Recently, I updated the Translated Primary Sources page. I know that translating charter material is kind of our gimmick on this blog, and I know that the inevitable progression of chronological time means that if you started at a given point heading towards another you’re going to have more of the earlier material if you haven’t finished yet; but I was nonetheless a bit put out to find how much it skews towards late ninth-century material rather than tenth-century stuff proper, and I also thought that some non-diplomatic sources wouldn’t go amiss. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I decided, now that we’ve paused translating wills, that it wouldn’t go amiss to translate some smaller non-diplomatic sources. The fact I’m doing all this for free in my spare time is going to impose limits on what I deal with – an English translation of the acts of the Council of Saint-Basle is something I’d like very much, but I personally don’t feel incentivised to go through all sixty-odd pages of it – but plenty of material on the shorter side is important and can be overlooked.
Today’s source is certainly the former, although I don’t think it’s the latter. (Ironically too given my concerns, it’s also late ninth century!) It comes in two parts, the first being a breviary written by one Erchanbert around 826. I’m translating this part from the MGH edition, which is an abbreviated version of the text, which is fine by me because the part I’m more interested in is the Continuatio Erchanberti, written by Notker the Stammerer in 881. Between them, these texts cover the history of the Franks from the Merovingians down to the end of the ninth century.
Breviarium Erchanberti
The Breviary of Erchanbert from the Fifth Century Up to AD 827
With the death of King Faramund, who was the first king over the Franks, etc…
King Theuderic, son of Clovis, brother of Chlothar, reigned for 19 years. His mayor of the palace was Berthar; when he was killed, the younger Pippin, son of Ansegisl, coming from the Austrasians, succeeded in the leadership of the mayors of the palace.
Thereafter, the kings began to have the name and not the honour; wherever they were established, they had lots to eat, and they were held under constant oversight in order that they could not do carry out any act of power. In those times and thereafter, Gotfrid, duke of the Alemannians, and other dukes all about were unwilling to obey the dukes of the Franks, because they could not serve the Merovingian kings as they had previously been accustomed. And so each of them carried on, until finally, a little after the death of Duke Gotfrid, Charles [Martel] and the other princes of the Franks little by little endeavoured to bring them back into the fold as tightly as they could…
The Franks established Daniel, formerly a cleric, who had let his hair grow, as king, and they named him Chilperic; because the line of kings had failed, they established him whom they could found to be the closest relation to the Merovingians, because the Merovingians (as they say), just like the Nazarenes of old, never cut their hair; and he reigned for 6 years…
Therefore, the aforesaid prince, with the counsel of his best men, having asked and persuaded the king and receiving in the end his unwilling consent, divided the realm of the Franks between his two sons Carloman and Pippin, and following an illness immediately ended his life in the year 741.
Carloman, therefore, and his brother Pippin, having divided the realm between themselves, held the leadership of the Franks together for 10 years. Meanwhile, as they say, the aforesaid King Theuderic held the name but not the realm, and only that minor dignity which previous kings had held, nothing except solely that when the aforesaid princes made charters of gift, they put his name and year at the end of the page.
Prince Carloman, in the sixth year of the aforesaid, commending his realm and sons to his brother, in order that he might raise them to kinship when they came of age, went to Rome, was tonsured at St Peter’s, went to the monastery of St Benedict, and subjected himself to be surrendered to the discipline of the Rule.
Before Pippin was elevated to the kingship, a pope named Stephen came from Rome to the borders of the Franks in order to seek out the aforesaid prince so that he could help him with Haistulf, king of the Lombards, because he had seized both cities and other places and borders from St Peter. The aforesaid prince is said to have responded ‘I have a lord king, and I do not know what he wants to rule on this matter’. But the pope beseeched help from the king with the same words. Then the king said ‘Do you not see, O pope, that I do not enjoy royal dignity and power? How can I do any of this?’ The pope said ‘That sounds right, because you are unworthy of such an honour’. Returning to Prince Pippin, he said, ‘By the authority of St Peter I command you to tonsure him and send him to a monastery. How can he hold land? He is useful neither to himself nor to others.’ He was immediately tonsured and thrust into a monastery, and the pope said to the prince: ‘the Lord and the authority of St Peter chooses you to be prince and king over the Franks’. And he immediately established and blessed him as king, and consecrated his two sons – who were still immature – Charles and Carloman as kings. But King Pippin promised that he would do everything as pleased him, and afterwards he did. And King Pippin reigned 17 years after his consecration.
Kings Charles and Carloman, the sons of Pippin, held the realms together for 4 years. King Charles reigned by himself for 45 years, and Pope Leo consecrated him as emperor in the thirtieth year of his reign. Louis, king and emperor, has reigned happily, with God propitious, for 19 years at this point. From King Chlothar to the present 13th year of Emperor Louis, there are 232 and ten years in total.
2. The continuation of a monk of Reichenau for the years 840-881
Emperor Louis died in the 27th year of his reign, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 840, in the third indiction, on the 12th kalends of July.
In the second year after his death, his three sons, after a terrible battle which raged between them over the sharing out of the realm, divided up Europe in this fashion. The first-born Lothar received Italy, Burgundy and part of Lyonnais Gaul, the province of the Moselle, and the part of those who are called the Old Franks. His brother, the most glorious King Louis, received the whole of Germany, that is, the whole of East Francia, Alemannia or Rhaetia, Noricum, Saxony and many barbarian nations. Again, Charles, who was yet a boy, by the efforts of his mother, the most cunning Judith, accepted five provinces: the Viennois, the province of Autun, Gallia Narbonnenis, and part of Belgica or Lyonnais. Their fourth brother, named Pippin, retained Aquitaine, Spain and Gascony and Gothia, which he had received whilst his father was alive (against the will of his father and his brothers), until the end of his life. Provence, which is simply called ‘the Province’, is known to have passed between this party and that party.
The sons of Lothar, that is, Louis and Lothar, divided the realm of their father in such a way that Louis received Italy and the name of emperor and Lothar the cisalpine portion of his father.
Louis, king of Germany, many years before his death, providing for peace, took care to divide his realm between his three very illustrious sons born of Queen Emma in such a way that he committed Noricum and part of the barbarian nations to his first-born, the very warlike Karlmann, to be ruled; he made his like-named son Louis co-heir of his realm, that is, of the Franks and the Saxons, with tribute from the foreign-born. Again, he sent the most mild Charles as ruler into Alemannia, Greater Rhaetia and also Chur. He did this in such a way that his sons should hold these specific estates while he was still alive, and take care to determine minor cases, and that all the bishoprics and monasteries and counties and the public fiscs and all the higher justices should be beholden to himself.
Therefore Louis, king of Germany, died at Frankfurt on the 5th kalends of September in the thirty-sixth year after the death of his father Emperor Louis, and was buried in Lorsch in the basilica of St Nazarius, and left his three aforesaid sons as heirs to his realm, having also added to his realm about half a part of Lotharingia.
Meanwhile Louis, Lothar’s brother, had died in Italy the year before King Louis of Germany. Their brother Karlmann occupied Italy up to the Po. Charles of Gaul invaded it beyond the Po, and then returned to Gaul from there and died on the journey. He left the government of the empire to Karlmann, since he had previously added the realm of Pippin (who had died without living offspring except only one, Bishop Charles of Mainz) to his own realm.
And so, Karlmann, after holding Italy for a short time, returned to Noricum, attacked by a terrible and incurable disease, whilst he was still alive, conceded Italy to his most pious and faithful brother Charles to be governed.
He, having gathered a large army, occupied it completely unexpectedly, and came to Ravenna, and commanded the Roman pope, named John, to be summoned to him, and the patriarch of Friuli too, and the archbishop of Milan, and all the bishops and counts and the other leading men of Italy, and he was established king there by them, and all of them besides the bishop of the apostolic see bound themselves with oaths to his devoted service. Liutpert, bishop of Mainz, was present at this gathering at the command of King Louis.
In the same year, the fourth after his father’s death, Karlmann put an end to dwelling in this life. The following year, that is, the 881st from the Incarnation, in the 14th indiction, the same most clement Charles, equal to his grandfather the great emperor Charlemagne in all wisdom and industry and success in war and overcoming him in the tranquillity of peace and the prosperity of affairs, went to Rome with all the rulers of Italy and many from Francia and Swabia, and was consecrated as emperor by the Roman pontiff, who placed on his head a crown from the treasury of the holy apostle Peter, and was called Augustus Caesar, and now by favour of divine clemency rules the most peaceful empire, and lady Richgardis was elevated together with him to the consortship of the realm by the same apostle.
Charles of Gaul left one surviving son, named Louis. He lived a very short time after the death of his father, and left this life by an early death, leaving two surviving sons, that is, Louis and Carloman, who are now growing into the first flower of youth as the hope of Europe. Karlmann, son of the great Louis, had no sons except one named Arnulf, born from a certain very noble woman who was not legally betrothed to him. He still lives and O! Let him live so that the light of the great Louis be not extinguished in the house of the Lord!
Similarly, Louis king of Francia had one son named Hugh, a very attractive and warlike youth, from a concubine of very high nobility, who this year was killed in battle against the barbarians alongside the most religious bishops Thierry and Markward and Bruno, brother of Queen Liutgard, to the ruin of the Franks, since not long before the son of this Liutgard received from lord Louis was killed by a sudden death on the journey to Noricum whilst Karlmann yet lived, I know not from what cause, and indeed various opinions are bandied around about this by the fickle mob.
Now, therefore, it rests in the hand of God Almighty alone, by Whose will the universe is ruled, whether He will deign to awaken the seed of the lord emperor Charles, who is still young but excels all the old in good habits, and from the most religious queen and augusta Richgardis, through which the tyrants, or rather bandits, who (although the most serene emperor Charles and his brother the lord king Louis yet lived) presumed in secret to raise their head, might be suppressed by divine help. In the meantime, having respect for human shame, we will pass over them in silence until either they come over to the princes of the world and seek pardon for their stupidity or (as is appropriate that men who disturbed the commonwealth should suffer) until they are burned to ashes and blown away in the wind and condemned with their names – or, better, their ignominy and memory – forever.
I’m not going to comment on the original Breviarium here, although there’s some pretty darn interesting stuff on it out there. But there’s enough to talk about in Notker’s comments on his own time! First of all, Notker is already starting to get really concerned about the shape of at least the East Frankish descent line. Noteworthily, whilst he comments on whether or not children are legitimate, he’s not completely ruling at least some illegitimate offspring out of the royal succession. Notker’s view on Arnulf of Carinthia would only get sharper as the 880s wore on, but his apparent interest in Hugh, son of Louis the Younger, is also interesting. Noteworthy too is the fact that Charles the Fat’s illegitimate son Bernard doesn’t get a mention here – possibly he was too young? Even more, it’s only 881 – there are still four legitimate, crowned Carolingians rocking around. I suppose, from his point of view, there have been four major deaths in just the last two years; but I think the main clue is that final paragraph.
Who are the ‘tyrants’ whom Notker is talking about? The text’s editor mentions Boso of Provence, but as always when talking about the early 880s we also have to consider Hugh of Alsace as well. Both these figures raise interesting questions about Notker’s ideas about rulership. Hugh of Alsace, illegitimate though he might have been, was a son of a Carolingian king, but if it is him about whom Notker is talking he clearly doesn’t envisage him as throne-worthy. (For the record, I think Notker does mean Hugh of Alsace, so from here on out I’ll stop with the qualifiers.) My guess is that Notker thinks he missed his window: he might be in a descent line, but he’s not an ‘heir to the realm’ and there’s already qualified kings. This makes his comments as applied to Boso equally interesting, as he mentions Charles the Fat and Louis the Younger, not Carloman II or Louis III, as the relevant kings. Boso did pose a threat to territory under the control of the East Frankish kings, but that wasn’t the primary objective. One of Boso’s justifications for becoming king was that there was no king otherwise after Louis the Stammerer’s death. I wonder if the argument that Carloman and Louis for whatever reason didn’t count could actually have found wider purchase? Louis the Younger, of course, was trying his hardest to come after the West Frankish kingdom as well…
More broadly, despite Notker being more-or-less contemporary the shape of the wider array of the Carolingian family is starting to get fuzzier. He mis-identified Pippin II of Aquitaine as a brother rather than a nephew of the sons of Louis the Pious – something even more noteworthy because he’s apparently familiar with Pippin’s brother (not son) Archbishop Charles of Mainz. He also manages to completely forget about Lothar I’s third son Charles of Provence. I can’t think of any particular sinister motivation for this, but it’s a useful reminder that the endless array of Charles’ and Louis’ were confusing for contemporaries as well.
A final note is about Louis the German’s division of his realm between his sons. If you remember our discussion of the provisions of the 877 Capitulary of Quierzy regarding Louis the Stammerer, you may also recall that Charles the Bald’s refusal to allow his son any quote-unquote ‘real power’ whilst he was in Italy is an important plank in the argument that Charles was uniquely contemptuous of Louis. Yet a simple look at Notker’s statements shows Louis doing the same thing with his sons. This is a strong plank in the case that Quierzy is just business as usual for power sharing between fathers and sons in the late ninth century.
17 thoughts on “Source Translation: The Breviary of Erchanbert and the Continuation of Notker the Stammerer”
I find the Merovingian bits of this translation extremely interesting even though they’re not the main focus of this post, because they show that there’s always been debate and controversy about when exactly did all effective political power pass from the kings to the mayors. Erchanbert seems to have thought that Pippin of Herstal’s victory at Tertry in 687 was the turning point, judging from what he writes in this passage. He also seems to have identified this point in time as the moment when the dukes of Alemannia, Thuringia, Bavaria and Aquitaine and the patricians of Burgundy and Provence went de facto independent from the Regnum Francorum, and gives an interesting explanation for it – that these regional governors with plenipotentiary powers decided to cut ties with the centre because they could only respect the authority of the king’s not those of the mayors of the palace/ dukes of the Franks. In many ways that explanation has a lot of merit to it, no doubt because it could also explain what happened in 751 – the Carolingians could only secure control over all the territories the early Merovingians had ruled in, and thus eliminate potential allies/ refuges for rebels, if they assumed the royal dignity themselves. To a certain extent modern historians would agree with him, given that by 687 it was clear to elites from the periphery that konigsnahe just wasn’t worth it anymore and the royal court was too toxic, and Chris Wickham in “the Inheritance of Rome” notes the much smaller area that Pippin of Herstal’s governmental activity concerns compared to that of Dagobert I in the 630s, though he sees it as being rooted in the factional struggles of the 640s to 670s and Tertry as just being the final straw.
This differs a lot from what Adhemar of Chabannes wrote 200 years after Erchanbert, as he claimed that Childebert III (r.694 – 711), whom he describes as “the glorious king Childebert, of good memory”, and his short lived son Dagobert III (711 – 715) still held effective royal power, and that it was after 715 that the Merovingians “forsook prudence” and became kings in name only. In many ways, Adhemar’s view is closest in line with that of Paul Fouracre and many other Merovingianists today, who would argue that the civil war of 715 – 720 was what really brought about the end of Merovingian royal power – even the most revisionist historians would concede that Einhard’s description of the last Merovingians would be accurate for the generation immediately preceding the Carolingian coup d’etat. Erchanbert on the other hand takes a view that would be moderately less fashionable in Merovingianist circles today. But certainly no medieval writer on the Merovingians seems to have thought that the death of Dagobert, let alone Chlothar’s Edict of Paris in 614, were what sent the Merovingians on the path to ruin. Medieval views on the Merovingians are fascinating, and the reception of the Merovingians before the sixteenth century is incredibly understudied – its given less than a paragraph in “The Oxford Handbook to the Merovingian world.”
Erchanbert’s interpretation of Chilperic II is also fascinating. He was made king “because the line of kings had failed” (not true!) and because he was “the closest relation to the Merovingians” (he arguably was a Merovingian, if he was the son of Childeric II). That he, of all the later Merovingians, is the only one apart of Theuderic III to be deemed worthy of mention is interesting in and of itself. Although if I’m interpreting Erchanbert’s words correctly, he seems to be conflating Theuderic III and IV into one king, with Chilperic popping up and then disappearing again.
That’s an incredibly good point. I guess he would be saying that Chilperic II wasn’t a real Merovingian because Chilperic II was backed by Ragenfrid, who was the arch-rival of Charles Martel in the civil war for leadership of the Frankish kingdom in the late 710s, while Charles himself backed Chlothar IV to give his rule as mayor/ prime minister of Austrasia legitimacy. This may reflect earlier traditions of Carolingian propaganda, or it may be his own retrospective way of saying why Charles Martel was on the side of right in the civil war which he chooses not to mention explicitly.
Anyway, Erchanbert’s narrative of the late Merovingian era is such a clear contrast to Einhard’s, which just says that the Merovingian kings had been living in decadence and exercising no real power since time immemorial and only names Childeric III. Its clear that Erchanbert did some historical research – he probably used the Liber Historiae Francorum and the Annales Mettenses Priores, but possibly also some less well-known or no longer extant sources as well.
“Medieval views on the Merovingians are fascinating, and the reception of the Merovingians before the sixteenth century is incredibly understudied – its given less than a paragraph in “The Oxford Handbook to the Merovingian world.””
Yes, this definitely needs more attention!
Glad to hear that someone agrees with me on this. Because normally what happens when most scholars talk about the medieval reception of the Merovingians is that they bring up Einhard as evidence of Carolingian “damnatio memoriae” of the preceding dynasty, they might bring up Hincmar and his myth-making about Clovis and Saint Remigius and then they’ll jump to the Grand Chroniques de France, considered as Capetian royalist propaganda. After cursory treatment of these, its straight on to the sixteenth century with Paolo Emilio Coimo, Claude Fauchet and Francois Hotman, who get considerably more attention. This is ultimately the result of three underlying assumptions.
1. The propaganda of the Carolingians and Capetians meant that people either dismissed/ forgot about the Merovingians, or else revered mythologised, ahistorical versions of certain Merovingians like Clovis and Dagobert.
2. The bedrock of true Merovingianist scholarship has always been the Romanist-Germanist debate, which begins with the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Germania in the fifteenth century and gains political potency in France in the eighteenth century with the clash between supporters of Bourbon Absolutism (who favour the Romanist view) and critics of it (who favour the Germanist view) – this is essentially the crux of the opening chapters of Ian Wood’s “The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages.”
3. Proper, serious historical scholarship grounded in primary sources begins with Renaissance humanism/ early modern antiquarianism.
I would challenge all three of these unspoken assumptions, but they’re incredibly pervasive and they mean that medieval reception of the Merovingians is very understudied.
When I was a junior PhD student, I went to a conference in St Andrews and heard Paul Fouracre talking about the _Vita Dagoberti_. In discussion, we ended up concluding there had been a ‘post-Merovingian’ shift around the mid-ninth century, when the Carolingians got a lot less insecure about their dynastic predecessors… This more-or-less fits with the (admittedly few) times I encounter them in tenth-century sources. Folcuin’s _Gesta abbatum Sithensium_ springs to mind, where there’s no animus against the Merovingians at all, IIRC, and the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian is presented as a smooth transition between stable royal families. I think some version of Fouracre’s talk is out in the _Frankland_ volume.
When I was doing my PhD, I was lucky enough to work quite closely with Erik Goosman. His thesis is excellent, and well worth reading. As is the article on Merovingian long hair, which, while my supervisor voiced some reservations, I find thoroughly convincing.
Fouracre does indeed have an article on Dagobert(s) in the Frankland volume. Again, excellent and well worth reading.
On Erchanbert, yes, he’s quite clearly using the LHF as his source. If I was feeling ungenerous, I’d say he’s not engaging with it particularly carefully, but that might just be the impression left by his summarising. What’s clear from his comments on Chilperic is that there was certainly a perception by later authors that ‘Daniel’ was not a legitimate Merovingian. In fact, this is something I discussed in my thesis and in an article. Contrary to most Merovingianists, I argue that the LHF author did not approve of Chilperic and thought him illegitimate. Since that was the source for later authors, it’s easy to see why it became a theme.
On (later) medieval perceptions of the Merovingians, I wouldn’t necessarily challenge Joseph’s point 2 so much as open it up for questioning. The other two points can definitely be challenged. The whole subject needs some attention though, even if only to point out – as Fraser does – that by the tenth century there wasn’t an anti-Merovingian sentiment any more. Personally, I’d wonder how much this was to with the passing of time (water under the bridge), or whether challenges to the Carolingian dynasty made a difference. But I’m way out of my depth in the tenth century, so I wouldn’t want to speculate too much.
(Apologies for posting all this in one reply – I don’t seem to be able to reply to individual replies.)
I completely agree with you here. It would be a scholarly achievement enough just to demonstrate that by the tenth century (and really, after the generation of Einhard), there wasn’t really much of an anti-Merovingian animus around any more and thus more nuanced historical views of them could emerge.
Just to take up Notker’s section, I found the points about illegitimacy really interesting. There’s sort of an idea in the scholarship that Pippin III instituted new ideas about royal legitimacy in terms of marriages and heirs. That might be true for the late eighth/early ninth century, but the possibility of illegimate sons being potential heirs, and Notker’s attitude to that possibility shows a more opportunistic attitude prevailed when it suited. I’d love to read more about this, if there is anything.
There’s McDougall’s _Royal Bastards_, which I’ve got a PDF of somewhere if you like 🙂
Illegitimacy is something which by the tenth century is bad, but malleable. I’m currently – *finally* – finishing an article about tenth-century Provence, and Charles Constantine of Vienne is later declared ‘de concubinali stemmate’. He’s probably not a bastard-bastard in a straightforward sense, but I think his parents’ marriage was in some vague way unsatisfying and his father Louis the Blind’s regime was so dubious that his ancestry got slandered as a result. Arnulf of Carinthia is somewhat the reverse – he was a bastard-bastard but his father’s regime (and his own as a regional ruler) was so legit people gave him a pass.
(Also, will respond to the other part of your reply later – I am well out of my depth in the Merovingian period, and am increasingly regretting the lack of comparative perspective such knowledge could afford
…)
In response to both of you, what I’d say is that the probable reason why more neutral or even positive views of the Merovingians (pre-687/ 715) could be expressed from about the 820s onwards was because the rule of the Carolingian dynasty no longer faced any serious challenge. They were now on their third generations of monarchs, the reign of Charlemagne had been one great rip-roaring success for the Franks in which more territory had come under Frankish rule than had been even in the glory days of Clovis, Chlothar I and Dagobert, and the Carolingians now far outstripped any of their aristocrats in wealth, power and prestige. The contrast to the situation in the 750s couldn’t have been clearer. Back then, there does seem to have been a great deal more unease about Pippin the Short’s coup d’etat against Childeric III than the royal Frankish annals make out. The way in which the Clausula Unctione Pippini (767) glosses over the anointing of Pippin and his two sons by Pope Stephen II in 754 is quite revealing, since it suggests that Pippin felt his anointing by Boniface in 751 wasn’t enough to legitimise him and mentions that after the anointing by the pope, the Frankish magnates were pressured to swear an oath to only elect kings from within the Carolingian family (meaning here Pippin the Short’s male-line descendants). And in the 880s, Notker the Stammerer wrote a very vivid anecdote about a brave and cunning stunt Pippin the Short pulled with a lion and a bull after he heard his aristocrats were conspiring against him, which suggests that in the late Carolingian period people were starting to remember that the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian rule wasn’t as smooth after all, and that the power of the early Carolingians was actually quite open to challenge. Lets also not forget that neither Childeric III nor his son were killed (we don’t even know when the latter died), and precedents from Merovingian history showed that a tonsuring didn’t make someone lose their eligibility for the kingship forever – Dagobert II and Theuderic III come to mind.
My point is that basically as soon as it became politically safe for neutral and positive portrayals of Merovingian kings to be made, they were. And from the 840s, we can even see the Carolingian dynasty promoting them. Charles the Bald even accepted the putative genealogy, promoted in Paul the Deacon’s Deeds of the Bishops of Metz, which linked the Carolingians to the Merovingians via St Arnulf of Metz, and he patronised the foundations of the Merovingian kings quite extensively.
I think a further shift took place in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries with Aimoin of Fleury and Adhemar of Chabannes, who were very interested in exploring the deep Frankish past, an interest no doubt fuelled by the political changes going on. And the Capetians increasingly become eager to seize on the Merovingian past because the glory days of Frankish unity, the territorial extent of the dominions of Clovis and Dagobert and the divine favour the Merovingians enjoyed could be weaponised to justify the Capetian project in the present.
As for illegitimacy, what Notker notes about Hugh of Alsace, which is interesting in light of Sara McDougall’s work”, is that his mother was of good birth, which from an earlier medieval (pre-1100) standpoint could serve to cancel out the negatives of
I think you’re spot about attitudes changing as the Carolingian dynasty became more secure. I feel like that’s the scholarly consensus as laid out by Fouracre (either in the Dagobert article or “The Long Shadow of the Merovingians” – possibly both). I would just add a bit to what you say. There’s a difference between utilising specific Merovingians or linking to the dynasty as a source of legimacy, which happens quite early (see Paul the Deacon’s genealogy or Charlemagne naming sons after Clovis and Chlothar), and having a neutral (or positive) attitude to the dynastic change as an event, which only seems to happen later. So the problem for the Carolingians isn’t so much with the Merovingians (although delegitimising the later Merovingians was part of their own legitimisation strategy), it was with the fact that Pippin was a usurper. Obviously later dynasties didn’t have that problem, and took their own approaches to justifying their replacement of the Carolingians.
Just as a minor note though (at the risk of going wildly off topic): I think most scholars these days would argue against Boniface having annointed Pippin. The earliest reference is in the Royal Frankish Annals, and there’s nothing in Boniface’s letters or Willibald’s Life of Boniface about it – missing from one of those would be reasonable, but not in either is suspiscious. It’s more likely to have been the author of the annals seeking a way to further legitimise Pippin by tying him to a man who could reasonably be considered the first Carolingian saint and martyr.
Thank you so much for the important nuances you’ve made to my points, and I would say that a really positive view of the Merovingians (as opposed to making specific Merovingians worthy of celebration or utilising the dynasty for the legitimacy of one’s own royal family, church or monastery) happens later – I would identify it with the transition from Carolingian to Capetian rule. And the Capetians would eventually (by the thirteenth century) come to see themselves as the culmination of three great royal races – the Merovingians and the Carolingians being the previous two. And as you say, other subsequent dynasties had their legitimising legends. The Ottonians claimed that Henry the Fowler had been chosen by Conrad I, who was in turn a Carolingian by adoption, as his successor, and once they assumed the imperial title they would claim that a translatio imperii from west of the Rhine to east of it had occurred. For the Salians, Conrad II would claim descent from Charlemagne. And for the Hohenstaufens, in the latter years of Frederick Barbarossa the most ardently pro-imperial propagandists would claim that the Staufer were descended not only from Henry IV and the Salians but from the Ottonians, the Carolingians, the Merovingians and all the Roman emperors going back to Augustus Caesar, and before him to Julius Caesar and the Julia clan, Romulus and the other semi-legendary kings of Rome, Aeneas and the kings of ancient Troy until you literally went back all the way back to Adam and Eve. The message from this was that the imperial title had always been held by the same family, and therefore the Pope could only crown a Staufer emperor. Totally ingenious isn’t it!
As for the Saint Boniface note, thank you so much again. Yet another reason to be cautious with the Royal Frankish Annals’ account of the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian rule.
Thanks for the information about claims used by the other dynasties. I’m out of my depth by the tenth century and positively drowning any later than that!
If you ever want to discuss this further (or anything else early medieval for that matter), you can reach me at rickybroome[at]hotmail[dot]com
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I find the Merovingian bits of this translation extremely interesting even though they’re not the main focus of this post, because they show that there’s always been debate and controversy about when exactly did all effective political power pass from the kings to the mayors. Erchanbert seems to have thought that Pippin of Herstal’s victory at Tertry in 687 was the turning point, judging from what he writes in this passage. He also seems to have identified this point in time as the moment when the dukes of Alemannia, Thuringia, Bavaria and Aquitaine and the patricians of Burgundy and Provence went de facto independent from the Regnum Francorum, and gives an interesting explanation for it – that these regional governors with plenipotentiary powers decided to cut ties with the centre because they could only respect the authority of the king’s not those of the mayors of the palace/ dukes of the Franks. In many ways that explanation has a lot of merit to it, no doubt because it could also explain what happened in 751 – the Carolingians could only secure control over all the territories the early Merovingians had ruled in, and thus eliminate potential allies/ refuges for rebels, if they assumed the royal dignity themselves. To a certain extent modern historians would agree with him, given that by 687 it was clear to elites from the periphery that konigsnahe just wasn’t worth it anymore and the royal court was too toxic, and Chris Wickham in “the Inheritance of Rome” notes the much smaller area that Pippin of Herstal’s governmental activity concerns compared to that of Dagobert I in the 630s, though he sees it as being rooted in the factional struggles of the 640s to 670s and Tertry as just being the final straw.
This differs a lot from what Adhemar of Chabannes wrote 200 years after Erchanbert, as he claimed that Childebert III (r.694 – 711), whom he describes as “the glorious king Childebert, of good memory”, and his short lived son Dagobert III (711 – 715) still held effective royal power, and that it was after 715 that the Merovingians “forsook prudence” and became kings in name only. In many ways, Adhemar’s view is closest in line with that of Paul Fouracre and many other Merovingianists today, who would argue that the civil war of 715 – 720 was what really brought about the end of Merovingian royal power – even the most revisionist historians would concede that Einhard’s description of the last Merovingians would be accurate for the generation immediately preceding the Carolingian coup d’etat. Erchanbert on the other hand takes a view that would be moderately less fashionable in Merovingianist circles today. But certainly no medieval writer on the Merovingians seems to have thought that the death of Dagobert, let alone Chlothar’s Edict of Paris in 614, were what sent the Merovingians on the path to ruin. Medieval views on the Merovingians are fascinating, and the reception of the Merovingians before the sixteenth century is incredibly understudied – its given less than a paragraph in “The Oxford Handbook to the Merovingian world.”
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Erchanbert’s interpretation of Chilperic II is also fascinating. He was made king “because the line of kings had failed” (not true!) and because he was “the closest relation to the Merovingians” (he arguably was a Merovingian, if he was the son of Childeric II). That he, of all the later Merovingians, is the only one apart of Theuderic III to be deemed worthy of mention is interesting in and of itself. Although if I’m interpreting Erchanbert’s words correctly, he seems to be conflating Theuderic III and IV into one king, with Chilperic popping up and then disappearing again.
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That’s an incredibly good point. I guess he would be saying that Chilperic II wasn’t a real Merovingian because Chilperic II was backed by Ragenfrid, who was the arch-rival of Charles Martel in the civil war for leadership of the Frankish kingdom in the late 710s, while Charles himself backed Chlothar IV to give his rule as mayor/ prime minister of Austrasia legitimacy. This may reflect earlier traditions of Carolingian propaganda, or it may be his own retrospective way of saying why Charles Martel was on the side of right in the civil war which he chooses not to mention explicitly.
Anyway, Erchanbert’s narrative of the late Merovingian era is such a clear contrast to Einhard’s, which just says that the Merovingian kings had been living in decadence and exercising no real power since time immemorial and only names Childeric III. Its clear that Erchanbert did some historical research – he probably used the Liber Historiae Francorum and the Annales Mettenses Priores, but possibly also some less well-known or no longer extant sources as well.
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“Medieval views on the Merovingians are fascinating, and the reception of the Merovingians before the sixteenth century is incredibly understudied – its given less than a paragraph in “The Oxford Handbook to the Merovingian world.””
Yes, this definitely needs more attention!
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Glad to hear that someone agrees with me on this. Because normally what happens when most scholars talk about the medieval reception of the Merovingians is that they bring up Einhard as evidence of Carolingian “damnatio memoriae” of the preceding dynasty, they might bring up Hincmar and his myth-making about Clovis and Saint Remigius and then they’ll jump to the Grand Chroniques de France, considered as Capetian royalist propaganda. After cursory treatment of these, its straight on to the sixteenth century with Paolo Emilio Coimo, Claude Fauchet and Francois Hotman, who get considerably more attention. This is ultimately the result of three underlying assumptions.
1. The propaganda of the Carolingians and Capetians meant that people either dismissed/ forgot about the Merovingians, or else revered mythologised, ahistorical versions of certain Merovingians like Clovis and Dagobert.
2. The bedrock of true Merovingianist scholarship has always been the Romanist-Germanist debate, which begins with the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Germania in the fifteenth century and gains political potency in France in the eighteenth century with the clash between supporters of Bourbon Absolutism (who favour the Romanist view) and critics of it (who favour the Germanist view) – this is essentially the crux of the opening chapters of Ian Wood’s “The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages.”
3. Proper, serious historical scholarship grounded in primary sources begins with Renaissance humanism/ early modern antiquarianism.
I would challenge all three of these unspoken assumptions, but they’re incredibly pervasive and they mean that medieval reception of the Merovingians is very understudied.
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Re: ‘Erchanbert’ and his sources, apparently his foundational text is the LHF. Erik Goosman has a bit on this in his PhD: https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1547321/129146_15.pdf
When I was a junior PhD student, I went to a conference in St Andrews and heard Paul Fouracre talking about the _Vita Dagoberti_. In discussion, we ended up concluding there had been a ‘post-Merovingian’ shift around the mid-ninth century, when the Carolingians got a lot less insecure about their dynastic predecessors… This more-or-less fits with the (admittedly few) times I encounter them in tenth-century sources. Folcuin’s _Gesta abbatum Sithensium_ springs to mind, where there’s no animus against the Merovingians at all, IIRC, and the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian is presented as a smooth transition between stable royal families. I think some version of Fouracre’s talk is out in the _Frankland_ volume.
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When I was doing my PhD, I was lucky enough to work quite closely with Erik Goosman. His thesis is excellent, and well worth reading. As is the article on Merovingian long hair, which, while my supervisor voiced some reservations, I find thoroughly convincing.
Fouracre does indeed have an article on Dagobert(s) in the Frankland volume. Again, excellent and well worth reading.
On Erchanbert, yes, he’s quite clearly using the LHF as his source. If I was feeling ungenerous, I’d say he’s not engaging with it particularly carefully, but that might just be the impression left by his summarising. What’s clear from his comments on Chilperic is that there was certainly a perception by later authors that ‘Daniel’ was not a legitimate Merovingian. In fact, this is something I discussed in my thesis and in an article. Contrary to most Merovingianists, I argue that the LHF author did not approve of Chilperic and thought him illegitimate. Since that was the source for later authors, it’s easy to see why it became a theme.
On (later) medieval perceptions of the Merovingians, I wouldn’t necessarily challenge Joseph’s point 2 so much as open it up for questioning. The other two points can definitely be challenged. The whole subject needs some attention though, even if only to point out – as Fraser does – that by the tenth century there wasn’t an anti-Merovingian sentiment any more. Personally, I’d wonder how much this was to with the passing of time (water under the bridge), or whether challenges to the Carolingian dynasty made a difference. But I’m way out of my depth in the tenth century, so I wouldn’t want to speculate too much.
(Apologies for posting all this in one reply – I don’t seem to be able to reply to individual replies.)
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I completely agree with you here. It would be a scholarly achievement enough just to demonstrate that by the tenth century (and really, after the generation of Einhard), there wasn’t really much of an anti-Merovingian animus around any more and thus more nuanced historical views of them could emerge.
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Just to take up Notker’s section, I found the points about illegitimacy really interesting. There’s sort of an idea in the scholarship that Pippin III instituted new ideas about royal legitimacy in terms of marriages and heirs. That might be true for the late eighth/early ninth century, but the possibility of illegimate sons being potential heirs, and Notker’s attitude to that possibility shows a more opportunistic attitude prevailed when it suited. I’d love to read more about this, if there is anything.
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There’s McDougall’s _Royal Bastards_, which I’ve got a PDF of somewhere if you like 🙂
Illegitimacy is something which by the tenth century is bad, but malleable. I’m currently – *finally* – finishing an article about tenth-century Provence, and Charles Constantine of Vienne is later declared ‘de concubinali stemmate’. He’s probably not a bastard-bastard in a straightforward sense, but I think his parents’ marriage was in some vague way unsatisfying and his father Louis the Blind’s regime was so dubious that his ancestry got slandered as a result. Arnulf of Carinthia is somewhat the reverse – he was a bastard-bastard but his father’s regime (and his own as a regional ruler) was so legit people gave him a pass.
(Also, will respond to the other part of your reply later – I am well out of my depth in the Merovingian period, and am increasingly regretting the lack of comparative perspective such knowledge could afford
…)
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Looks like I actually have a pdf of _Royal Bastards_ already – time to actually read it! But thanks for the offer.
I like the idea of malleability. Very illustrative contrast between Charles Constantine and Arnulf. I’ll keep an eye out for the article!
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In response to both of you, what I’d say is that the probable reason why more neutral or even positive views of the Merovingians (pre-687/ 715) could be expressed from about the 820s onwards was because the rule of the Carolingian dynasty no longer faced any serious challenge. They were now on their third generations of monarchs, the reign of Charlemagne had been one great rip-roaring success for the Franks in which more territory had come under Frankish rule than had been even in the glory days of Clovis, Chlothar I and Dagobert, and the Carolingians now far outstripped any of their aristocrats in wealth, power and prestige. The contrast to the situation in the 750s couldn’t have been clearer. Back then, there does seem to have been a great deal more unease about Pippin the Short’s coup d’etat against Childeric III than the royal Frankish annals make out. The way in which the Clausula Unctione Pippini (767) glosses over the anointing of Pippin and his two sons by Pope Stephen II in 754 is quite revealing, since it suggests that Pippin felt his anointing by Boniface in 751 wasn’t enough to legitimise him and mentions that after the anointing by the pope, the Frankish magnates were pressured to swear an oath to only elect kings from within the Carolingian family (meaning here Pippin the Short’s male-line descendants). And in the 880s, Notker the Stammerer wrote a very vivid anecdote about a brave and cunning stunt Pippin the Short pulled with a lion and a bull after he heard his aristocrats were conspiring against him, which suggests that in the late Carolingian period people were starting to remember that the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian rule wasn’t as smooth after all, and that the power of the early Carolingians was actually quite open to challenge. Lets also not forget that neither Childeric III nor his son were killed (we don’t even know when the latter died), and precedents from Merovingian history showed that a tonsuring didn’t make someone lose their eligibility for the kingship forever – Dagobert II and Theuderic III come to mind.
My point is that basically as soon as it became politically safe for neutral and positive portrayals of Merovingian kings to be made, they were. And from the 840s, we can even see the Carolingian dynasty promoting them. Charles the Bald even accepted the putative genealogy, promoted in Paul the Deacon’s Deeds of the Bishops of Metz, which linked the Carolingians to the Merovingians via St Arnulf of Metz, and he patronised the foundations of the Merovingian kings quite extensively.
I think a further shift took place in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries with Aimoin of Fleury and Adhemar of Chabannes, who were very interested in exploring the deep Frankish past, an interest no doubt fuelled by the political changes going on. And the Capetians increasingly become eager to seize on the Merovingian past because the glory days of Frankish unity, the territorial extent of the dominions of Clovis and Dagobert and the divine favour the Merovingians enjoyed could be weaponised to justify the Capetian project in the present.
As for illegitimacy, what Notker notes about Hugh of Alsace, which is interesting in light of Sara McDougall’s work”, is that his mother was of good birth, which from an earlier medieval (pre-1100) standpoint could serve to cancel out the negatives of
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*the negatives of illegitimacy.
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I think you’re spot about attitudes changing as the Carolingian dynasty became more secure. I feel like that’s the scholarly consensus as laid out by Fouracre (either in the Dagobert article or “The Long Shadow of the Merovingians” – possibly both). I would just add a bit to what you say. There’s a difference between utilising specific Merovingians or linking to the dynasty as a source of legimacy, which happens quite early (see Paul the Deacon’s genealogy or Charlemagne naming sons after Clovis and Chlothar), and having a neutral (or positive) attitude to the dynastic change as an event, which only seems to happen later. So the problem for the Carolingians isn’t so much with the Merovingians (although delegitimising the later Merovingians was part of their own legitimisation strategy), it was with the fact that Pippin was a usurper. Obviously later dynasties didn’t have that problem, and took their own approaches to justifying their replacement of the Carolingians.
Just as a minor note though (at the risk of going wildly off topic): I think most scholars these days would argue against Boniface having annointed Pippin. The earliest reference is in the Royal Frankish Annals, and there’s nothing in Boniface’s letters or Willibald’s Life of Boniface about it – missing from one of those would be reasonable, but not in either is suspiscious. It’s more likely to have been the author of the annals seeking a way to further legitimise Pippin by tying him to a man who could reasonably be considered the first Carolingian saint and martyr.
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Thank you so much for the important nuances you’ve made to my points, and I would say that a really positive view of the Merovingians (as opposed to making specific Merovingians worthy of celebration or utilising the dynasty for the legitimacy of one’s own royal family, church or monastery) happens later – I would identify it with the transition from Carolingian to Capetian rule. And the Capetians would eventually (by the thirteenth century) come to see themselves as the culmination of three great royal races – the Merovingians and the Carolingians being the previous two. And as you say, other subsequent dynasties had their legitimising legends. The Ottonians claimed that Henry the Fowler had been chosen by Conrad I, who was in turn a Carolingian by adoption, as his successor, and once they assumed the imperial title they would claim that a translatio imperii from west of the Rhine to east of it had occurred. For the Salians, Conrad II would claim descent from Charlemagne. And for the Hohenstaufens, in the latter years of Frederick Barbarossa the most ardently pro-imperial propagandists would claim that the Staufer were descended not only from Henry IV and the Salians but from the Ottonians, the Carolingians, the Merovingians and all the Roman emperors going back to Augustus Caesar, and before him to Julius Caesar and the Julia clan, Romulus and the other semi-legendary kings of Rome, Aeneas and the kings of ancient Troy until you literally went back all the way back to Adam and Eve. The message from this was that the imperial title had always been held by the same family, and therefore the Pope could only crown a Staufer emperor. Totally ingenious isn’t it!
As for the Saint Boniface note, thank you so much again. Yet another reason to be cautious with the Royal Frankish Annals’ account of the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian rule.
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Thanks for the information about claims used by the other dynasties. I’m out of my depth by the tenth century and positively drowning any later than that!
If you ever want to discuss this further (or anything else early medieval for that matter), you can reach me at rickybroome[at]hotmail[dot]com
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