#merovingian history

[blueiscoool]

Merovingian Gold and Garnet Fibula in the shape of a Rooster European · ca. 500 - 600 A.D.

[wonder-worker]

"In the Histories, Brunhild and Fredegund appear as political adversaries and moral opposites. Gregory encouraged his audience to compare the two queens by emphasising their differences. He said nothing bad of Brunhild, yet he accused Fredegund of a great many crimes, including murder, sacrilege, witchcraft, and treason.

…Looking beyond Gregory’s interpretation, Brunhild and Fredegund may not have been so different. Both queens reigned at the side of their husbands and then remained politically influential during their widowhood as mothers of their minor sons. Both formed close, politically useful relationships with some bishops and quarrelled with others. Both cared about the education of their children and made efforts to rescue daughters who fell into the hands of rival powers. They treated their inferiors in a manner befitting a ruler, defending honour and threatening violence much as did kings and other powerful men. Their skilful evocation of both fear and love would have made Machiavelli blush. They donated to the church, venerated the saints, and kept an eye on those who might use illegitimate sources of spiritual power, such as witchcraft or poison, with due attention. Other sources recognised this fundamental similarity: Venantius Fortunatus, ever the dutiful royal client, praised Fredegund and Brunhild alike, while the Chronicles of Fredegar, written from the safety of a later generation, criticised them equally. Yet Gregory insisted they were rivals and moral opposites. His task was not an easy one. Rumours of Fredegund’s misdeeds may have abounded, but stories of Brunhild’s virtues were rather more obscure. Thus, Gregory carefully arranged his material, encouraging his audience to compare the two and to find Brunhild to be the better. Why so complex a narrative strategy? Gregory laboured under burdensome constraints, coming into personal conflict with Fredegund, while finding Brunhild to be a powerful, if intimidating, patron."

– E.T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and the Women of the Merovingian Elite

[illustratus]

View of Reims Cathedral by Domenico Quaglio the Younger

[merovingian-marvels]

The Langobards

The Langobards/Lombards/Longobards are an Italic-Germanic tribe with origins in southern Scandinavia around the first centuries B.C. and A.D.

Their steady migration southward can be retraced by archaeological artifacts, which show their Scandinavian origin.

Their early connections to (the geographical city of) Rome made them very influential in the Western Roman world; on financial, military, religious but also law practice and kingship levels.

The Lombards were quickly christened and were the founding fathers of many religious institutions in northern Italy, ruled Italy, and adapted/adopted Roman Law, making for a culturally rich period. Their capital Pavia is located in the Italian province of Lombardy, named after, you guessed it.

It has to be said (it sounds like a fake fact but it is not) that their name means “Long Beards”. In many European languages the descriptive name can be heard in “Langobard” also written as “Longobard”.

Image:

Langobardic radiate headed bow brooch

Found in: Chiusi - Tuscany, Italy

[ochipi]

So I might’ve actually lectured my lecturer. He’s an archivist, but not a historian (in the broadest version of the word).

Previously mentioned: Roman archives, didn’t really survive because of wax tablets and papyri decaying but we know they wrote and archived. Sure.

After the disappearance of the Western Roman Empire (he was very safe with his word choices here), archiving or writing large amounts of texts wasn’t really a thing, until the Arabs came by the 12th century and Europe was archiving again.

HOLD THE FFING PHONE RIGHT THERE! And I did ask why he was reasoning this way. He didn’t really got me immediately so I provided him with examples.

Roman law didn’t disappear, it was held up and added upon. (Fine = income!) we know this because A) we have catholic additions on it making pagan elements in society illegal, B) we have written versions of the Lex Salica as old as the 8th century, C) Carolingian Minuskel is a thing, learned how to read it at previous Uni.

They just continued copying/translating Greek to Latin to f.e. Diets.

Laws are only useful when you have an institute that has them, can check on them and execute them. All those laws are stored somewhere (= archived).

Handy for cloisters to know how many properties they have and what they provide in income and how much they cost.

Roman law became regional, the Goths, Salic Franks, Anglians all had written law. The Catholic Church even invited Irish monks over to baptize Europeans and they introduced the space in written language in the process to make it easier for them. Writing… archiving…

The Catholic Church was very keen on making martyrs immediate saints. Their stories were recorded (!) into hagiographies. We still have those. They were kept (archived!) in churches and cloisters.

They like their heroes. Tales like Beowulf are 8th century. The church wrote their hymns down so they could hand it out to their singers. The church provided education. The male elite could write…

Gregorius of Tours wrote his Historia Francorum. He wrote the history of the Francs, while they were still around! That’s archiving!

Yeah sure, they wrote how the Vikings were invaders and so on and on. But they wrote it down in the cloister archives!

I mean I can continue. But these were the things I mentioned in class.

To clarify, the Arabs did not re-introduce the production of archiving material and archives themself. They were just never gone. What the Arabs did do was re-introduced science! (Scream it out loud for the people in the back!). While Charlemagne was busy killing Slavs, the Arabs had libraries (Baghdad House of Wisdom) and research institutes and were good mathematicians and astronomers (many stars in our night sky have Arab names to this day). Europe owes a ton of stuff thanks to the Islamic Golden Age. But not really recording and archiving.

On the other hand, I was later informed that the lecturer started panicking because i apparently cornered him good. I just took the one time I get to prove that the last five years of me working around the Early Middle Ages wasn’t for nothing. I don’t want to apologise

[memories-of-ancients]

Gold and jewel mounted sword, Merovingian, 5th-6th century AD

from Christies

[nanshe-of-nina]

Medieval Women Week || free day! ↬ Saint Radegund

Long before she founded her convent in Poitiers, Radegund expected to live out her days as a queen. She was born into the royal house of the Kingdom of Thuringia, in what is today central Germany. The precise year of her birth, as with so many events in her life, cannot be determined with certainty, but it fell in either the late 510s or, more likely, the early 520s. While she was still very young, Radegund lost both of her parents. Yet this tragedy was soon eclipsed by the downfall of her dynasty, and the slaughter of most members of her family, following an invasion by the Franks in 531. King Chlothar I took Radegund as his captive and later made her his bride. For several years, the young Radegund reigned as queen alongside the very man who had butchered many of her relatives, until Chlothar went one step further and caused her surviving brother to be killed. Following this unforgivable crime, Radegund took religious vows and, after living for a few years in a villa, she founded her grand convent in Poitiers during the 550s. There she remained, in pious devotion and ascetic self- denial, until her death in 587 (outliving Chlothar by more than a quarter century). In what might be considered her greatest single achievement, she obtained from the imperial court in Constantinople what were thought to be fragments of the ‘True Cross’, the wood used to crucify Jesus on the hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem. Facing down opposition from her local bishop, Radegund managed to have the relic placed within her convent, which subsequently acquired the name of ‘Holy Cross.’ — Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen by E.T. Dailey

[isadomna]

Brunhild could not help but be unmoored; her rival had been the one constant in the ever-shifting political waters. Fredegund’s actions had informed her own for the past thirty years. She had grown so used to trying to anticipate Fredegund’s next plot; it would have felt strange to drift to sleep without that worry. Brunhild also felt her age. Nearly every royal, bishop and duke she had worked with or against was gone, replaced by their own children, or by a new family altogether. Brunhild’s political activities in the aftermath of Fredegund’s death were strangely civil. She launched no attacks on Neustria, not even to take back the recently conquered territories. It is unclear whether that was due to bad advice by her military advisers or if Brunhild herself decided to allow Neustria to mourn its queen in peace. But Brunhild could afford to be magnanimous.

Shelley Puhak, The Dark Queens: A gripping tale of power, ambition and murderous rivalry in early medieval

[grayjoy15]

Hello all, and welcome to my historical women inktober! I’ve started with a few mythological women and then included at least one from each century from 100 BCE - 1500 CE; however, there are seven specifically from the 11th century because that is my favorite century. I may be the only one following this list, but if anyone else decides to give it a try, tag me on instagram or tumblr, and use the hashtag #grayjoytober2024 !

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Leave a comment or dm me if there are any questions about the ladies. I’d be happy to clarify! I tried to include names that would be easy to find via google search.

[angevinyaoiz]

Some Dieudonnés

Putting these 2 illustrations next to each other, since I liked the style I used for this! Finally got better at drawing veils and patterns which is nice

[blueiscoool]

1400-Year-Old Gold Foil Figures Found at Pagan Temple in Norway

Archaeologists have discovered a votive gold hoard during road development works in Vingrom, south of Lillehammer on the shores of Lake Mjøsa Norway.

The 5 gold pieces are tiny, about the size of a fingernail. They are flat and thin as paper, often square, and stamped with a motif. Usually, they depict a man and a woman in various types of clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles.

The objects were discovered in the remains of a pagan temple, where previous excavations have uncovered thirty similar stamped gold objects in the vicinity over the past three decades.

Archaeologist Kathrine Stene was the project leader for the excavation, which has been ongoing along the road here all summer and into autumn, due to the upgrade of the E6 highway between Mjøsa Bridge and Lillehammer.

“It was incredibly exciting,” Kathrine Stene said.

The pagan temple measures around fifteen meters in length. Archaeologists have found five gold foil figures in the last couple of weeks.

According to the researchers, the objects date from the Merovingian era sometime between AD 550 to the Viking Age.

The latest objects were found beneath the structure in the wall runs and in adjacent postholes, suggesting that they were ritually placed as votive offerings in the form of a sacrifice or a religious act to protect the building before it was constructed.

In 1993, the temple at Hov was discovered entirely by chance. County conservator Harald Jacobsen noticed the soil while driving along the E6. He thought it looked like what archaeologists call cultural layers, or soil containing human traces. A quick investigation proved him correct, and the discovery of two gold foil figures indicated that this was no ordinary location.

Smaller excavations during the 2000s led to the discovery of 28 gold foil figures, and what is referred to as a temple, a house for pagan religious practices.

In Norway, findings of gold foil figures are rare. The 35 from the temple in Vingrom represent the largest collection found in this country.

However, 100 gold foil figures were found in a similar temple at Uppåkra in Sweden, and more than 2,500 gold foil figures were found in a field on the Danish island of Bornholm.

So, “There must be more of them here,” researchers believe.

By Oguz Kayra.

[wonder-worker]

"A similar item in all the biographies written about Fredegonde during the first half of the nineteenth century was the emphasis placed on her gender. When we recall what was written about Fredegonde in 1789, “Frédégonde seroit aujourd’hui le modele des reines, & peut-être des rois,” and compare it to what Langerack wrote in 1847, “Mais ce n’était pas assez pour Frédégonde d’être reine: il lui fallait être reine et roi tout ensemble,” we see how Fredegonde was viewed as crossing the line between feminine queenship and masculine kingship. The central ideas in the quotations are different–the first one emphasises her “crimes” as a leader and presents her masculine behaviour as a positive feature. In the second one, however, the criticism is aimed at her unfeminine ambition and lust for power. It was no longer the monarchy itself which was negative but the queen who did not behave like a good bourgeois queen should have behaved. The same image of Fredegonde subjugating her husband persisted throughout the early nineteenth century as it was used as an example of “unnatural” relations and as a sign of the Merovingian period’s decadence. She was thus perceived in many occasions as a masculine figure but her “greatness” was always attached to the political needs tied to historiography–just as Clovis’ “greatness” was tied to the rebirth of French monarchy in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Both figures were instruments used by historians to bolster their vision of the “French nation.”

Fredegonde’s role as a queen of France was partly based on second-hand sources written during the Ancien Régime, and as the use of these sources diminished, so did her role in the history of France. In addition, there are several revealing reasons why no one ever wrote any entire work about Fredegonde. First of all she was not perceived as a good role model for female readers and therefore no woman writer would or could write about her. The choice of topics for women authors was very limited–most of them wrote to make a living and it would have been very difficult to get a book about Fredegonde published as it could not have been sold to a bourgeois lady. Saint queens from the Merovingian period, Clotilde, Radegonde and Bathilde, were more suitable topics for biographies as they functioned as role models–even for queens such as Maria Amelia who identified herself to a bourgeois lady as well. Secondly the reason why there were no works about Fredegonde is that she did not represent the nineteenth-century idea of civilisation, whereas Brunhilde could be depicted as the well-educated patron of religious monuments. Fredegonde was in fact perceived as less “French” and more German than Brunhilde. But as Chilperic’s wife, as a “queen of France,” she could not be ignored, and queenship itself assured her a place among “famous women.” The new historiographical ideas which led to represent Gauls, and Gallo-Romans, as opposing the Franks brought about a slow change in Fredegonde’s role. She no longer represented the early monarchs but the German Franks who were perceived as oppressing the Gauls. Her history was thus a warning example of what might happen to a society if “natural” social classes or gender hierarchies were not respected. Eventually she also came to represent the threat of Germanic influence in France –all in one person."

— Heta Aali, "Fredegonde – Great Man of the Nineteenth Century", Les Grandes figures historiques dans les Lettres et les Arts 2 (2013)

[illustratus]

The Education of the Children of Clovis (School of Vengeance, Training of Clotilde's Sons)

by Lawrence Alma-Tadema

[merovingian-marvels]

The Salic Law/ Lex Salica

The Salic Law is the written law of the Frankish empire. Its origin is both in Germanic customary law and Roman criminal law. Continuing Roman law fitted in the “Imperium Romanum Aeternum" or the idea that Rome was everlasting (the early Merovingians still saw themselves as Roman and didn't consider the (Western) Roman Empire "fallen").

There are many versions and interpretations of the Salic Law, depending on the Germanic additions made to it. This is especially true for customary law, punishments and inheritance. The most famous rule included in the text is that Kings/rulers have to be succeeded by their eldest son.

In some instances, new laws and punishments were added after incidents occurred which were not previously considered. There were for example different punishments for people who were free vs. slaves. Punishments could also vary, depending on the amount of people involved. Later Catholic additions include the banishment of pagan elements such as animistic practices, future predictions or the names of our weekdays. Some of these banishments are the only documented proof of certain pagan elements which were successfully oppressed by Christianity, such as the habbit of saying "bless you" after a sneeze. This indicates that a sneeze was used for interpretations (foresight, good luck charms, etc.) that could not coexist with Catholic devotion. "Bless you" was installed to replace whatever it was Germans did after a sneeze, turning it into a "positive" that survived into our current time.

Image: page from the 794 AD Salic Law

Library of the Sankt Gallen abbey - Switzerland.

[ochipi]

Archaeological things that made me happy 2

The Wijnaldum Fibula, a bow brooch from Great Frisia, was found plowed to bits. Metal detectorists and archaeologists spend years searching the fields of Wijnaldum trying to complete the brooch and to the world’s (and my) joy, the brooch was reassembled to its most complete form in 1500 years.

The garnet inlay originates from India, and two Dirham coins were found, signifying long distance trade with the East.

Just for the fun of it, can you spot Wotan’s face in the garnet inlay?