up nor given away. If a line died out entirely, the estate was to revert to the crown. Also serfs were to pay their lords one-ninth of their produce. These steps made Louis virtually independent of the Diet financially. Louis' second war against Venice (135758) was more successful than his first ventures. Under the Treaty of Zara (February 1358), most of the Venetians' Dalmatian towns went to Hungary. In the east he protected his expanded domains by defeating the Turks in northern Bulgaria. King Casimir III of Poland, who died without sons, named Louis as his successor, and he was crowned king of Poland on Nov. 17, 1370. The Poles, however, never let him exert much real authority over them, though in 1374 they recognized his daughter Maria and her betrothed husband, Sigismund of Luxembourg, as their future queen and king. Louis' attention again turned to Italy when the Western Schism broke out (1378). Louis helped his protg Charles of Durazzo conquer Naples and supplant its queen, Joan, who declared herself in favour of the antipope Clement VII. Meanwhile, Louis undertook a third war against Venice and won virtually all of Dalmatia (Treaty of Turin, Aug. 18, 1381). King Louis I died in the following year. Maria (with Sigismund), whom he had intended to rule Poland, succeeded him in Hungary, and his other daughter, Jadwiga, became queen of Poland instead of Hungary. born c. 1304 died Aug. 25, 1346, near Crcy, Fr. also called Louis Of Nevers, French Louis De Nevers, Dutch Lodewijk Van Nevers count of Flanders and of Nevers (from 1322) and of Rthel (from 1325), who sided with the French against the English in the opening years of the Hundred Years' War. Grandson and heir of Robert of Bethune, count of Flanders, Louis was brought up at the French court and married Margaret of France. His sympathies were entirely French, and he made use of French help in his contests with the Flemish communes. Under Louis of Nevers, Flanders was practically reduced to the status of a French province. In his time the long contest between Flanders and Holland for the possession of the island of Zeeland was brought to an end by a treaty signed on March 6, 1323, by which West Zeeland was assigned to the count of Holland, the rest to the count of Flanders. The latter part of the reign of Louis of Nevers was remarkable for the successful revolt of the Flemish communes, then rapidly advancing to great material prosperity under Jacob van Artevelde. Artevelde allied himself with Edward III of England in his contest with Philip VI of Valois for the French crown, while Louis of Nevers espoused the cause of Philip. Louis fell at the Battle of Crcy (1346). born Aug. 25, 1786, Strasbourg, Fr. died Feb. 29, 1868, Nice king of Bavaria from 1825 to 1848, a liberal and a German nationalist who rapidly turned conservative after his accession, best known as an outstanding patron of the arts who transformed Munich into the artistic centre of Germany. Louis, the well-educated eldest son of King Maximilian I, was a fervent German nationalist as a youth and served only reluctantly at Napoleon's headquarters in the wars against Prussia and Russia (180607) and Austria (1809). In Bavaria he came to head the anti-French party, and at the Congress of Vienna (181415) he unsuccessfully advocated the return of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. The liberal Bavarian constitution of 1818 bears his stamp, and he was to resist repeatedly the demands of Metternich, the Austrian statesman, for basic changes in that document. In church questions, however, Louis was more conservative, opposing his father's secularization of monasteries. He played an active part in the downfall of Bavaria's leading minister, Maximilian, Graf von Montgelas (1817), whom he blamed for these anti-ecclesiastical policies. Louis' liberal reputation assured him of general acclaim upon his accession, but he was soon to disappoint his subjects. The King frequently feuded with the Diet, and after the revolutions of 1830 in Europe he came to distrust all democratic institutions. The ttingen-Wallerstein ministry (183137) was a shift to the right, and the subsequent government under Karl von Abel (from 1837) steered a strictly reactionary and clericalist course, restoring many monasteries and proceeding to erode the liberal constitution. Culturally, however, Louis' reign was brilliant. An enthusiastic patron of the arts, he collected the works that formed the nucleus of Munich's two best known museums, the Glyptothek and Alte Pinakothek. His large-scale planning of Munich created the city's present layout and classic style. He commissioned many representative buildings, among them the Ludwigskirche, Staatsgalerie, Propylen, Siegestor, Feldherrnhalle, and Odeon. On the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848, Louis, whose passion for the dancer Lola Montez (q.v.) had reduced his popularity even further, abdicated in favour of his son Maximilian II. Additional reading Good overviews of the Carolingian period include Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751987 (1983); and Pierre Rich, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe (1993, originally published in French, 1983). The only modern account of Louis's reign is Egon Boshof, Ludwig der Fromme (1996). Peter Godman and Roger Collins (eds.), Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814840) (1990), is an excellent collection of essays on the government, church, law, learning, literature, and frontiers of Louis's empire; especially noteworthy in this collection is Janet L. Nelson The Last Years of Louis the Pious, pp. 146-159. Stimulating interpretations of different aspects of Louis's reign can be found in Paul Edward Dutton, The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (1994); Francois Louis Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy: Studies in Carolingian History (1971); Peter Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (1986); Mayke de Jong, "Power and Humility in Carolingian Society: The Public Penance of Louis the Pious," Early Medieval Europe 1(1):2952 (1992); and Mayke de Jong, "Old Law and New-Found Power: Hrabanus Maurus and the Old Testament," in Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald (eds.), Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-modern Europe and the Near East (1995), pp. 161176.