Any inquiry into how far Charlemagne's innovation shaped his successors’ roles in triumphal entries and Palm Sunday processions over the next 350 years is hampered both by the sketchy nature of the contemporary records and the tendency of historians to read those records through the lens of Kantorowic's exaggerated claims. In Chapter 2, I offer tentative conclusions rather than definitive answers.

In 801, after a prolonged siege, the citizens of Barcelona surrendered to the forces of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's youngest son and the duke of Aquitaine. The city had been under Muslim rule for some eighty years. According to his anonymous contemporary biographer, now known only by his nickname (the Astronomer), Louis delayed his entry “until he could decide how to consecrate this desired and welcome victory to God's name with suitable thanksgiving. On the next day his priests and clergy preceded him and his army through the gate of the city. With solemn splendour and hymnic praise, they processed to the church [i.e., the Visigothic cathedral] of the holy and most victorious Cross, where they gave thanks to God for the victory divinely bestowed upon them.” Ermold the Black, a contemporary court poet, dates the opening of the city gates to Holy Saturday and the entry itself to Easter Sunday, which fell that year on April 4. He adds that Louis “purified” the places of worship appropriated by Muslims for use as mosques before “he gave reverent thanks to God.” Louis's entry into Barcelona shared significant features with his father's entry into Rome in 774. Common to both are the juxtaposition of clergy and soldiers; the singing of “hymnic praise,” which in both cases may have been acclamations (laudes) directed towards the king; the celebration of a decisive military conquest and annexation of new territory; the acknowledgment of the power of the “victorious cross”; and, if Ermold is correct, the timing of the entry just a few days after Palm Sunday. The contemporary accounts, however, yield no decisive reference to palms or to any other elements of the Palm Sunday story or liturgy.

The few other records of Carolingian triumphal entries that survive are even sketchier. In the summer of 818, Louis led “a great army” to quell a rebellion in Brittany. He was by then, as his father had been, both king of the Franks and emperor.