The Frankish kingdom of the Merovingians: genesis and the transformation of the representations of authority in the synthesis of Roman and Germanic traditions

Abstract

Addressing the representations of the Merovingian kingdom in the narrative sources, hagiography, and legal records, this book seeks to examine the relationship between "fact" and "representation" in the Frankish history of the V to VIII centuries. Taking for analysis the key events in the history of the Merovingian Gaul, this study attempts to investigate the discordant aspects of their representation and to analyse the ways in which these incongruences or conflicts in representation are due to the limitations of discourses and narratives predicated on the sources' genre. The book also investigates the ways in which differences in source genre may help explain the traditional and yet highly subjective chronological picture of the development of the Frankish kingdom over two and a half hundred years. Drawing parallels between the main events of particular periods, the sources and their authors, the study seeks to suggest that the traditional picture of the significant changes in the Merovingian polity and infrastructure from the early, more successful period during the rule of Clovis (486/487-511) and Chlotar I (511-561) to the later, less successful one may be an aberration cause by the changes in literate culture, in the types of documents and in the specific perspective of authors and scribes composing the documents rather than by objective causes. Thus in this book I attempt to show how the historical sequence of traditional Late Antique narrative histories (Gregory of Tours, Fredegar, Liber Historiae Francorum), of hagiography (Vita Balthildis reginae etc.) and of the charters and royal responses to litigation determined the image of each of the periods. At the same time, I argue that despite the emphasis on differences that scholars have sought to emphasize in describing each of the periods there is a great deal of continuity between the earlier and later part of the Merovingians' reign, if one can divert from the traditional narrative account of milirary victories and royal control over territories and domains and look instead at the mechanisms of soft power that underlay the rule of the Frankish kings. The book argues that if one eliminates the bias of portraying particular historical peiods that had originated because of the difference in the approach provided by sources, one will see a relatively homogenous narrative which used the same clichés, or rather, archetypes, both for the times of Clovis, his sons and grandsons and for the times of Clovis II and his progeny with Balthild. Central to this stropped-down narratives were the ideas of the Franks' integration into the Mediterranean culture and into the system of threepartite representation of authority which had been common to it since Caesar and Tacitus. Regardless of their origin, the writers of histories, authors of saints' lives and the scribes who put together royal responses to tough legal cases all thought of the king as the peacemaker and an intermediary who was supposed to incorporate military prowess, sacrality of both the rex and of the priest, and the special status of the judge which in their case originated from the Roman emperors' role in adjudicating conflicts by means of rescripts. Chapter on addresses the formation of the kindom of the Franks and undertakes to examine the events of Clovis' coming to power, of his baptism and of the delineation of the boundaries within the family between the winning and the losing lines. Constructing the story of the Franks' forceful conquest of Soisson and of Northern Gaul in general, which goes against the archaeological evidence and information from other sources, Gregory of Tours, as this study suggests, followed his own goal of presenting the Franks as the group whose legitimacy in excercising power did not depend on the Roman empire's sanction. His description of Clovis' visit to Tours showed the bishop attempting to portray the king as the duly chosen lieutenant of the Byzantine emperor, but the one whose prerogatives were transferred to him not by the emperor's legates but the the bishop of Tours. Thus he saw the Frankish kings as both belonging to the Mediterranean world and distinct from it, as being part of the imperial aristocracy and elite, and at the same time as conquerors who owed their authority to no one. The chapter also suggests that Gregory of Tours made his choice of supporting the Austrasian brach of the dynasty in the person of Childebert over the Soisson branch, represented by Chilperic. This choice was due to the attempt of Chilperic as the king of Neustria to claim control of Tours to himself, whereas Childebert as the more distant ruler did not arise the same suspicions and negative attitude. This predilection towards who he thought was the "better" king he thought should transform into historical reality. But Gregory of Tours' representation was far from being a true reperesentation of historical trends as the branch of Childebert lost in the long run and that of Chilperic managed to become the main one and to produce all remaining kings of the Merovingians. Thus the bishop of Tours' highly subjective approach highlighted the episcopal privilege and put to the fore the king who recognized it, while the historical situation rapidly developed towards favoring the branch that the prelate saw as ill-fitted and doomed. While Gregory espoused the idealized picture of the kingdom as an heir to the Roman diocese where the bishops and cities were key to power structures, while the situation rapidly developed towards the kings appropriating the powers of imperial representatives that had earlier been reserved for general like Aegidius. Gregory underappreciated the capability for maneuver that the youngest son of Chlotar I from his last marriage could muster and generally failed to grasp the attempts of the weakest king in the family hierarchy to aspire to the position of an educated philosopher-king and intermediary. But in Fredegar's Chronicle the accents changed as the author sought to emphasize continuity between the Frankish kings and the Roman empire, whose generals their predecessors could have served as soldiers. In the Liber historiae francorum the representation of the Frankish kingdom came to resemble the straight line from the barbarian military commanders of the fifth century to the Christian kingdom of the seventh and eighth centuries. Thus one may notice that the representation of the Frankish kingdom changed significantly, from being that of the episcopal republic under the aegis of the good kings and in constant competition with the unruly representatives of the Merovingian family, to the kingdom that incorporated in its unity with the dynasty the ideal of Christian authority. Chapter two shows how the development of monasticism in the seventh century contributed to the changes in the patterns of literacy as many educated people began to shift their writing habits to hagiography. It investigates the ways in which sacrality, originating from monastic community, was added to the image of the king which had been hitherto perceived as the intermedieary between the Mediterranean post-Roman world and the world of barbarian limes. This chapter suggests that these sources produce a picture one needs to take into account with caution. On the one hand, the wide spread of saints' lives produced an impression of the monastic communities' privileged position since the very first day of monastic onslaught. Careful examination suggests, however, that for a relatively long period the rising number of monasteries had not initiated the reshaping of the foundations of the royal authority. Using the example of St-Denis, this chapter suggests that the monastery's history shows it to be a regular monastic establishment which had not yet developed a unique tie with the Frankish kings it did later. Much as with the Gregory of Tours' Histories, hagiography produced an impression of the close ties between the kingship and monasticism from the early seventh century, whereas in reality the kings long continued to be ignorant of the opportunities the new phenomenon provided. Thus in the lives of the seventh and early eight centuries nothing nothing had changed with the coming of the monasteries as the kings remained largely out of contact for the monks. This chapter suggests that the Merovingian kingship continued to be built in this age on the close connection the cities that had been important until the trends first noticed by Henri Pirenne started to weigh heavily on their existence. Thus the imagined historical picture needs to be separated from the actual history of the Merovingian kingship in the case of hagiography just as it has been done in the first chapter in the case of narrative histories. Chapter three addresses records of court proceedings that had become a peculiarly interesting sort of documents since the middle of the seventh century and that filled an important gap that appeared when both narrative histories and hagioraphy stopped appearing as a result of the overall drop in literacy. These records were an offshoot of the imperial rescript and they conveyed to the conflicting parties the solutions found by the kings' representatives and the king himself to the conflicts that had no precedent in Late Antique law. These court proceedings dealt with reshaping of the power balance in Neustria and they showed how different aristocratic groupings used appeals to the king to get a grip on those lands that lost their direct owners and that fell through the cracks of the Frankish and Gallo-Roman networks of authority. Although scholars have thought that these court proceeding, mostly favoring the monastery St-Denis, were "political" in the sense of favorite the key royal monastery, I suggest that even the most evident of them still showed that the Merovingian court in the late period of the dynasty's rule was the place of negotiation and incorporation of elites into the orbit of royal prestige. These documents suggest contrary to the image of the "weak rulers" the kings in this period were deemed to be peacemakers and rulers in the image of the emperor and that they were accorded the right to pronounce law. This prerogative, although derided by Einhard in the 830s, meant a significant rise in prestige of the Merovingian kings who had finally managed to move away from the military commander status and who added to their aristocratic standing (unstable and questioned by Gregory of Tours) the right to be considered worthy of law-giving, the status first accorded to Theodosius II by the Senate in 439.

История франкского королевства в период правления Меровингов стала одним из определяющих элементов трансформации позднеантичного мира в раннесредневековый (наряду с историей варварских королевств визиготов, остроготов, вандалов, бургундов и лангобардов). Приход варваров на территорию провинций Западно-Римской империи, прекратившей свое существование в 476~г., наложился на ряд тенденций развития позднеантичного общества, которые стали все более заметны начиная с IV~в. Этот процесс имел ряд хронологических и региональных особенностей. Роль королевства франков в процессе заимствования раннесредневековым обществом позднеантичного наследия определяется рядом факторов, в частности, его географическим положением, и тем значением, которое это королевство приобрело в истории Средневековой Европы благодаря второй династии франкских королей, Каролингам. Ключевой проблемой исследования меровингского периода стала оценка характера взаимовлияния позднеантичного общества и того общества, которое сложилось в бывших римских провинциях в результате постепенного проникновения туда варваров. Эта проблема, т. н. "романо-германский синтез", по-прежнему привлекает внимание исследователей, и история франкского королевства является центральным сюжетом истории раннего Средневековья, по причине того, что это королевство может считаться своего рода "золотой серединой" между значительно романизировавшимися визиготами, и мало подверженными влиянию империи и никогда не романизировавшимися саксами, свевами, и отчасти вандалами. Настоящее исследование рассматривает проблемы трансформации позднеантичного общества в раннесредневековое на примере королевства Меровингов, уделяя внимание в первую очередь изменениям в представлениях о власти и о социальной структуре, характерных для современников эпохи с использованием широкого круга как первоисточников, так и историографии - традиционной и современной.