Pepin le Bossu

[2] However, Einhard and most other Carolingian historians worked in the courts of Charlemagne's successors, and had a vested interest in undermining the legitimacy of the claims of other potential royal lines.

However, a dearth of documents and credible contemporary historians leaves the question up for debate, and some have even argued that Pepin retained a full stake in the inheritance of the kingdom right up until his rebellion in 792.

This quirk scandalized later contemporary historians ("Strange to say," Einhard writes, "he never wanted to give any one of them in marriage to anybody")[1] and probably reflects Charles' reluctance to leave problematic heirs that could interfere with a peaceful succession after his death.

[8] Charlemagne named Charles the Younger "King of the Franks" when he divided his kingdom in 806, and to some historians this suggests that Pepin the Hunchback was also being groomed for future kingship, perhaps for the "lion's share" of Francia, before his rebellion in 792.

According to Goffart, Paul uses his history of the ancestry of Charlemagne as an allegory for the current succession by depicting the Frankish kingship as a "birthright" handed down from a father to only one son, like those passed down among Biblical patriarchs.

"[3] Goffart and like-minded historians even speculate that Charlemagne and his court offered Pepin a sort of quid pro quo: in return for surrendering his claim to the throne, "the Hunchback may have been promised that he would become bishop of Metz.

While he apparently remained at court with Charlemagne's third wife and new Queen Fastrada, his half-brother Charles the Younger joined his father on important campaigns, and even led large detachments of troops.

[11] Indeed, the medieval historians who dismissed Pepin's mother as a concubine were often the same intellectuals and religious reformers who pushed for the imposition of orthodox Catholic practices throughout the Frankish domains, and the abandonment of old pre-Christian customs.

[7] If Charles wanted to impose Catholic notions of orthodoxy on his domains, then he needed to abandon Pepin—the incarnate symbol of what was at best a pre-Christian variety of marriage and at worst, an un-Christian concubinage.

Additionally, both the Royal Frankish Annals and Einhard cite Charles' then-current wife Fastrada, who seems to have been poorly received by many members of court, as a factor in the rebellion.

As cited in the year 792 of the Royal Frankish Annals, "A conspiracy was made against him [Charles] by his oldest son Pepin and some Franks, who claimed that they were unable to bear the cruelty of Queen Fastrada and therefore conspired against the king's life.

"[8] We can find confirmation of this in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni: "It is supposed that the cruelty of Queen Fastrada was the primary cause of these plots, and they were both due to Charles' apparent acquiescence in his wife's cruel conduct, and deviation from the usual kindness and gentleness of his disposition.

"[1] Historian Carl Hammer paraphrases Einhard's position, suggesting the revolt was caused by "crudelitas, the extraordinary harshness, of Charlemagne's wife, Fastrada, which had subverted the normal clemency of the king's rule.

Einhard explains: "When Charles was at war with the Huns, and was wintering in Bavaria, this Pepin shammed sickness, and plotted against his father in company with some of the leading Franks, who seduced him with vain promises of the royal authority.

The Poeta Saxo offers a particularly damning account of Pepin and the other rebels, reporting: [W]icked men conceived a great crime which almost blotted out forever the shining light of the Franks, for they busied themselves in many ways plotting to put the king to death.

Conspicuous among them, the king's oldest son madly offered himself as the author of this crime, being more ignoble in his own worthless character than in his birth.However, a Lombard named Fardulf exposed the plot and reported it to Charles.

As Einhard describes, "When his [Pepin's] deceit was discovered and the conspirators were punished, his head was shaved, and he was suffered, in accordance with his wishes, to devote himself to a religious life in the monastery of Prüm.

He suggests that "Pippin's conspiracy was the last rising against Charlemagne and its suppression permitted the king to slim the royal family down further: only the sons of Hildegard were to inherit..."[6] However, Airlie also points out that the cost of the revolt to Charles was more expansive than the mere insult and threat of death.

Located near the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle rivers, just north of modern-day Luxembourg, Prüm was far from the heart of Charles' empire, and therefore a fitting site for exile.

For I am the LORD who sanctifies them.In spite of this isolated part of the Old Testament's association of deformity with uncleanliness, Christian writers like Isidore of Seville and Augustine of Hippo who followed Jesus maintained that physically disabled people were not inhuman or demonic.

St. Augustine, who exercised a considerable intellectual influence on Carolingian thinkers, wrote in his treatise City of God that "the deserts of souls are not to be estimated by the qualities of bodies.

"[16] As one historian puts it, Augustine and his disciples believed that the role of individual deformities was "hidden from human understanding, but had significance in God's divine plan of creation.

Notker the Stammerer, however, treats Pepin's disability as more of a mundane inconvenience than a sign from God: he writes, with a hint of droll humor, that "all deformed people tend to be more irritable than those who are properly proportioned.

Of these, by God's favor, Pepin Minor now holds the kingdom of Italy and Louis that of Aquitaine.Historical appraisal of the Gesta has varied widely over time, however, and many historians see it as more of a "literary curiosity" with only an incidental or inadvertent historical value.

Initially, he makes no mention of Pepin or Himilitrude in his list of Charlemagne's legitimate offspring and spouses in his Vita Karoli Magni: ...[He] married Hildegard, a woman of high birth, of Suabian origin.

"[13] Hammer also points out that Einhard describes Pepin as a "hapless pawn of the real conspirators" and so hopes to maintain the cohesion of the family unit in his portrayal of Charlemagne and his offspring.

"[1] Professor Lewis Thorpe suggests that "the Charlemagne of the Monk of Saint Gall seems to live before our eyes and to be a little nearer to the real man whom we find portrayed elsewhere.

"[1] Like his portrayal of Charlemagne, Notker's depiction of the hunchback inaugurated a long tradition of fictionalizing Pepin as a literary character, with an emphasis on the complex relationship he maintained with his father.

In 2013, it returned to Broadway in a major well-acclaimed revival, which also won many Tonys, including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical (Diane Paulus), Best Performance by a Leading Actress (Patina Miller, playing the role previously played by Tony Award winner Ben Vereen) and Best Performance by a Featured Actress (Andrea Martin).

The DC comic Arak, Son of Thunder (1981–1985) was set in the time of Charlemagne and featured Pepin (as Pip) in its contemporaneous backup strip, Valda the Iron Maiden.