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

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Francia in the seventh century 373

so numerous that they ﬁll no less than ﬁve weighty tomes of the Monumenta

Germaniae Historica series.

One collection of letters has also survived, as well

as a few other individual letters.

Only one piece of secular legislation survives

from the seventh century (from the year 614), but there are the records of up

to ten church councils.

Then there are approximately 200 charters relating to

the period, thirty-seven of which have survived as originals.

To this list we can

add the models of charters provided in the Formulary of Marculf

and note,

ﬁnally, the additional information supplied by writers outside Francia: Eddius

Stephanus and Bede from England, Julian of Toledo from Spain, and Paul the

Deacon from Italy.

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.

In 613 Theuderic, king of Burgundy, attacked his brother Theudebert, king

of Austrasia, in revenge for a raid the latter had made upon Alsace three years

earlier. Theuderic defeated Theudebert in a ﬁerce battle at Z

ulpich and cap-

tured his treasure at nearby Cologne. He ﬁrst imprisoned and then assassinated

his defeated brother, killing the latter’s young son too. Theuderic then turned

on his uncle, Chlothar king of Neustria, but died before an attack could be

mounted. Chlothar, taking advantage of the death of his Merovingian rivals,

now moved into Burgundy and captured Theuderic’s grandmother Brunehild

and three of her great-grandsons. Chlothar had Brunehild, with whom he had

been in feud all his life, tortured to death and he also killed two of the great-

grandsons. The effect of such carnage was to leave Chlothar II king of all the

three kingdoms which made up Francia. On the face of it, Chlothar was rather

an unlikely winner. Only a few years earlier his very survival as king of Neustria

had been in the balance when his nephews Theuderic and Theudebert com-

bined against him. In 613 he was transformed from underdog to overlord more

by chance than by conquest, and what allowed chance to work in his favour

MGH SRM iii–vii.

Epistolae S. Desiderii Cadurcensis.

Clotharii II Edictum, MGH Cap. i,pp.20–3; Concilia Galliae 511–695,pp.273–326.

ChLA 13, 14 for the original charters. Diplomata, chartae, epistolae. Leges, aliaque instrumenta ad res

Gallo-Francicas spectantia, ed. J. Pardessus for all charters. The royal charters are newly edited in

MGH Diplomata Regum Francorum.

Marculﬁ Formularum Libri Duo.

The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus; Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People;

Julian of Toledo, Historia Wambae;Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum.

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374 paul fouracre

like this was the Franks’ phenomenal attachment to Merovingian kingship:

in Austrasia and Burgundy a Merovingian from Neustria was preferable to no

Merovingian at all.

According to the Chronicle of Fredegar, Chlothar took control of both Bur-

gundy 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 that it was in return for their help against

Brunehild and the sons of Theuderic that in 614 in the Edict of Paris he legis-

lated 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 for-

tunes 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.Itseems 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 opposed to Brunehild 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 in the way

that it is commonly supposed to have done. The Edict contains twenty-four

chapters (capitularia), but 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 pos-

itively 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.

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

Fredegar, chron. iv.40–2,pp.32–6.

Chlotharii Edictum c.12, MGH Cap. i,p.32:‘Ut nullus iudex de aliis provinciis aut regionibus in

alia loca ordinetur.’

Edictus Chilperici c.8, MGH Cap. i,pp.9–10.

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Francia in the seventh century 375

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.

Chlothar was descended from the kings of Soissons and all subsequent

Merovingianswerehisdirect descendants. The area to the north of Paris towards

Soissons thus became the special homeland of the dynasty, and the monastery of

St Denis, 12 kilometres to the north of Paris, was built up in the early seventh

century as the premier royal monastery. Royal movement outside this area

appears to become rare as the seventh century progresses. After 613 Burgundy

never again had a king of its own. Austrasia, which Fredegar tells us was equal

to Neustria-Burgundy in size and population, was ruled by the Neustrian king

from 613 to 622,from628 to 632, possibly from 656 to 662 and from 679

onwards. At other times there was a separate kingdom of Austrasia, but no

Austrasian dynasty ever developed beyond two generations. This latter failure

is not surprising given the restriction of royalty to the descendants of a single

person after 613.For the rest of the seventh century biological accident and

three cases of assassination would together make the descendants of Chlothar

avery 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. It was in the reigns

of Chlothar and of his son Dagobert (d. 638) that leaders from all the regions

of Francia became accustomed to attending the Neustrian palace. What would

spell trouble for the future was a growing resentment at the privilege which

proximity to the king conferred upon the Neustrians 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’, Warnachar in Burgundy and Rado in Austrasia.

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

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376 paul fouracre

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 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, for example travelling to a meeting which took place at Clichy near

Paris the next year. Fredegar’s report of this meeting is of great interest.

shows the deliberative nature of the annual assemblies of king and magnates,

gatherings which Einhard parodied, but which would be no less important to

the Carolingians than they were to the Merovingians. The account also shows

how a gathering of leaders, each accompanied by a military following, could

erupt into violence, but how 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 in Neustria

and Burgundy, creating a sub-kingdom south of the Loire for a half-brother,

Charibert. But within three years Charibert was dead. Dagobert, it was said,

then had Charibert’s young son killed, the southern kingdom came to an end,

and the Merovingian family was again pruned back to a single stem. 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. The next year he made a tour of Austrasia, but after

that, as Fredegar tells us in a strongly disapproving tone, he set up permanent

home in Neustria. Because of this ﬂurry of activity in 628–629,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, two to lead military campaigns

against the Wends in 630 and 631, and another to install his son Sigibert as

king of Austrasia in 632. Whereas the Burgundians seem to have been content

to share a king with the Neustrians, the Austrasians were clearly not happy to

do so. According to Fredegar, they were demoralised when Dagobert preferred

to reside in Neustria rather than Austrasia, and as a result they made a poor

showing in standing up to Wendish pressure on their eastern frontier. Once

they had again acquired a king of their own they rallied their defences and

fought bravely. This suggests that it was necessary to have a king, even an

infant king like the two-year-old Sigibert, in order to raise effective armies.

Fredegar, Chron. iv.55,p.46.

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Francia in the seventh century 377

Later evidence suggests that the enforcement of military obligations was by

royal order. From a reading of Fredegar it seems that another important factor

was royal largesse. When Dagobert established Sigibert in Austrasia he handed

over to him ‘the treasure that he needed’.

The prospect of reward from this

source must have made people keener to ﬁght. Lastly, the setting up of a new

palace in Austrasia allowed certain leaders there to maintain their pre-eminence

through a palace-based structure of government. Austrasia’s military recovery

after Sigibert’s arrival may thus have been due as much to the reinforcement

of a hierarchy amongst the aristocracy of the region as to a general boost in

morale.

Amongst those who beneﬁted from the return of a king to Austrasia was

Pippin of Landen (also known as Pippin I) who eventually emerged as mayor

of the palace to Sigibert, just as he had once been mayor to Dagobert when

he had had a palace in Austrasia. A faction led by Pippin and Arnulf bishop

of Metz had originally consolidated their predominance in connection with

Chlothar’s move into Austrasia in 613.Pippin seems to have faced opposition

from his fellow Austrasians in the period between Dagobert’s departure for

Neustria and Sigibert’s arrival in Austrasia. Somehow the latter’s installation

as king allowed Pippin’s faction to re-establish their leading position. 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 that family would eventually replace the Merovingians as rulers of all of

Francia.

Under Chlothar and Dagobert Francia remained strong and able to pre-

vent neighbouring peoples encroaching upon its territory. To the east of the

Rhine the Franks retained inﬂuence overthe Saxons,Thuringians, Alamans and

Bavarians. The Liber Historiae Francorum has a long and dramatic story about

Chlothar and Dagobert together ﬁghting the Saxons near the River Weser, but

the author seems to have confused the second with the ﬁrst Chlothar (d. 561)

who did ﬁght the Saxons and made them pay tribute, which they did until

Dagobert excused them from payment in return for military service.

The

Thuringians and Alamans were led by Frankish dukes, and Dagobert was able

to get the Bavarians to obey his orders. Fredegar implies that the lands of all

of these peoples were regarded as Frankish territory, at least in relation to the

defence of Francia against the Slavonic Wends and the Asiatic Avars.

Throughout the sixth century Slavonic groups had been settling in what

is now termed central Europe as far west as the River Elbe in the north and

Fredegar, Chron. iv.75,p.63:‘Tinsaurum quod suffecerit ﬁlium tradens.’

Liber Historiae Francorum c.41,pp.311–14.

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378 paul fouracre

the conﬂuence of the rivers Ens and Danube in Lower Austria to the south.

At the end of the sixth century the Avars, who were a nomadic people from

Central Asia, erupted into Pannonia (present-day Hungary) and subjugated

all the Slavs around them. The effect of this was to accelerate the coalescence

of formerly disparate groups of Slavs into large political and military units,

and the ﬁrst fruit of such development was a revolt against Avar control in the

620s. According to the Chronicle of Fredegar, which is the only source for these

events, it was actually a Neustrian Frank called Samo who in 623 became leader

of a newly formed Slavonic kingdom based probably in Bohemia to the north

of the Avars.

Under Samo the Slavs, or Wends, raided deep into Frankish

territory. How deep it is impossible to tell. Thuringia certainly suffered, and

Fredegar talks of the Austrasians defending ‘their frontier’, but when Dagobert

attacked the Wends in 630 they took refuge in a place called Wogastisburg

which seems to have been well to the east, in Bohemia itself. A fair impression

might be therefore of a Slavonic kingdom in Bohemia which on occasion raided

deep into Thuringia, but of one which was prevented from actually shifting

the Slav–German border further westwards. When the Chronicle of Fredegar

comes to an end in the mid-seventh century we hear almost nothing more of

affairs in this eastern borderland. When we do begin to hear more at the end

of the eighth century, the border situation does not seem to have altered very

much in the intervening period.

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, paying them 12,000 solidi ayear up to 617, when they were

released from this burden upon payment of a lump sum. As the payment of

tribute suggests, the Lombards acknowledged the superior military power of

the Franks, and the latter intervened in Lombard affairs on several occasions

in the seventh century. Their particular concern, according to Fredegar, was

the treatment of Queen Gundeberga, daughter of Theudelinda who had been

of Frankish, possibly even Merovingian, stock and had married the Lombard

kings Ago and Agilulf.

In the next generation and after the death of her

brother in 626, Lombard royalty was ﬁrmly attached to Gundeberga. Marriage

to her provided a route to the throne, and not surprisingly her two royal

husbands each tried to dispose of her once they had ascended it. On both

occasions (in 629 and in 641)Gundeberga was released from incarceration after

strong Frankish protests. It is possible that her vicissitudes also reﬂect Lombard

For the development of Slav cultures and territories, see Kobyli

nski, chapter 19 below.

Fredegar, Chron. iv.48,pp.39–40.

Gundeberga is the main subject of three chapters: Fredegar, Chron. iv.51, 70, 72,pp.41–3, 59–60.

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Francia in the seventh century 379

attempts to throw off Frankish tutelage in the light of their growing security

in Italy. By 663 they were able to defeat the Franks in Provence, although Paul

the Deacon’s account of this victory suggests that it was won against the odds,

through superior guile rather than by the stronger force.

The Visigoths too were wary of the Franks. In this period they managed to

hold on to their Gallic enclave of Septimania, but in 630 they were unable to

resist an army raised in Burgundy and sent to support Sisenand in his bid for the

throne. Fredegar says that the Franks intervened in Spain for purely mercenary

reasons, Dagobert having been promised a famous golden dish by Sisenand.

In the event the Visigoths refused to hand it over and the Franks received the

enormous sum of 200,000 gold solidi instead.

There is some reason to doubt

the story about the dish, but for a signiﬁcant injection of gold into the Frankish

economy at this moment there is some numismatic evidence.

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 as well

as south into the Ebro valley. Dagobert’s half-brother Charibert is said to have

subdued them in 631 from his base in Toulouse, which appears to have been the

main Frankish stronghold in the area in the seventh century, as it had been since

Clovisgarrisoned it against the Goths in the early sixth century. In 635,however,

the Basques were again raiding into what had been Charibert’s kingdom, and

so Dagobert raised another Burgundian army which drove them back into the

mountains and forced their leaders to agree to present themselves before the

Frankish king. But in an episode which preﬁgures Roland’s legendary disaster

at Roncesvalles, a part of the returning army was ambushed and destroyed in

aPyrenean valley.

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’.

One can only guess at what lay behind this episode, for we know

next to nothing about Frankish–Breton relations in the seventh century, but

from Fredegar’s account it seems to have involved the Bretons not recognising

Frankish overlordship and seizing the property of Franks. By analogy with

events in the later sixth century, this could have meant Breton raids into the

lands around Nantes and Rennes. In contrast with the sixth-century clashes,

Breton submission in 636 came before the dispatch of a Frankish army and the

Breton leader Judicael came to Clichy to submit to Dagobert. The next year

the Basque leaders too came to Clichy and formally submitted.

Paul the Deacon, HL v.5,pp.185–6.

Fredegar, Chron. iv.73,pp.61–2.

Kent (1972).

Fredegar, Chron. iv.78,pp.65–6:‘Dagobertus ad Clippiaco resedens mittit nuncius in Brittania que

Brittones male admiserant veluciter emendarint et dicione suae se traderint.’

380 paul fouracre

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, the last to lead from the front, an ‘army-

king’ (Heerk

onig) who made his kingdom the scourge of its neighbours. But

the assumption that Frankish power went into decline after Dagobert requires

some qualiﬁcation. First we must remember that it is overwhelmingly based

on a reading of Fredegar. The author of this work was very interested not

only in the dynastic politics of the Franks’ immediate neighbours, but also in

Byzantine affairs. ‘Foreign relations’ thus ﬁgure prominently in his narrative.

When his coverage ends in 642 we are forced to rely upon the Liber Historiae

Francorum,asource with much lower horizons, which, for instance, never

mentions Italy or Spain. It might be possible to infer from this silence that

after the mid-seventh century the inﬂuence of the Franks over their neighbours

was indeed on the wane, and that control over the borderlands had been lost.

Against this, however, we have Paul the Deacon’s sense that the Franks were

still to be feared in the 660s and we also have a detailed account from the

contemporary Julian of Toledo about Frankish intervention in Septimania in

673.

As we shall see, at this latter date conﬂict at the heart of the kingdom

makes outward pressure on its borders appear quite surprising. One of the

features of Julian’s fascinating account might explain that pressure: in a civil

war in Visigothic Septimania there were Frankish warriors ﬁghting on both

sides, plus the intervention by a Frankish army from across the border. 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 co-operate 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

Historia Wambae cc. 11–29,pp.510–25.

Francia in the seventh century 381

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 inte-

gration, for not only were many magnates educated there from childhood,

it also helped form the public identity of those who buttressed their per-

sonal power with royal ofﬁce. The public association of leaders from different

regions stimulated the development of a political culture which accommo-

dated 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 writ-

ten law texts of Roman provenance and ritual procedures of more uncertain

origin.

Such ﬂexibility was necessary to enable negotiation between peo-

ple from different cultural 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 culture 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 under-

pinned 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 powerwhich 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

culture 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.

Cf. Fouracre (1986), pp. 40–3.

382 paul fouracre

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 who founded

the monastery of Luxeuil in Burgundy. Expelled from Burgundy in 610

by Brunehild and Theuderic, Columbanus travelled through Neustria and

Austrasia before founding the monastery of Bobbio in Italy, where he died in

615.According to one recent writer, ‘the list of aristocrats inﬂuenced by Colum-

banus reads like a Who’s Who of the Frankish aristocracy’.

His inﬂuence on

them 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 move-

ment equally attractive.

It has been possible to show how the great families

of north and east Francia entered into the religious arena and acquired spiri-

tual 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 overwheen-

ing members of the episcopate in what has been termed a veritable Klosterpolitik

(monastic policy).

The novelty and central importance of Columbanan monasticism has nev-

ertheless 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 thanks to a persuasive biographer, Jonas of

Bobbio. In fact, mid-seventh-century Francia saw other Irishmen who set up

monasteries and inﬂuenced nobles. There were, in effect, not one but many

Iro-Frankish movements.In addition, monasteries claimed to adhere to a bewil-

dering variety of rules, perhaps in effect naming famous abbots (Columbanus

amongst them) 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

Geary (1988), p. 172.

The seminal work on Frankish monasticism of this period is Prinz (1965).

Wood (1981) sets the parameters for a critique of traditional views of Columbanan monasticism.