[65] Theodosius the Great was born in Spain about 346 and died in 395. Though he was under the influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan; and though the bishops humiliated him and once compelled him to do penance for the period of eight months, his reign was one of great splendor, and the last year of his life he was sole emperor.
[66] It was in the winter of 1804–5 that the fiasco of Boulogne occurred.
[67] “The emperor celebrated the birth of our Lord at Aachen.”
[68] The city of Ravenna; which is situated between the Ronco and the Lamone rivers.
[69] He absolutely refused to take medicines, and when ill his only treatment was abstaining from food. See also p. 304:--“According to his usual custom he thought to _subdue the fever by fasting_.”
[70] Louis deserved the surname “Pious” so far as his care for the morals of his people was concerned. At the beginning of his reign he earnestly attacked the abuses that prevailed. At court he suppressed licentiousness and punished the nobility who had abused their authority. He also tried to reform the clergy. Seeking to establish the order of succession, he associated his oldest son, Lothair, with himself in the government, and gave to his two younger sons, Pippin and Louis, portions of the empire. His wife, however, died, and he marrying again became the father of a fourth son. Upon this he revised his plans of the partition of the empire. The three older sons rebelled, and took their father prisoner in the year 833, but in the following year he was reinstated by his son Louis. Again in 838 Louis was involved in a dispute with his sons, but he died (840) while the question was in process of arbitration. “He had capacities which might have made him a great churchman, but as a secular ruler he lacked prudence and vigor, and his management prepared the way for the destruction of the empire established by his father.”
[71] A curious and somewhat difficult question arises as to the disposal of the remains of the great emperor. This account rests on the authority of Einhard, and is fully confirmed by Thegan the biographer of Louis the Pious. But in the year 1000 the Emperor Otho III. opened the tomb in the presence of two bishops, and a knight named Otho of Lomello, and according to the statement of that knight communicated to the author of the chronicle of Novalese, they found the emperor sitting on a throne, with a golden crown on his head, and holding a golden sceptre in his hands. The hands were covered with gloves, through which the nails protruding had worked their way. A little chapel (_tuguriolum_) of marble and lime was erected over him, through the roof of which the excavators made their way. None of the emperor’s limbs had rotted away, but a little piece had fallen from the end of the nose, which Otho caused to be replaced in gold. The four discoverers fell on their knees before the majestic figure. Then they clothed him with white robes, cut the finger nails, took away one tooth as a relic, closed the roof of the chapel and departed.