ABSTRACT
The Carolingian empire was not effectively ruled by a single government, but it was ruled by members of the same royal house. There was an emperor with power real in some portion of the empire and titular in the rest, and the Frankish ‘culture’ still prevailed from beyond the Pyrenees to Moravia, and from Hamburg to Benevento. In Brittany, Nominoe chased off four bishops as pro-Frankish, invaded the March, took Nantes, and asserted Breton independence of the mother church of Tours. External raiding, rather than maritime commerce, became the main occupation of the Scandinavian peoples, and the Frankish lands were plundered from three chief Scandinavian bases. The Lorraine divorce involved a serious issue in canon law, but it was even more important in the sphere of Frankish politics. After the year 860, Frankish politics centred on the repudiation of Theutberga by Lothar II.
