Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 203

the seventh century the kingdom of his son Chlothar II was known as Neustria

and was focussed primarily in north-western Gaul, ‘located on the edge of Gaul

next to the [Atlantic] Ocean’.

Once Chlothar II expanded his inﬂuence in

613,Paris ﬁnally emerged as the capital city of Neustria. The kingdom centred

on Orl

eans had meanwhile changed the most. After 511 Chlodomer’s kingdom

had extended into western Gaul; but after 561 Guntramn’s kingdom stretched

east and south of Orl

eans. It acquired an identity of its own largely because it

revived an earlier independent kingdom. Because Guntramn spent increasingly

more time in Chalon-sur-Sa

one, the focus of his kingdom came to resemble

the former kingdom of the Burgundians centred around the intersection of the

one and the Sa

one. So although the kings and the royal residences changed,

three distinct ‘Frankish kingdoms’ emerged, Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy.

Aquitaine might have been a fourth, not least because it too had been the basis

for another of the barbarian kingdoms that had emerged in Gaul during the

later ﬁfth century. After the Visigoths’ defeat, Aquitaine initially remained

more or less intact, and its linkage with Clovis’ interests in north-western Gaul

hinted at the possibility of a division between a western Gaul dominated by

Clovis and an eastern Gaul dominated, from north to south, by Rhineland

Franks, Burgundians and Ostrogoths; so at the council that Clovis convened

at Orl

eans in 511 all of the bishops who attended came either from Aquitaine or

from what would later become the kingdom of Neustria. But after Clovis’ death

the cities in Aquitaine were partitioned among the various Merovingian kings

in the north, and unlike the former kingdom of the Burgundians, the former

kingdom of the Visigoths had no opportunity to re-emerge as a consolidated

Frankish kingdom. Because royal deaths and rapid marriages led to constantly

shifting partitions of the cities in Aquitaine, during the twenty years after 567

control over Cahors alone, to mention but one example, bounced among ﬁve

kings and two queens.

During the sixth century the deﬁning characteristic

of the region was political fragmentation. Writing at the end of the century

Gregory of Tours never mentioned an ‘Aquitaine’.

Conﬂicting interests in Aquitaine led to additional civil wars; so did the

isolated location of the kingdom of Neustria. Like his brothers, Chilperic too

fought against various northern neighbours such as the Frisians, Saxons and

Danes; but because the core of his kingdom was in north-western Gaul, he

could expand his resources only by confronting his brothers. After he had his

son Theudebert invade the territories of Tours, Poitiers and other cities that

belonged to Sigibert, Guntramn tried to serve as a broker, sometimes allied

Jonas of Bobbio, Vita Columbani i.24.98, apparently the earliest reference to ‘Neustrian Franks’.

Soissons: Kaiser (1973).

Rouche (1979), pp. 51–85.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

204 raymond van dam

with Chilperic, sometimes with Sigibert. By late 575 Sigibert had seized Paris

and Theudebert had been killed in battle. At the moment of his triumph, how-

ever, Sigibert was murdered by assassins sent by Chilperic’s wife Fredegund.

Although Sigibert’s young son Childebert succeeded him as king in Austrasia,

Chilperic’s son Merovech presented himself as a rival by marrying Brunehild,

his uncle Sigibert’s widow. But Chilperic, perhaps at Fredegund’s urging, was

now the one who felt threatened enough to have his son tonsured in prepa-

ration for entering a monastery. Chilperic should not have worried, because

the notables of Austrasia soon arranged Merovech’s death. Eventually, because

illness and intrigues deprived both Guntramn and Chilperic of their sons, each

decided to adopt their young nephew Childebert as heir. Childebert’s advisers

simply took the opportunity to play his two uncles against each other, until

Chilperic too was assassinated in 584.

In Gregory’s biblical perspective most of these kings had failed to follow

Clovis’ example; because they ‘had not walked rightly before God’s sight’, He

had delivered them ‘to the hand of their enemies’. But Gregory did admire

Guntramn, who as the only surviving son of Chlothar I now cast himself

as guardian for his nephews. He had already adopted Childebert, and once

Fredegund asked for his protection, Guntramn eventually supported the rule

of her infant son Chlothar II, and ﬁnally adopted him too. As ‘father’ for

his two nephews, Guntramn seemed similar to King Chlothar I by holding

‘pre-eminence in the kingdom’.

So Guntramn quickly tried to expand his

own holdings by claiming both Paris and the entire kingdom once held by his

brother Charibert and by seizing some of the kingdom of Chlothar II.

As uncle and nephew, as well as father and son by adoption, Guntramn

and Childebert were able to reign more or less in tandem. Guntramn warned

Childebert of a plot against his life, and in 587 they signed a pact that ﬁnally

certiﬁed the distribution of various contested cities.

Their wider interests

caused some friction, however, in part because almost any foreign campaign

or diplomacy seemed to outﬂank Guntramn’s kingdom of Burgundy at the

centre of the Frankish kingdoms. As another aspect of their interests in central

Europe the kings of Austrasia had arranged diplomatic ties, and some marriage

ties, with the Lombards. But after the Lombards marched into Italy, Childebert

used occasional campaigns into northern Italy to extort subsidies and gifts from

both them and Byzantines. Guntramn, however, refused to help his nephew,

even though marauding Lombards occasionally attacked cities in his kingdom.

Gregory, Hist. v.14.212, applying i Kings 9:4, 9,toMerovech; vii.13.334,‘regni principatus’, with

Jussen (1991), pp. 64–97.

Gregory, Hist. ix.20.434–9, the so-called ‘Treaty of Andelot’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 205

Instead he launched unsuccessful campaigns against Septimania, the small

coastal district in southern Gaul between the River Rh

one and the Pyrenees

that was still under Visigothic control; but Childebert and Brunehild were

meanwhile receptive to envoys from the Visigothic king Reccared.

Although

Fredegund, still a dominant ﬁgure at the court of Chlothar II, also schemed

against Guntramn by using her connections with the Visigoths, Guntramn

was prepared to preside at Chlothar’s baptism at Paris. Childebert’s dismay

at the time was unnecessary, because upon Guntramn’s death he conﬁrmed

the alliance between Austrasia and Burgundy by inheriting most of his uncle’s

kingdom. In 592 only the cousins Childebert and Chlothar II were left as

Merovingian kings; but their inﬂuence was by now subordinated to the rivalry

between their mothers, Brunehild and Fredegund, and to the increasing power

of the great aristocrats in their kingdoms.

the making of frankish kingship

Gregory of Tours was duly impressed by one bishop who could recite from

memory the complex genealogies in the Old Testament ‘that most ﬁnd difﬁcult

to remember’;

modern readers will probably have a similar bemused reaction

to the numbingly intricate intrigues of the early Merovingians. For all their

scheming, during the sixth century the Merovingians gradually established

over much of Gaul a kingship, or rather several kingships, which combined

elements from different traditions. One was Germanic.

The Merovingians

may have founded and maintained their royal rule by force, but various rit-

uals and symbols then distinguished them from the rest of the population.

The usual insignia of royal rule included a throne, a spear and a shield; when

Guntramn adopted Childebert, he set him on his own throne and suggested

that one shield and one spear defend them both.

The most conspicuous dis-

tinguishing symbol was the kings’ long hair. Despite the obscurity of Gregory

of Tours’ simplistic explanation for the emergence of ‘long-haired kings’ from

the ‘foremost and more noble family’ of the Franks, this emblem became the

visible badge of royal authority that separated them from their subjects, ‘whose

hair was clipped all around’. Clovis had used ecclesiastical tonsures as a means

of gelding some of his rivals; pretenders to the throne had to wait to grow the

required long mane; and the long hair on the head of a decomposed corpse

allowed its identiﬁcation as one of King Chilperic’s sons.

Queen Clothild

Septimania: James (1980).

Gregory, Hist. v.42.248–9.

On Germanic kingship, see Wormald, chapter 21 below.

Gregory, Hist. v.17.214–16.

Gregory, Hist. ii.9.52–8, long-haired kings; Agathias, Hist. i.3.4, clipped hair. Gregory, Hist. ii.41.91–2

for Clovis; v.14.207 for Merovech; vi.24.291–2 for Gundovald; viii.10.376–7 for Guntramn.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

206 raymond van dam

knew what long hair meant for the Merovingian family into which she had

married: when once confronted with a sword and scissors and forced to decide

the fate of some of her grandsons, she conceded that death was preferable to a

haircut. During the sixth century the only non-Germanic name that a Merovin-

gian king used for a son was, not surprisingly, Samson.

These long-haired

kings also retained a value system that, while not uniquely Germanic, certainly

betrayed their background in the frontier zones. To preserve their authority the

Frankish kings had to demonstrate that they were ‘overpowering’, especially in

protecting their kin and in achieving victories in battles. So although the two

had fought in the past, after Chilperic’s assassination Guntramn still thought

that he had to take revenge: ‘If I do not avenge my brother’s death this year, I

should not be considered a man.’ Kings were concerned lest they appear to be

‘weak women’; conversely, Queen Brunehild once ‘armed herself like a man’

in order to stop a war, and Queen Fredegund earned credit for a military vic-

tory by suggesting that her troops camouﬂage themselves as trees.

Because an

ideology of military success and virile manliness deftly reinforced the warrior

symbols of royalty, the Italian poet Fortunatus could ensure his welcome at

Frankish courts by shrewdly beginning his ﬁrst panegyric for a Merovingian

king with a coveted title: Victor.

A second tradition that inﬂuenced the nature of early Frankish kingship

was biblical.

Although by the ﬁfth century Orthodox Christianity provided

a dominant world-view among the Roman population in Gaul, as the Franks

expanded into Gaul they nevertheless retained their pagan cults, and even into

the sixth century they continued to worship at pagan shrines, especially in

northern Gaul. But Clovis had eventually converted to Orthodox Christianity

by allowing Bishop Remigius to baptise him at Rheims. In return, Christian

clerics would now cast Frankish kings as the equivalents of the kings of the Old

Testament. Gregory, as we have seen, often alluded to this biblical model for

the Merovingians, and his friend Fortunatus even went so far as to praise King

Charibert for displaying the clemency of David and the wisdom of Solomon.

Other bishops pointedly addressed the Merovingians as ‘Catholic kings’, per-

haps as a sly admonition of how they were supposed to behave towards the

church. Some comments were less subtle forms of intimidation: a bishop in

Gregory, Hist. iii.18.117–20, Clothild; v.22.122, although Samson, son of Chilperic and Fredegund,

died as an infant in 577.

Gregory, Hist. vii.8.331,‘de genere nostro robustus’; viii.5.374,Guntramn; vi.4.268,‘weak women’;

ix.19.432–4,Brunehild. Fredegund and camouﬂage, Liber Historiae Francorum c.36,p.305.Onthis

episode, Gerberding (1987), p. 165, and on Brunehild, Fredegund and female violence, Gradowicz-

Pancer (2000).

Fortunatus, Carmina 6. la, a panegyric for Sigibert in 566;McCormick (1986), pp. 335–42.

Cf. Wormald, chapter 21 below.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 207

Provence once reminded Theudebert to remember the Final Judgement, when

a ‘Christian leader’ had to render an account to God.

Butifthis biblical analogy made the Merovingian kings more acceptable

for the Roman Christian population, it also posed a dilemma for the kings

themselves. In contemporary letters Remigius had suggested that the warrior

Clovis should instead look after widows and orphans, and Bishop Avitus of

Vienne that the king should exchange his armour for the ‘helmet of salvation’;

according to a later tradition, Remigius had also praised Clovis’ ‘meekness’.

Gregory constantly reminded the Merovingians that they became ‘good kings’

only when they demonstrated their charity and kindness, and that what they

valued most highly, prowess in battles, was in fact most disruptive in Gallic

society. Fortunatus too, who became a priest and eventually bishop at Poitiers,

stressed that success presupposed ‘ruling without slaughter’.

The biblical ide-

als of these tonsured clerics obviously conﬂicted with the warrior code of the

long-haired kings. So a third tradition inﬂuential in the making of early Frank-

ish kingship was the precedent of the Roman or, by now, Byzantine emperors

who combined their Christian faith with an ideology of military victory.

Constantine had long ago set the example of a triumphant Christian emperor,

and at his baptism Clovis was apparently lauded as the ‘new Constantine’. After

his victory over the Visigoths Clovis had even assumed some of the imperial

trappings at Tours where he was hailed as ‘Augustus’. Fortunatus supplied addi-

tional comparisons between Merovingian kings and Roman emperors. Since

he had grown up in a northern Italy that the emperor Justinian’s armies had

recently reconquered from the Ostrogoths, he was familiar with Byzantine

culture and its political theories about emperors. His poems honouring the

marriage of Sigibert and Brunehild displayed a mixture of allusions to clas-

sical mythology and references to some of the virtues long characteristic of

Roman emperors. In a later panegyric he outright attributed to Charibert the

piety of Trajan. And in another laudatory poem he compared Childebert with

Melchizedek, the Old Testament king and priest who had come to represent

the theocratic pretensions of the Byzantine emperors.

ForRomans accustomed to emperors and magistrates, and for Franks accus-

tomed to petty chieftains, imagining kings was not an easy process, and

Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina vi.2.77–80;Gregory, Hist. ix.16.505–9,‘sub catholicis regibus’;

Epistolae Austrasicae x,pp.124–6.

Remigius of Rheims, Epistolae Austrasicae ii,p.2;Avitus of Vienne, Epistolae 46,pp.75–6;Gregory,

Hist. ii.31.76–8.

Gregory, Hist. iii.25.123, v.Praef.193–4;Fortunatus, Carmina vi.2.38.Views of kingship: Wallace-

Hadrill (1968); Reydellet (1981); Brennan (1984); George (1992), pp. 35–61.

On the Roman inﬂuence on early medieval kingship, Wormald, chapter 21 below.

Gregory, Hist. ii.31.77,‘new Constantine’, apparently derived from a Vita of Remigius. Fortunatus,

Carmina vi.1–1a; vi.2.81–2 for Trajan; ii.10.21–2 for Melchizedek.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

208 raymond van dam

throughout the sixth century this mixture of competing ideas simmered like

the discordant babble of languages used to greet kings upon their arrival at

Gallic cities.

Establishing royal authority in a heterogeneous society pre-

sented other, more practical difﬁculties. Even though Clovis and his successors

had eliminated rival Frankish royal dynasties, they were not able to resolve

the tensions within their own family. Successive marriages and concubinage

produced many brothers, half-brothers and cousins who competed with their

fathers, their uncles and each other, and the lingering unresolved implications

of the initial division of territories in 511 among all Merovingian sons also chal-

lenged the establishment of strong royal authority. The early administration of

Clermont and the Auvergne provides one example of this ongoing uncertainty.

Upon Clovis’ death Theuderic had inherited Clermont as an outlying part of

his Austrasian kingdom. But because of the haphazard division of the cities in

Aquitaine other kings had interests in the region, and disloyalty was endemic.

When it was rumoured that Theuderic had been killed, some local Roman

aristocrats offered to betray Clermont to King Childebert. In 524 Theuderic

took his revenge. Although he was unable to take Clermont itself, he did turn

his army loose to pillage the Auvergne. He then left behind, ‘as if for protec-

tion’, a relative named Sigivald, who now served as a duke. But a few years later

Theuderic had Sigivald killed and tried to convince his son Theudebert to kill

Sigivald’s son too. The promotion of a relative, especially in an outlying city,

was perhaps still too much of a challenge to a Merovingian king’s authority. In

555 Chlothar inherited Clermont and immediately sent his son Chramn to the

Auvergne. Chramn soon began to act like an autonomous king by appointing

anew count and terrorising the bishop. But when Chramn seized Poitiers and

Limoges ‘for his own lordship’, his father sent two other sons against him and

eventually had him killed.

The promotion of a son in an outlying region also

raised the possibility of a challenge to a Merovingian king, especially one who

reigned too long, and in particular when local aristocrats supported the son in

preference to the father. Yet sometimes kings had no choice. When Guntramn

remarried, he sent a son by a former mistress to Orl

eans; and Childebert II

later sent an infant son to Soissons and Meaux at the request of local nota-

bles. Gregory’s comparison of the war between Chlothar and Chramn to the

usurpation of Absalom (another long-haired royal son!) neatly encapsulated

the dilemma facing the Merovingian kings as they struggled to consolidate

their authority.

Although the multiplicity of royal courts preserved the rule

Fortunatus, Carmina vi.2.7–8, Charibert greeted at Paris by ‘barbarians’ (i.e. Franks) and Romans

in their own languages; Gregory, Hist. viii.1.370–1,Guntramn greeted at Orl

eans by acclamations

in ‘the languages of Syrians, Latins, and even Jews’.

Sigivald: Gregory, Hist. iii.13.109–10, v.12.201; Vita Patrum xii.2.262–3.‘Rex Chramnus’: Gregory,

Hist. iv.13.144.

Gregory, Hist. iv.20.153,Absalom; iv.25.156,Guntramn; ix.36.457, Childebert.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 209

of the Merovingian family by hampering local aristocrats from establishing

themselves as autonomous rulers, it also increased the potential for feuding

among the Merovingians themselves.

Each Merovingian king extended his royal authority through the appoint-

ment of magistrates, ‘counts, domestics, mayors, guardians, and everyone

else required for imposing royal control’. Ofﬁcials serving at the royal courts

included mayors of the palace, counts of the palace, counts of the stables and

domestics, who might all also function as generals, judges or ambassadors; refer-

endarii, secretaries who kept the king’s ring, as well as stenographers and clerks;

and stewards who administered the royal treasures. Since the Merovingian

kings were often leading military campaigns or roving among their various

lodges and villas, these court ofﬁcials were travelling companions as well as

royal agents and administrators. Other royal magistrates served outside the

courts. Because the Merovingian kingdoms did not respect the boundaries of

the old Roman provinces, the largest administrative units that survived from

the Roman Empire were the cities, that each usually still included an urban

centre and a large surrounding rural hinterland. For many of the cities under

their control, kings appointed counts with various responsibilities, including

dispensing justice, collecting taxes, and enrolling and often also commanding

the local military levies. Kings also appointed dukes, who often commanded

armies, sometimes served as ambassadors, but soon became local administra-

tors of larger regions within the kingdoms. During the sixth century the kings

of Austrasia appointed dukes for Champagne, for the Touraine and Poitou,

for eastern Aquitaine and especially the Auvergne, and for Marseilles and a

part of Provence. The kings of Neustria appointed dukes for Soissons and

the surrounding area, for the region between the Somme and the Loire, and

for Toulouse and a part of Aquitaine that included Bordeaux. The kings of

Burgundy appointed dukes for Orl

eans and the surrounding area, for a collec-

tion of cities in Aquitaine, and for Arles and a part of Provence. In Provence

the governors were usually known by such Roman titles as rectors, prefects

or patricians. Dukes commonly supervised, or at least had higher rank than,

the counts within their regions, although there were few counts in most of

Austrasia and in Provence. So because these royal administrations combined

new and traditional elements, they were certainly neither systematic nor uni-

form. Shaping and imposing a Merovingian administration in Gaul was an

ongoing process throughout the sixth century.

Merovingian authority also rested upon the ability of the kings to accumu-

late wealth. Rivalries and warfare were two important sources. During their

Gregory, Hist. ix.36.457, list; Selle-Hosbach (1974); Weidemann (1982), i,pp.24–106. Counts:

Claude (1964); Murray (1986), (1988). Dukes: Lewis (1976). Provence: Buchner (1933), pp. 15–25,

86–108.

210 raymond van dam

military campaigns kings accumulated much booty, and some neighbours paid

tribute after being defeated. Some of their wealth also came from the more or

less systematic collection of revenues within Gaul. After taking over the old

imperial estates, conﬁscating the properties of their opponents and rivals, and

accepting many gifts, the kings were ﬁrst of all great landowners who collected

payments and services (or consumed the produce) from their own estates. The

kings’ agents also collected various tolls and ﬁnes, as well as the fees required

as payments for the arbitration of kings or their representatives in judicial dis-

putes. And ﬁnally the kings’ agents collected taxes from the lands owned by

both individuals and institutions such as churches and cities. In some respects

the Merovingians seem to have continued aspects of the old Roman tax system,

not least because their agents kept registers and conducted periodic reassess-

ments. But in a larger context of the redeﬁnition of authority the collection of

revenues was a precise gauge of the kings’ success at extending their inﬂuence

throughout Gaul. Because during their incessant campaigns throughout Gaul

the kings’ armies often looted cities, churches and individuals, perhaps it is best

to think of these taxes as polite forms of plunder, tokens of intimidation and

subordination, rather than as an indication of the imposition of a proper ﬁscal

system for raising revenues. The payment of taxes was the monetary counter-

part to the oaths of allegiance that kings expected from the cities under their

control. Kings sent counts to cities in order to extract both oaths of loyalty

and the taxes; in return, one count once visited Childebert’s court in order to

present the taxes he had collected as ‘the servitude that was owed to the royal

treasury’.

For the Merovingian kings sometimes seem to have thought of themselves

less as heads of state or chief magistrates in a hierarchy of administrators than

as great proprietors who were protecting their interests and their possessions,

both personal and public. Justice, for instance, often became a commodity that

people purchased rather than the result of the uniform enforcement of a set of

values or regulations by kings and their agents; even when kings issued edicts

or promulgated law-codes, they seem to have been primarily concerned about

imitating Roman emperors and creating a consensus among their subjects.

Their kingdoms too were less territorial states than sources of revenue. When

Guntramn and Childebert agreed upon the division of various cities, they

seemed more interested in the revenues than in the actual territorial bound-

aries, and their fractional interests in cities represented proportions of the

taxes. By deﬁning themselves and their authority in terms of their resources,

Gregory, Hist. x.21.519. Royal estates: Ewig (1965), pp. 152–5.Revenues: Goffart (1982); Durliat

(1990), pp. 97–121. Coinage: Grierson and Blackburn (1986), pp. 811–54;Hendy (1988), pp. 59–70.

Wormald (1977); Wood (1994), pp. 102–19.

Merovingian Gaul and the Frankish conquests 211

these kings constantly had to negotiate (or ﬁght) with others interested in

the same assets. Their policy of granting ﬁscal immunities was hence a form

of diplomacy with other powerful notables and institutions. Churches and

shrines requested, and sometimes insisted upon, immunity from taxation for

their properties. Theudebert, for instance, demonstrated his royal justice and

generosity by remitting the taxes of churches in the Auvergne. Since these

churches, like others elsewhere, constantly acquired more properties that were

still liable for taxes, at the end of the sixth century Childebert again remitted

their taxes. Chlothar II seems ﬁnally to have granted to churches and clerics

a more extensive privilege that conferred immunity also upon lands acquired

in the future.

The Franks likewise resisted the imposition of taxation upon

their lands, since it could be taken as a sign of subordination and would hence

subtly change the relationship between themselves and their kings. They there-

fore stoned to death one royal ofﬁcial who had inﬂicted them with taxes; and

after one count had forced some Franks to pay the ‘public tax’, these Franks

responded to this affront to their ‘freedom’ by burning his house.

As the

notion of ‘Frank’ hence gradually became associated more with freedom from

taxation than with ethnic origins, the acquisition of immunities became one

method of assimilation with the Franks.

Having accumulated their wealth the Merovingian kings had to ﬁnd ways

of spending it. Under the Roman Empire the major expense for emperors

had been the enormous army, most of whose legions had been camped on

various frontiers. But the Merovingian kings kept no large standing army and

instead relied on local levies, garrisons and armed retainers for each campaign.

By Roman standards their armies were comparatively small, often only a few

thousand or a few hundred men; and because their campaigns, whether within

Gaul or against neighbours, produced so much booty and so many captives who

could be ransomed, the armies were virtually self-supporting. Unlike Roman

armies, the armies of the Frankish kings and their magistrates were furthermore

not intended to fortify outlying frontiers. Instead, military campaigns were

too often simply manifestations of royal (and aristocratic) concerns about

manliness and prestige, and the armies of the kings and their magistrates

frequently terrorised their own subjects. The devastating impact of one army

as it marched through western Gaul was comparable to the destruction caused

byaswarm of locusts of biblical proportions. In the evaluation of Gregory

of Tours, this army was another ‘natural disaster’ like frost, storm or drought.

In many respects the Merovingians and their armies seem to have treated

Gregory, Hist. iii.25.123, x.7.488; Chlothar II, Praeceptio, MGH Cap. i, 8,c.11.19.Immunities: Murray

(1994); Fouracre (1995).

Gregory, Hist. iii.36.131–2, vii.15.336–7.

212 raymond van dam

warfare like sport; so when one supporter of Sigibert came upon a son of

Chilperic, ‘with horns and bugles he pursued him like a ﬂeeing deer’.

The

Franks and their kings obviously enjoyed the chase, and some of their small-

scale military campaigns were similar to hunting expeditions. In fact, after

King Chlothar had killed his son Chramn, he requested forgiveness and then

went hunting. But Chlothar died from a fever he contracted during this hunt;

his nephew Theudebert had been mortally injured in a bizarre accident while

hunting, crushed by a tree knocked over by a wild bull; and Chilperic too was

assassinated while hunting. During the sixth century the kings who survived

royal feuds were more likely to die while hunting than while on military

campaigns.

Since the Merovingians therefore had limited military expenses, they used

their wealth to bolster their own prestige and authority. The sheer accumulation

of valuable objects was a visible manifestation of their standing. Chilperic

once tried to impress Bishop Gregory by displaying the gold coins that he had

received from the Byzantine emperor; he also showed the bishop an enormous

bejewelled gold platter that he had had fashioned ‘for the ennoblement of the

Frankish people’. Kings, then, dispersed their wealth as gifts that conﬁrmed

their relationships with retainers and subjects. In order to acquire or ensure the

support of local aristocrats kings distributed estates and treasures; given their

mutual interests in warfare and hunting, their gifts often included horses, dogs,

hawks, even hunting horns. As the kings appointed many of these same men as

court ofﬁcials, counts and dukes, they clearly relied more on the obligations of

these personal ties than on more impersonal notions of bureaucratic authority

and efﬁciency to maintain their magistrates’ loyalty. Their wealthwas the means

for ensuring these personal links and for maintaining royal power, and when

one king wanted to appropriate another’s kingdom, his ﬁrst concern was to

conﬁscate his rival’s treasury. So upon Chlothar’s death in 561 Chilperic seized

his father’s treasury, sought out the most powerful Franks, and tried to win

their allegiance with gifts. The royal treasuries also included the royal archives

in which kings kept records of their gifts, not so much to ensure legal title as

rather to document the expansion of their inﬂuence and the establishment of

obligations.

With their wealth, kings could also subsidise some of the trappings of high

culture. Although Gregory of Tours may have bemoaned the decline of literary

studies, in fact familiarity with classical culture had certainly not disappeared

Gregory, Hist. vi.45.319, for locusts; iv.47.183–4, for deer; Bachrach (1972).

Gregory, Hist. vi.2.266 and vii.4.328, platter; iv.22.154–5, Chlothar’s treasury; x.19.510–13,archives.

Expenses: Durliat (1990), pp. 122–30.