Oath of Strasbourg

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Tweet Report an Error

The Oath of Strasbourg designates the pledges of allegiance taken by Louis the German, son of Louis the Pious and ruler of the eastern Frankish kingdom (today’s modern Germany), and by his brother Charles the Bald, ruler of the western Frankish kingdom (today’s modern France). As well as their allegiance to each other, Louis and Charles pledged their opposition to the Emperor, their elder brother Lothair. The oath is an important linguistic and cultural document, for it was sworn in the vernacular, not in Latin, and thus testifies to the split that had slowly been occurring in Carolingian society into separate proto-countries with different languages and customs. One version is in a variety of old Gallo-Romance, the ancestor of Old F…

147 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Oath of Strasbourg". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 May 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=6940, accessed 23 November 2024.]

6940 Oath of Strasbourg 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.