Merovingian dynasty

“ A few feebly imitated the pomp of the Roman emperors, but their claims had no great weight with the world. The aureole which the genius of Theodoric cast around his throne passed away upon his death, and the Arianism of that great sovereign sufficiently debarred him from the sympathies of the Church. In Gaul, under a few bold and unscrupulous men, the Merovingian dynasty emerged from a host of petty kings, and consolidated the [pg 266] whole country into one kingdom ”

“ These primitive popular assemblies had originated as the Merovingian dynasty was drawing to its close, when it was realized that the people must provide for their own concerns because of the failure of the ruling house to govern efficiently or successfully. They were held generally in May at a royal villa or palace in the Rhine Valley, Aix, Worms, or Mainz. In theory every Frank was supposed to be present. Actually, only the great lords and the high ecclesiastics were at hand, and their followers stood for the people. ”

“ In the North, the anarchy accompanying the bloody struggles of the princes of the Merovingian dynasty, [276] which preceded the foundation of the empire of Pepin and Charlemagne, removed, for the time, all danger of encroachment from that quarter. But the Gothic nobles, since the battle of the Guadalete, had cast glances of anxiety and dismay upon the distant summits of the Pyrenees. Innumerable refugees from Spain had sought safety among their Gallic kinsmen, and the tales which they related of the excesses of the invaders lost nothing in their recital by these terror-stricken fugitives. ”

“ Chlodwig, the Founder of the Merovingian Dynasty. —His Conversion to Christianity. —His Successors. —Theuderich's Conquest of Thuringia. —Union of the Eastern Franks. —Austria (or Austrasia) and Neustria. —Crimes of the Merovingian Kings. —Clotar and his Sons. —Sigbert's Successes. —His Wife, Brunhilde. —Sigbert's Death. —Quarrel between Brunhilde and Fredegunde. —Clotar II. —Brunhilde and her Grandsons. —Her Defeat and Death. —Clotar II.'s Reign. —King Dagobert. —The Nobles and the Church. —War with the Thuringians. —Picture of the Merovingian Line. —A New Power. ”

“ King Dagobert, weak, swayed by whatever influence was nearest, and voluptuous rather than cruel, died in 638, before he had time to do much evil. He was the last of the Merovingian line who exercised any actual power. The dynasty existed for a century longer, but its monarchs were merely puppets in the hands of stronger men. Its history, from the beginning, is well illustrated by a tradition current among the people, concerning the mother of Chlodwig. ”

“ But a man more thoroughly wicked never played the hypocrite. By treachery the most loathsome, he caused all the chiefs to be assassinated who could be regarded in the least degree as his rivals, and, placing chiefs subject to his will at the head of all the different tribes, he attained such a supremacy as has led historians to speak of Clovis as the first monarch of the conquered realm. The dynasty thus established has been called the Merovingian, from Merovius, the grandfather of Clovis. From this successful invasion of the Franks all Gaul received the name of France. ”

“ But a recent discovery 107 has proved that these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth century; and after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel the injustice, or the favors, of a third dynasty. ”

“ While the Merovingian race in its decline is notorious in history as having produced an unexampled number of imbecile monarchs, the family which was destined to supplant them was no less wonderfully prolific in warriors and statesmen of the highest class. ”

“ The Carolingian, like the Merovingian, realm included many different peoples who were destined never to become one nation; and the whole Carolingian system of government virtually had existed in the Merovingian period. Before, as well as after, the dynastic change, the government throughout the realm was administered by Counts. Likewise the famous missi dominici, or royal legates, are found in Merovingian times; but they were employed more effectively by Charles Martell, Pippin, and, finally, by Charlemagne, who enlarged their sphere of action. ”

“ Therefore I present him as one with whom is associated an epoch in civilization. To him we date the first memorable step which Europe took out of the anarchies of the Merovingian age. His dream was to revive the Empire that had fallen. He was the first to labor, with giant strength, to restore what vice and violence had destroyed. He did not succeed in realizing the great ends to which he aspired, but his aspirations were lofty. It was not in the power of any man to civilize semi-barbarians in a single reign ”

“ MEROVINGIANS, the name given to the first dynasty which reigned over the kingdom of the Franks. The name is taken from Merovech, one of the first kings of the Salian Franks, who succeeded to Clodio in the middle of the 5th century, and soon became the centre of many legends. The chronicler known as Fredegarius Scholasticus relates that a queen was once sitting by the seashore, when a monster came out of the sea, and by this monster she subsequently became the mother of Merovech, but this myth is due to an attempt to explain the hero’s name, which means “the sea-born.” ”

“ The Merovingian kings had sunk into absolute insignificance, and had become mere puppets of royalty before the eighth century. Charles Martel, like his father, Pépin Héristal, was duke of the Austrasian Franks, the bravest and most thoroughly Germanic part of the nation, and exercised, in the name of the titular king, what little paramount authority the turbulent minor rulers of districts and towns could be persuaded or compelled to acknowledge. ”

“ Neither politically, socially, intellectually, nor geographically [6] was there discontinuity or break or sudden change between the Merovingian and the Carolingian periods. [7] The character of the monarchy was scarcely affected by the substitution of the house of Pippin of Heristal for the house of Clovis. The baleful custom of dividing the realm upon a monarch's death survived; but Fortune rendered it innocuous through one strong century, during which (719-814) the realm was free from internecine war, while the tossing streams of humanity were driven onward by three great successive rulers. ”

“ Thus the Merovingians had shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all. They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national magistracy. ”

“ At the same time the authority of the king gradually underwent a 908 change in character, though he always claimed to be the successor of the Roman emperor. It gradually assumed that Character of the Merovingian kingship. domestic or personal character that, among the Germans, marked most of the relations between men. The household of the king gained in political importance, by reason that the heads of the principal offices in the palace became at the same time high public officials. ”

“ The growing weakness of the Merovingians saved them from serious attack, though not from occasional invasion on the north. The prostration of the empire in the East by Avar and Persian invasions enabled them to drive the imperial officers from the coast towns. But the kingdom was growing internally weaker. The nobles were strong enough to prevent the monarchy from becoming hereditary. The Church seemed to exert great power, but it had itself become barbarized by contact with kings and nobles. ”

“ Merovingians.—The Franks, whose dominion swallowed up those of both the foregoing tribes, had been long settled in the north; and Pharamond, their chief in 420, is considered the founder of the French monarchy, as he was of the first or Merovingian race of Frankish kings. In 485 Clovis defeated Syagrius, the Roman general, at Soissons, and finally extinguished the Roman power in the west, and in 507, by his victory over the Visigoths, he rendered himself master of the country between the Loire and Garonne, but was checked at Arles by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. ”

“ Pippin the Short had found, through his own experience as well as that of his ancestors, that the pretence of a Merovingian king only worked confusion in the realm of the Franks, since it furnished to the subordinate races and principalities a constant pretext for revolt. ”

“ Gregory of Tours, his biographer and panegyrist, who was somewhat modestly endowed with the sense of humour, tells us gravely that on one occasion, after dismissing with prayer a synod of the Gallican Church, he quietly proceeded to butcher all the Merovingian princes. ”

“ In proportion as a tendency to the centralization, either of the different states among themselves, or of the internal power of each state, had been visible under the rule of the Merovingian race, in just that proportion did a tendency to the dismemberment, to the dissolution, both of the states themselves and of the power in each state, become evident under the Carlovingians. Under the Merovingians, you have seen that five successive dismemberments took place, none of which was able to last; after the death of Charlemagne, the kingdoms once separated do not reunite. ”

“ Nothing is more common than to find a Merovingian king who is a father at fifteen, or even earlier, and who dies (not always by a violent death) under thirty. Let us take a few of the lives of the later kings as an illustration. Dagobert I., who is a sort of patriarch among them, dies at thirty-eight; his son, Clovis II., at twenty-four; of the sons of this latter king, Chlothair III. dies at eighteen, Childeric II. at twenty. Theodoric III. actually lives to the age of thirty-eight, but of his sons one dies at thirteen and another at eighteen. ”

“ The majesty of the Roman laws protected the liberty of each citizen, against the rash effects of his own distress or despair. But the subjects of the Merovingian kings might alienate their personal freedom ”

“ From this date the Merovingian monarch became a shadow. Pippin paid him all external signs of allegiance, kept up the ceremonies of his Court, supplied him with ample revenues, and governed the kingdom in his name; but the actual power was concentrated in his own hands. France, Switzerland and the greater part of Germany were subjected to his government, although there were still elements of discontent within the realm, and of trouble outside of its borders. The dependent dukedoms of Aquitaine, Burgundy, Alemannia, Bavaria and Thuringia were restless under the yoke ”

“ In the bloody discord and silent decay of the Merovingian line, a new order of tyrants arose in the provinces, who, under the appellation of Seniors, or Lords, usurped a right to govern, and a license to oppress, the subjects of their peculiar territory. Their ambition might be checked by the hostile resistance of an equal: but the laws were extinguished; and the sacrilegious Barbarians, who dared to provoke the vengeance of a saint or bishop, would seldom respect the landmarks of a profane and defenceless neighbor. ”

“ Besides his wife, Ingoberga, he had unions with Merofleda, a wool-carder’s daughter, and Theodogilda, the daughter of a neatherd. He was one of the most dissolute of the Merovingian kings, his early death in 567 being brought on by his excesses. ”

“ These designations were used in the historical chronicles for some centuries afterwards.
While Theuderich lived, his brothers observed a tolerably peaceful conduct towards one another, but his death was followed by a season of war and murder. History gives us no record of another dynasty so steeped in crime as that of the Merovingians: within the compass of a few years we find a father murdering his son, a brother his brother and a wife her husband. ”

“ He was a type of chivalry, before chivalry arose. He was born to greatness, and early succeeded to a great inheritance. At the age of twenty-six, in the year 768, he became the monarch of the greater part of modern France, and of those provinces which border on the Rhine. By unwearied activities this inheritance, greater than that of any of the Merovingian kings, was not only kept together and preserved, but was increased by successive conquests, until no so great an empire has ever been ruled by any one man in Europe, since the fall of the Roman Empire, from his day to ours. ”

“ In the meanwhile during the Merovingian, and more potently in the Carolingian period, king’s law, as distinguished from people’s law, had been an influence making for legal uniformity throughout that wide conglomerate empire which acknowledged the authority of the Frankish king or emperor. The king’s law might emanate from the delegated authority, and arise from the practices, of royal functionaries; [Pg 248] it was most formally promulgated in Capitularies, which with Charlemagne reach such volume and importance. ”

“ The laopan of this junk has his money. This he will deny, and will cry for more; but do not heed him.
“Remember there is nothing strange or abnormal in my passing; death has become my duty. It may be true that the historic throne of the Manchus is rocking, is falling, but despite the understanding that has been given to me of what is good in Western civilization I have never swayed in my heart from loyalty to that throne and steadfast devotion to its best interests as I can see them, and I do no less than obey the mandate of my empress and my emperor. ”