Fouracre, Merovingians before Carolingians
Governance, magnates, child kings, mayors, bishops, land, public authority
Exhibit category type 7 rank over status society.
The Source:
Paul Fouracre, ‘Francia in the Seventh Century’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1 c. 500-c. 700, edited by Paul Fouracre, Cambridge University Press 2005
The main focus of the narrative history of Francia in the seventh century is its ruling dynasty, the Merovingians. This is because the precious few Franks who commented upon what was happening around them were primarily interested in a tiny social elite which participated in the exercise of power through the medium of the royal palace.
Hardly less for modern commentators, the doings of kings, and of queens, and the arrangement of power in and out of the palace, have become the necessary principles around which we must organise our understanding of events. The very chronology of the period is determined according to which king ruled where, and for how long.
The Merovingians themselves have a poor reputation – they are notorious as ‘the do-nothing kings’ – and given the nature of our sources, this has had the effect of dragging the seventh century down with them.
In the most pessimistic view, its main redeeming feature was that it also saw the rise of the family which would form a new ruling dynasty, namely the Carolingians. The ‘decline of the Merovingians and the rise of the Carolingians’ has thus often been the keynote for studies of seventh-century Francia. But the beginning of the transition from the one dynasty to the other is by no means the most significant feature of seventh-century history.
Far more important is that this period saw the maturing of a [mode of governance] that would outlast both Merovingians and Carolingians and spread well beyond Francia itself.
With a gradual disappearance of direct taxation and with the enlargement of territory under a single ruler, the seventh century saw the development of a regime which was formed out of consensus between the different groups of the powerful in society.
It is the power-sharing needed to address a broad coalition of interests which appears from a Carolingian perspective as simply the loss of power by incompetent Merovingians.
Two early ninth-century sources in particular, the Prior Metz Annals and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, have conditioned our view of the history of this period. Indeed, the durability of that view is lasting tribute to the skill with which the authors of these works justified the Carolingians’ seizure of the throne in the year 751. What they described was a Merovingian failure so complete that intervention by the Carolingians was an urgent moral necessity.
Einhard’s account of the last Merovingians is compelling, but ultimately misleading. Their energy had gone, he tells us, and they no longer enjoyed the use of their once extensive lands: all that was left to them was a single villa and their long hair, the symbol of their former potency. Their eventual successors, the altogether more vigorous ancestors of Charlemagne, treated their nominal overlords the Merovingians with respect and enabled them to carry on with their ceremonial duties which, rather ludicrously, they discharged from an oxcart. No modern historian would seriously dispute that Einhard was highly partisan in his writing, that he displayed ignorance of Merovingian ceremonial and that his account was plainly second- or third-hand. It is nevertheless with his end in sight that many of the truly Merovingian sources have often been read. Superficially, they may seem to confirm Einhard’s observations, or, rather, he theirs. At the other end of our period, Gregory of Tours’ rather pessimistic view of the progress of the Franks across the sixth century primes us to expect further decline in the seventh. At first sight a comparison between Gregory’s fluent history and the guttural and piecemeal narratives of the seventh- and eighth-century chronicles seem to bear out a notion of decline. But we must be careful not to read too much into what is ultimately a literary comparison.
For the basic account of seventh- and early eighth-century history we must rely on the chronicles … [multiple, omitted here] … As we have seen, this corpus of material may be read for signs of progressive Merovingian decline in the light of the dynasty’s eventual demise. Alternatively one can steer away from the question of the ‘decline of the Merovingians and the rise of the Carolingians’ in order to look at the seventh century in its own terms. To do this, let us begin at the start of the seventh century with the unification of Francia under a single ruler, which lengthened the distance between ruler and ruled and made necessary the development of political consensus. …
… According to the Chronicle of Fredegar, Chlothar [king of Neustria and king of the Franks 584–629] took control of both Burgundy and Austrasia by agreement with the magnates of each kingdom. This observation has led many historians to judge that Chlothar was as a result dependent upon such men and [thus] legislated to guarantee their positions, that is, to make them effectively hereditary. The Edict of Paris is thus often said to have marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Merovingians: thereafter they would be shackled by a concession which enshrined aristocratic independence. This reading of Fredegar and of the Edict is not very helpful for it is more concerned with what would eventually become of the Merovingians than with what was actually happening in 613– 614.
It seems in fact that the invitations to Chlothar to become king of Austrasia and of Burgundy were the product of factional politics, that is, any agreement was between Chlothar and particular magnates … rather than between king and aristocracy in general. Secondly, it is clear that the Edict of Paris did not actually guarantee the positions of the magnates… one clause from chapter 12 is usually quoted out of context. It says that counts (iudices) should henceforth come from the areas in which they were to hold office. At first sight this statement appears positively to encourage what other states generally tried to prevent: the loss of control over officials who put down roots in the provinces and espoused the interests of the locality rather than of central government.
The rest of chapter 12, however, makes it clear that the reason why counts should be local people with hereditary lands in the area of their command was that it would then be possible to control their actions by distraining their property. Far from being a novel concession of principle, this idea harks back to sixth-century legislation which spells out that what was at stake here was the potential for the count to abuse his own powers of distraint by unjustly seizing the property of others. Were he to do this, the remedy was to take his property in return.
[dict. ‘distraint’: seize someone's property to obtain money owed, especially rent]
The manner of Chlothar II’s acquisition of Burgundy and Austrasia, and the legislation he issued shortly afterwards, cannot therefore be taken to show that Merovingian kingship had entered a phase of terminal decline. The Merovingians would survive for another 137 years after the Edict of Paris, and if anything the events of 613–614 help us understand why the dynasty lasted so long, rather than why it eventually came to an end.
For they cast light on two essential characteristics of the later Merovingian polity: first, they reveal the way in which rivalry within the aristocracy tended to be expressed through attempts to win influence in the royal palace, and second, they illuminate how the collection of institutions and persons exercising public powers perceived to be derived from royal authority (the ‘state’, in other words) had a measure of support at local level when and where it was able to guarantee and legitimise property relations.
Both of these forces pulled people into political activity around the kings rather more than they pushed people out into defiance and self-help.
… The area to the north of Paris towards Soissons … became the special homeland of the dynasty … Royal movement outside this area appears to become rare as the seventh century progresses. … For the rest of the seventh century … would together make the descendants of Chlothar a very select group.
It was only a matter of time, therefore, before the only available Merovingians would be children. What made child kingship possible was the development of government through palaces in fixed centres to which magnates were prepared to travel, even from distant regions … leaders from all the regions of Francia became accustomed to attending the … palace … growing resentment at the privilege which proximity to the king conferred … and the related tendency of the magnates to feud when they met up at the palace.
Chlothar began by exercising control in Burgundy and Austrasia through the palaces in these kingdoms. The key figures in these now kingless palaces were the ‘mayors of the palace’ … The ‘mayor of the palace’ was the most important non-royal leader in the land. His influence came from his position as broker between king and magnates, and his rising power in the seventh century reflects the growing concentration of political activity in the royal palace. In 622, however, Chlothar made his son Dagobert king in Austrasia. If what happened ten years later is anything to go by, it may be that in 622 the Austrasians demanded a king of their own partly to free themselves from dependence on the [Clothar] Neustrians and partly to strengthen their position in the face of pressure from peoples on their eastern border. In 626 Warnachar, mayor of Burgundy, died and according to Fredegar the Burgundian leaders asked Chlothar not to appoint a successor, but to deal direct with them. Thereafter the Burgundians attended the Neustrian palace …
… It shows the deliberative nature of the annual assemblies of king and magnates …would be no less important to the Carolingians than they were to the Merovingians … a gathering of leaders, each accompanied by a military following, could erupt into violence … the king was able to keep the peace between the different factions of magnates.
Successful government meant drawing strength from the dynamic of inter-magnate rivalry without letting the infighting get out of hand.
When Chlothar died in 628, Dagobert his son took his place … Following Chlothar’s death Dagobert had visited Burgundy to make his presence as king felt there. He established his authority by doing what early medieval kings did best: by dispensing justice.
… Dagobert has been remembered as a king constantly on the move, a truly vigorous ruler. But once he had taken up residence in Neustria, there is no record of him moving again apart from three forays into Austrasia …
… it was necessary to have a king, even an infant king … in order to raise effective armies.
… the enforcement of military obligations was by royal order … another important factor was royal largesse … The prospect of reward from this source must have made people keener to fight… the setting up of a … palace … allowed … leaders … to maintain their pre-eminence through a palace-based structure of government … the reinforcement of a hierarchy amongst the aristocracy of the region [was] a general boost in morale.
Amongst those who benefited … was Pippin of Landen (also known as Pippin I) who eventually emerged as mayor of the palace to Sigibert [an infant king], just as he had once been mayor to Dagobert … A faction led by Pippin …consolidated their predominance … It is, however, almost impossible to see what was really happening in the internal politics of Austrasia at this time, and it is extremely difficult to gauge the relative importance of Pippin and his family without being affected by the knowledge that [the Pippin] family would eventually replace the Merovingians as rulers of all of Francia.
Under Chlothar and Dagobert Francia remained strong and able to prevent neighbouring peoples encroaching upon its territory. To the east of the Rhine the Franks retained influence over the Saxons, Thuringians, Alamans and Bavarians … Dagobert was able to get the Bavarians to obey his orders … the lands of all of these peoples were regarded as Frankish territory …
To the south, the Franks’ neighbours were the Lombards, the Visigoths and the Basques, and to the west the Bretons. From the time of their establishment in Italy in the late sixth century the Lombards appear to have been tributaries of the Franks … Their particular concern … was the treatment of Queen Gundeberga … Lombard royalty was firmly attached to Gundeberga. Marriage to her provided a route to the throne …
… At the western end of the Pyrenees the Franks faced the Basques. From the later sixth century onwards there are signs of the Basques pressing northward into Francia …
Having mobilised an army to deal with the Basques, Dagobert was able to use the threat of the same force to wring concessions out of the Bretons, forcing them ‘to make swift amends for what they had done wrong and to submit to his power’ …
From the pages of Fredegar it is clear that Dagobert enjoyed an awesome reputation. Historians have generally seen him as the last Merovingian king who was fully in control of Francia … But the assumption that Frankish power went into decline after Dagobert requires some qualification … the Franks were still to be feared in the 660s …
… In the later seventh century, it seems, Francia had something of a surplus of warriors and at least in this regard it had not ‘declined’ since the death of Dagobert. Indeed, taken across the Merovingian period as a whole, Francia’s borders and its strength relative to its neighbours changed remarkably little, whatever the fortunes of its kings. We should bear this in mind when evaluating Dagobert’s successes. Secondly, we should qualify the image of Dagobert as an ‘army-king’ by noting that in 630 and in 635 he remained in Neustria whilst armies raised in Burgundy fought on his behalf against the Visigoths and the Basques. Here military organisation reflected the political structure of the kingdom in that leadership was in the hands of dukes and counts who brought their own power to bear on behalf of the state as much as they were serving officers of the crown. On this reading, Dagobert’s ‘success’ lay rather less in constant movement than it did in astute palace-based management. It was the willingness of the magnates to cooperate with the palace which enabled Dagobert in 638 to pass on his kingdoms to two sons aged but about eight and five years old.
The phenomenon of Merovingian child kingship has been often denigrated, but rarely explained. The co-operation between the palace and the wider magnate community which made child kingship possible may perhaps best be understood in sociological terms as a result of the formation of a highly integrated power elite.
The palace played a key role in the process of integration, for not only were many magnates educated there from childhood, it also helped form the public identity of those who buttressed their personal power with royal office. The public association of leaders from different regions stimulated the development of a [mode of governance] which accommodated a variety of traditions within a fairly elastic notion of custom.
What was customary in a legal sense, for instance, included both the use of written law texts of Roman provenance and ritual procedures of more uncertain origin.
Such flexibility was necessary to enable negotiation between people from different … backgrounds, and what emerged out of it was a common notion of power justified by legal right. Hence the strong emphasis on the judicial process which features in contemporary accounts of political behaviour. Political [practice] thus had a marked pragmatic element, and being relatively literate, it made extensive use of documents both in government and to protect property. Here again the elite were drawn to the palace which had preserved bureaucratic skills and produced documents which were underpinned by royal authority.
Force too played a part in the formation of a single political community, for individual magnates rarely dared stand apart from the collective power which could be mobilised when all of the chief leaders gathered together.
There was an important socio-religious aspect to the process of integration too.
The seventh century saw a marked rise in religious activity as Christian [custom] overflowed from its traditional urban strongholds to penetrate deep into the countryside. The elite shared in this activity by founding monasteries on their lands. At the same time, they came increasingly to occupy leading positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In this way, participation in a common enterprise throughout Francia fostered a religious identity which could override ethnic and regional differences.
As royal assent seems to have remained essential to episcopal appointments, and as the Merovingians themselves were leading patrons of the monasteries, the palace provided access to spiritual as well as to earthly prestige, and it thus helped to sanctify, as well as to legitimate, aristocratic power.
The key to understanding Merovingian child kingship is the observation that these trends were self-reinforcing. The elite would not easily disintegrate during periods of infant rule. As long as the magnates remained solidly behind the principle of Merovingian authority, upon which their own legitimacy as rulers ultimately depended, regent queens or mayors could govern through the palace in the name of child kings.
The foundation of monasteries is the best-recorded sign of a growing church in the seventh century. Traditionally the upsurge in foundations has been ascribed to the influence of the Irish holy-man Columbanus … His influence on [aristocrats] was twofold. First he inspired people to found monasteries in areas well away from the traditional centres of monasticism in the Gallo-Roman south, and second he introduced a novel form of monasticism which insisted on the independence of the monastery from the local bishop. Plainly, this double novelty was attractive to the Frankish aristocracy, and from the period from 637 to the late 660s there survives a series of nine charters in which bishops granted independence in Columbanan tradition to monasteries both new and old. Historians have found this Columbanan or ‘Iro-Frankish’ monastic movement equally attractive. It has been possible to show how the great families of north and east Francia entered into the religious arena and acquired spiritual prestige, for in time monastic founders very often turned into the patron saints of successful establishments. Merovingian political behaviour can also be explained with reference to this new form of monasticism, for rulers used the Columbanan notion of monastic independence to cut the claws of overweening members of the episcopate in what has been termed a veritable Klosterpolitik (monastic policy).
The novelty and central importance of Columbanan monasticism has nevertheless been questioned. The notion of a well-defined movement with a common monastic rule now seems to come from the way in which the charters granting monastic privileges established a common terminology rather than from any evidence of actual practice. Columbanus’ importance, moreover, appears to have been exaggerated … In fact, mid-seventh-century Francia saw other Irishmen who … influenced nobles. … In addition, monasteries claimed to adhere to a bewildering variety of rules, perhaps in effect naming famous abbots … rather than indicating that they were living according to the rules named after these people. Nor was there a simple opposition between new foundations and old episcopal centres, but a great complexity of relationships which depended upon local circumstances. … Columbanan monasticism does indeed stand out because it is well documented, it was part of a much wider spread of Christian [faith] from the town to the countryside to meet the needs of the rural population, beginning with their lords. But at village level the process of Christianisation was slow …
[Religious] political activity is reflected in the careers of those who in their youth spent time at the royal palace and then in later life became bishops, or founded monasteries or even became monks themselves. In the mid to later seventh century much of Francia was run by people schooled in this fashion through the courts of Chlothar II, Dagobert and his son, Clovis II. … the feeling of fellowship amongst this powerful old-boy network … circle of friends at court … made up of men of both Gallo-Roman and Frankish stock who occupied important positions in Aquitaine, Neustria and Austrasia. That the court had initially brought them together, and that they kept in contact with one another thereafter, is strong testimony to the integrative force of palace and religion. …
[Records of] seventh-century bishops show them acting in a similarly public manner, in effect combining the work of bishop and count. But on whose behalf were these lordly churchmen acting? This important question has been answered in two contrasting ways which express two very different views of seventh-century history.
For if it is thought that such bishops were acting independently in what have been termed virtual ‘episcopal republics’, then the conclusion must be that the Merovingian state had by the mid-seventh century lost control of much of its territory. If, on the other hand, one believes that the bishops were acting on behalf of the state, it is possible to argue that the latter was at this time rather strong.
A third more equivocal answer actually makes better sense of the evidence: namely, that bishops, like the counts their secular counterparts, wielded a wide range of powers derived from royal authority, but political considerations at both local and central levels dictated how they should exercise those powers.
To be independent, bishops and other magnates in formal positions of power had to be free of local rivals who could seek support from the palace and mobilise the collective power of the magnate community against them … such mobilisation might be achieved through a formal judicial process. For this to happen, the palace had to be at the centre of political activity and the magnates willing to back the judicial process.
For most of the seventh century in most areas of Francia these conditions prevailed.
Lords, both secular and ecclesiastical, usually did have rivals, and as a result the bishops on the whole acted to extend rather than to shorten the range of central authority. The history of Francia from the death of Dagobert to the advent of Charles Martel in the early eighth century is effectively about the political tensions which built up until these conditions were altered and about how the regime attempted to repair itself. It is to this history that we now turn.
Dagobert died on 19 January 638. His son, Sigibert III, aged about eight, continued to rule in Austrasia under the guidance of the mayor of the palace, Pippin, and Chunibert, bishop of Cologne. In Neustria and Burgundy Dagobert was succeeded by his son Clovis, aged about four, with his mother Nantechild and the mayor Aega ruling through the palace. What little we know about Nantechild suggests that she was a powerful ruler, like Brunehild, Balthild and Himnechild, three of the four other seventh-century dowager queen-regents. Their power parallels that of the mayors in that it rested in that influence over the political community which came from management of the palace and from government in the name of the king.
Nantechild in addition received as much of Dagobert’s treasure as his sons. … In 641 she can be seen channelling a feud … [to cut a long story short] erupted into fighting between the two factions of magnates. King Clovis II, now about eight years old, could not restrain the violence … but when information starts to flow again about a decade later, it is clear that the magnates from Burgundy and Neustria continued to form a single political community and to attend the same meetings. …
In Austrasia, Pippin died about a year after Dagobert and was succeeded as mayor of the palace by one Otto … Two years later in 641, Otto was murdered and Grimoald [Pippin’s son] replaced him.
Meanwhile, events … give a good example of conditions in which a leader did turn his back on the rest of the magnate community, being able to withstand the collective pressure they mounted against him. As a result he took a whole region out of the Merovingian orbit. … Radulf the duke of Thuringia …Even so, Radulf did not create a separate kingdom nor … actually deny Merovingian overlordship. This style of secession would be seen many more times in both Merovingian and Carolingian periods as particular leaders or regions went their own way without, it seems, being able to envisage the formation of completely new political entities. Such conservatism, which is another mark of the high degree of integration amongst the elite, goes a long way to explain the long-term territorial stability of Francia. …
… Sigibert came of age in about 645 and Clovis in about 649. Both kings married women who outlived them by more than twenty years and were important as dowagers …
… ‘the Grimoald coup’. This event has excited a great deal of attention, for it concerns what looks at a glance like an early Carolingian attempt to seize the throne from the Merovingians. …
[omitted complicated names and other facts uncertain] ….
… The chronology must remain a problem, but … it is possible to come up with an interpretation more satisfactory and less anachronistic than one which sees the ancestors of Charlemagne having a trial run at fulfilling their historical destiny. …
[omitted complicated names and other facts uncertain] ….
… All observers none the less agree on one point: that at this stage it was plainly unacceptable for a non-Merovingian to become king.
… Himnechild … ruled from 657 until her eldest son Chlothar reached the majority age of fifteen in 664. Alongside her in the palace were the bishops of Paris and Rouen, unnamed secular leaders, and the mayor of the palace …
… [The foregoing account] serves to warn us against seeing the politics of this period simply in terms of a policy of ‘centralisation’ directed by the palace against a provincial ‘separatism’, for it tells of how local people in Lyons combined with the palace to bring down Aunemund [archbishop of Lyon executed 657/8] … Moreover, despite his princely power in Lyons, Aunemund was an integral member of the wider magnate community…
… [The foregoing account] is indicative of the range and power of the mayor’s government, it was effective indeed. But this kind of government, in which the mayor ruled through the king and prevented the other magnates from having access to him, broke with the traditional consensus that was the very cement of the Frankish polity. … [According to sources, the mayor, Ebroin, a non-royal secular figure] became so tyrannical that he banned magnates from Burgundy from coming to the palace unless they had his permission to do so. But then in 673 Chlothar III died, and although he tried to prevent it, Ebroin [the mayor] could not stop the political community assembling to raise the new king to the throne. The assembly then turned on the mayor and he was powerless to resist their collective force. The magnates did this [the source says] because they feared that Ebroin would control the new king (… Theuderic) and if he could act in the king’s name without check then he would be able to attack anyone he wished. So Ebroin [the mayor] was driven from power and sent into exile. …
The Liber Historiae Francorum shows that Ebroin had as his ally Audoin of Rouen who was one of the most respected men in all of Francia. The alliance suggests that the mayor was not just a political maverick but represented a faction made up of leading Neustrian families.
A certain degree of political disintegration occurred when magnates outside this group understood that they were or would be barred from that access to the king which allowed them to safeguard their positions by participating in the making of decisions.
Contemporary sources make it clear that kings or mayors who did not listen to the counsel of their magnates were regarded as intolerably dangerous. The remedy to this injustice, as it was perceived, was to overturn the regime which perpetrated it, and this happened in both 673 and 675. But there were limits to disintegration, for widespread and prolonged disorder was also seen to threaten property and privilege. It is this last perception which may explain how after returning to power Ebroin [the former mayor] was able to re-establish some sort of political consensus and to go back to using the judicial process rather than armed conflict to achieve his aims. Significantly, one of the first things he now did was to bring order back to property relations. …
… the upheavals of this period were, as most historians would agree, caused by feuding within the palace-centred political community rather than by attempts by regionally based groups to separate from it …
The most recent study of this work argues convincingly for the following sequence: …The leaders of the Austrasian magnates were then one Martin and his probable kinsman Pippin, members of the family to which Grimoald had belonged, known to historians as the ‘Pippinids’, or ‘Arnulfings’. The Pippinids had recovered their fortunes since the demise of Grimoald. … [rest of the complicated sequence omitted] …
… From the Austrasian point of view, access to, and influence in, the royal palace was militarily, politically and legally a necessary safeguard to power and privilege. Financially too it was a great attraction. … Pippin won. His victory in 687 at this, the famous Battle of Tertry, has often been said to have signified the end of the Merovingian era and the effective beginning of Carolingian rule. This view, first laid out in the early ninth-century Prior Metz Annals, does not reflect the seventh-century reality that Pippin and the Austrasians were fighting to be included in the old regime, not to replace it.
Pippin was certainly rich and powerful, with extensive family lands to the east of the River Meuse, but he was not powerful enough to conquer Neustria and Burgundy in 687. …
… The sources from which we can reconstruct something of the growth of Pippin’s power are, as ever, ecclesiastical in origin and orientation, but they do at least indicate where he had influence … he can be seen making himself felt in the Rouen area where his daughter-in-law’s family was based. Between 689 and 691 he forced … the bishop of Rouen, into exile and replaced him with Gripho, one of his own supporters. …
Pippin… did not displace the old Neustrian families who clustered around the [Neustrian] king, although he was able to make his son Grimoald mayor of the palace in his stead. … The nineteen surviving original royal documents issued in Neustria from 691 to 717 have the names of eighty people associated with them. Of these eighty, only nineteen can be connected in any way either with Austrasia or with the family of Pippin, and of the nineteen names, only six can be found amongst the fifty-eight appearing in the witness lists of documents issued by Pippin’s family in Austrasia in the period 702–726. In other words, Pippin demonstrably did not pack the Neustrian court with his own followers as Childeric had attempted to do two decades earlier. Two of the Neustrian documents are royal judgements and they list all of the magnates present when the cases in question were heard. From these lists it is possible to see that, with the exception of western Aquitaine, magnates from all over the kingdom continued to attend the Neustrian court.
If Pippin wanted to validate his own actions by calling on the collective authority assembled at court, it is also clear that he too was bound by that authority.
One of these documents and two other judgements demonstrate this nicely, for they record court decisions against Pippin’s family, made when the latter tried to get their hands on lands and rights of the premier Neustrian monastery of St Denis. All this is a far cry from the picture the Prior Metz Annals and Einhard painted, in which Pippin had full control of the assemblies around the king. Likewise, their insistence that all of the kings of this period were totally insignificant is demonstrably wrong in the case of at least one of them, Childebert III who ruled 695–711.
Childebert’s father, Theuderic III, may well have been the puppet of suc- cessive magnate factions, as in 673 people had feared he would be. His eldest son, Clovis III (691–695), was a minor at his accession and survived for only three years as an adult king, but his younger brother Childebert ruled for over fifteen years as an adult. …
… Around this time too, according to a ninth-century source, the ruler of the Alamans and other eastern leaders cut themselves off from the rest of the political community because ‘they could no longer serve the Merovingian kings as they had formerly been accustomed to do’. But the success of the regime at the turn of the seventh century, before Childebert’s death led to a certain degree of political alienation, may lie in the way in which Childebert and Pippin together made a strong combination. The king could attract the support which allowed the royal court to function effectively as the primary instrument of judicial power, and the fact of Pippin’s military superiority discouraged the faction fighting which could disrupt the court’s activities. For Pippin was above all a military leader …
… resentment built up apace with the growing power of Pippin and his family. Then in 714 disaster struck them. Pippin fell ill and his son Grimoald was murdered whilst visiting him. Drogo had died in 707, and the males in the next generation were still young, so Pippin tried to secure his family by making a grandson, Theudoald, mayor of the palace, with his wife Plectrude as a kind of regent. … When Pippin died in late 714, the Neustrians drove Theudoald out and then allied with the Frisians to strike at the very heart of the family’s power on the River Meuse.
It was left to Charles, later to be known as Charles Martel [c.688–741, grandfather of Charlemagne] to rally the family’s supporters and its fortunes, beginning his campaign with guerilla actions against the victorious Neustrians and Frisians.
The events of 714 thus led to a period of prolonged warfare which finally destroyed the old order of the Merovingian world as the Frankish political community was first broken up and then forcibly reshaped around the person of Charles Martel.
Charles as a result, and in contrast to his father, could make Merovingian kingship a mere formality and even rule without a king. …
We have now followed the basic course of events recorded in the written sources for the history of seventh-century Francia. [the most torturous details were omitted]
One of the most prominent features to emerge from these sources is the importance of the royal palace in the political life of Francia. Against this background, political history is revealed as the interaction of kings, queens, mayors and magnates.
What shaped that interaction was first the unification of Francia under Chlothar II which led to the formation of a supra-regional political elite, and then a prolonged period of peace. In contrast to the sixth century, in the seventh there was relatively little fighting in Francia itself … also little threat from outside. Peace, however, put the solidarity of the political leaders under pressure as they competed for resources which appeared limited when there was no prospect of the profits which war could bring.
Though competition between magnates could be manipulated in the favour of royal government, when rivalry developed into uncontrollable feuding this could paralyse the operation of the palace, as events in the mid 670s demonstrate. ‘Feuding’ and ‘faction-fighting’ are the terms which best describe this behaviour, for they emphasise that strife between factiones was within a single political community rather than between different ethnic, social or regional groups.
This observation allows us to see that seventh-century Frankish society was at the top level subject to a limited degree of structural instability, but from this it need not follow that it was generally unstable or politically chaotic.
It was in fact the overall stability of the Frankish polity which made child kingship possible. An acceptance of public authority survived the disappearance of direct taxation which had once underpinned it. Royal rights were increasingly exercised locally without the supervision of central government, and by granting immunities to the lands of favoured church institutions the kings actually banned their own officers from exercising those rights in many areas of the kingdom. But a notion of public authority lived on in the hands of those who profited from it, even though they might be beyond the immedi- ate control of central government, or enjoy exemption from dues and services owed to the king, as holders of immunities did. Such people could not deny the authority of the kings without laying open to question the legality of their own power. Even Charles Martel would be thus bound into a notional acceptance of Merovingian authority.
In this way public authority was turning from a fiscal into a [political] phenomenon as fiscal rights fell into the hands of magnates, and government was produced through an association of the powerful rather than by bureaucratic direction.
It was within these terms that the later Merovingian state evolved, rather than as a result of ‘Roman’, or centralist, government being overthrown by ‘Germanic’ or aristocratic systems of rule, which is one way in which [events have] been interpreted.
The basis of power in society lay, ultimately, in the control of land because this provided access to the only sure source of renewable wealth in the form of what was produced by the workers on the land, both free and unfree.
At the same time there was a very strong demand for high-value moveable wealth, ‘treasure’, which could be acquired in exchange for agrarian products or more spectacularly through warfare or by political means. The writing of this period is saturated with references to treasure. A store of treasure was the precondition for the exercise of power, for it acted as a magnet on people’s loyalties, and one of the great attractions of wielding public authority was that it provided access to moveable wealth in the form of judicial fines and what little taxation remained.
The granting of immunities to churches, thereby giving them the rights to keep the profits of government, stimulated with cash institutions which were already well organised large-scale farmers. Whether simply as a result of this, or owing to a more widespread enhancement of landlords’ rights, or as a dividend of peace and greater stability, there was in the seventh century the beginnings of an increase in productivity in the countryside. In turn this led to the first signs (albeit faint) of economic growth since antiquity. It is in this context that we see a switch from a gold to a silver coinage in the 670s and the first hints that in some areas the population was beginning to grow. The seventh century therefore saw Francia maturing economically as well as politically … It had developed into a kingdom which could be massive in size despite its meagre resources and despite the rudimentary nature of its government. This, above all, was what the Merovingians bequeathed to their successors.
[END of Chapter 14]
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