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

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Francia in the seventh century 383

which depended upon local circumstances. Audoin, bishop of Rouen 641–684,

for instance, secured for his foundation at Rebais the ﬁrst surviving charter of

independence from episcopal control, but in his own work as bishop he seems

to have interfered at will in the monasteries of his diocese. Similarly, the found-

ing of new monasteries in the countryside did not mean that the urban and

suburban monastic traditions came to an end. These qualiﬁcations serve to

show that whilst Columbanan monasticism does indeed stand out because it

is well documented, it was part of a much wider spread of Christian culture

from the town to the countryside to meet the needs of the rural population,

beginning with their lords. But at village level the process of Christianisation

was slow, for besides continuing complaints about the persistence of pagan

customs, the archaeological record suggests that in many rural communities

cemeteries were not organised along Christian lines until at least the later sev-

enth century. With Christianisation also came a reorganisation of settlements

around a lord’s hall and church. Again, in many areas, this pattern was still

unfolding in the later seventh century.

The inﬂuence of Christian culture on political activity is reﬂected in the

careers of those who in their youth spent time at the royal palace and then

in later life became bishops, or founded monasteries or even became monks

themselves. In the mid to later seventh century much of Francia was run by

people schooled in this fashion through the courts of Chlothar II, Dagobert

and his son, Clovis II. The letters and ‘Life’ of one of them, Desiderius, bishop

of Cahors 630–655, gives some insight into the feeling of fellowship amongst

this powerful old-boy network. In a well-known letter to Audoin bishop of

Rouen, Desiderius recalled his circle of friends at court.

The group included

Desiderius and his two brothers, Audoin, Eligius who became bishop of Noyon,

Paul the later bishop of Verdun, and Sulpicius who became bishop of Bourges.

It is striking that this group and the wider circle of Desiderius’ correspondents

were made up of men of both Gallo-Roman and Frankish stock who occupied

important positions in Aquitaine, Neustria and Austrasia. That the court had

initially brought them together, and that they kept in contact with one another

thereafter, is strong testimony to the integrative force of palace and religion.

Here, because we are so much better informed about the church, we must use

the bishops to cast light on the magnates in general.

The Life of Desiderius shows the bishop controlling Cahors, maintaining

both its public services and its defences.

Most of the eighteen or so ‘Lives’ of

other seventh-century bishops show them acting in a similarly public manner,

Fouracre (2000), pp. 126–9, for a general discussion of this process; Theuws (1991) for a detailed

examination of the effects of Christianisation on the ground.

Epistolae S. Desiderii Cadurcensis i,no.11,pp.30–1.

Vita Desiderii Cadurcensis cc.16–17,pp.574–6.

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384 paul fouracre

in effect combining the work of bishop and count. But on whose behalf were

these lordly churchmen acting? This important question has been answered in

two contrasting ways which express two very different views of seventh-century

history. For if it is thought that such bishops were acting independently in what

have been termed virtual ‘episcopal republics’, then the conclusion must be

that the Merovingian state had by the mid-seventh century lost control of

much of its territory.

If,onthe other hand, one believes that the bishops

were acting on behalf of the state, it is possible to argue that the latter was

at this time rather strong.

A third more equivocal answer actually makes

better sense of the evidence: namely, that bishops, like the counts their secular

counterparts, wielded a wide range of powers derived from royal authority,

but political considerations at both local and central levels dictated how they

should exercise those powers. To be independent, bishops, and other magnates

in formal positions of power, had to be free of local rivals who could seek

support from the palace and mobilise the collective power of the magnate

community against them.

As we see it in saints’ Lives, such mobilisation

might be achieved through a formal judicial process. For this to happen, the

palace had to be at the centre of political activity and the magnates willing

to back the judicial process. For most of the seventh century in most areas

of Francia these conditions prevailed. Lords, both secular and ecclesiastical,

usually did have rivals, and as a result the bishops on the whole acted to extend

rather than to shorten the range of central authority. The history of Francia

from the death of Dagobert to the advent of Charles Martel in the early eighth

century is effectively about the political tensions which built up until these

conditions were altered and about how the regime attempted to repair itself.

It is to this history that we now turn.

Dagobert died on 19 January 638.His son, Sigibert III, aged about eight, con-

tinued to rule in Austrasia under the guidance of the mayor of the palace, Pip-

pin, and Chunibert, bishop of Cologne. In Neustria and Burgundy Dagobert

was succeeded by his son Clovis, aged about four, with his mother Nantechild

and the mayor Aega ruling through the palace. What little we know about

Nantechild suggests that she was a powerful ruler, like Brunehild, Balthild and

Himnechild, three of the four other seventh-century dowager queen-regents.

Their power parallels that of the mayors in that it rested in that inﬂuence over

the political community which came from management of the palace and from

government in the name of the king. Nantechild in addition received as much

of Dagobert’s treasure as his sons. In 641 she can be seen channelling a feud

which broke out at court at Augers, in rather the same way that Chlothar II had

For this view of bishops’ rule in the towns, Prinz (1974).

See, for instance, the argument of Durliat (1979).

Cf. Fouracre (1990), pp. 32–3.

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Francia in the seventh century 385

contained the inﬁghting at Clichy in 627, and when Aega died, also in 641, her

ally Erchinoald became mayor in his place. Nantechild and Erchinoald then

resurrected the Burgundian mayoralty, raising one Flaochad to the dignity,

and Flaochad married Nantechild’s niece. But not long after this Nantechild

died and a simmering feud between Flaochad and Willebad the ‘patrician’ (i.e.

ruler) of South Burgundy erupted into ﬁghting between the two factions of

magnates. King Clovis II, now about eight years old, could not restrain the

violence. Willebad was killed and Flaochad died soon after. What happened

next is unknown, for the Chronicle of Fredegar ends at this point, but when

information starts to ﬂow again about a decade later, it is clear that the magnates

from Burgundy and Neustria continued to form a single political community

and to attend the same meetings. The ‘Flaochad affair’ might thus have had

few consequences despite the fact that Fredegar devoted more space to this

than to any other seventh-century event, apart from the story of Columbanus’

disagreement with Theuderic and Brunehild.

In Austrasia, Pippin died about a year after Dagobert and was succeeded as

mayor of the palace by one Otto, although Fredegar makes it clear that Pippin’s

son Grimoald expected to follow his father and plotted with Chunibert of

Cologne to this end. Two years later in 641,Otto was murdered and Grimoald

replaced him. Meanwhile, events in Thuringia give a good example of con-

ditions in which a leader did turn his back on the rest of the magnate com-

munity, being able to withstand the collective pressure they mounted against

him. As a result he took a whole region out of the Merovingian orbit. This

was the case of Radulf the duke of Thuringia who in 639 revolted against

Sigibert. Radulf had been made duke by Dagobert and did his job of defend-

ing Thuringia against the Wends rather well, but this also meant that he

acquired the military power to defend himself, which in turn enabled him

to reject Sigibert’s authority, possibly because of disagreement with another

duke, Adalgisel. The Austrasians could now only respond with force and gath-

ered an army to attack Radulf. The latter won the battle which followed, and

thereafter he exercised independent authority, securing his position by ally-

ing with the Wends. Even so, Radulf did not create a separate kingdom nor,

according to Fredegar, did he actually deny Merovingian overlordship.

This

style of secession would be seen many more times in both Merovingian and

Carolingianperiods as particular leaders or regionswent their ownway without,

it seems, being able to envisage the formation of completely new political enti-

ties. Such conservatism, which is another mark of the high degree of integration

amongst the elite, goes a long way to explain the long-term territorial stability of

Francia.

The Radulf story is related in Fredegar, Chron. iv.77, 87,pp.64–5, 73–4.

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On events in the next decade we are singularly ill-informed, though a guess

sensible to the hagiography and letter writing which refer to the period would

be that it was generally a time of peace. Sigibert came of age in about 645

and Clovis in about 649. Both kings married women who outlived them by

more than twenty years and were important as dowagers. Clovis married an

Anglo-Saxon, Balthild, who became the subject of a saint’s Life.

Balthild was

said to have been a slave who served in Erchinoald’s household, refused the

latter’s sexual advances and triumphed by marrying the king. Hers may not,

however, have been a simple ‘rags to riches’ story for she may have been of

the Anglo-Saxon nobility, or even a princess, rather than a simple slave. Her

husband Clovis died in 657, and was the subject of a damning obituary in the

Liber Historiae Francorum which hinted that he met a violent end.

Balthild

was left as regent for the eight-year-old Chlothar III, eldest of her three sons.

Sigibert married a woman called Himnechild. It seems likely that she was not

the mother of Sigibert’s son, Dagobert, but she did eventually become regent

for her son-in-law, Balthild’s third-born, Childeric, who married her daughter

Bilichild. The context for the marriage and the insertion of a Neustrian king

into Austrasia is what has come to be known as ‘the Grimoald coup’. This event

has excited a great deal of attention, for it concerns what looks at a glance like

an early Carolingian attempt to seize the throne from the Merovingians.

When King Sigibert died he left a young son, Dagobert. But instead of

arranging for Dagobert to become king, Grimoald the mayor of the palace

seized and tonsured him, handing him over to the bishop of Poitiers who con-

ducted Dagobert into exile in Ireland. Grimoald then elevated his own son

to the throne. This king, given the Merovingian name Childebert, and said

to have been adopted by Sigibert, ruled for up to ﬁve years until there was in

turn a coup against Grimoald. What happened to Childebert is unknown, but

Grimoald fell into Neustrian hands and suffered a painful death in Paris. In 662

Balthild’s youngest son Childeric was betrothed to Bilichild and made king of

Austrasia with one Wulfoald as mayor of the palace, and with Himnechild as

queen-regent. Behind this apparently straightforward story there are complex

chronological problems, not least because the only source to give a coherent

narrative, the Liber Historiae Francorum, has Clovis II preside over Grimoald’s

demise, which puts the latter at a date before autumn 657, whereas Childeric’s

accession in Austrasia cannot have happened before 661.

The date tradition-

ally accepted for Sigibert’s death, and thus for the beginning of these events,

Vita Balthildis, trans. with commentary, Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 97–132.

Liber Historiae Francorum c.44,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), p. 89.

For differentinterpretations of these events, Krusch (1910), Levillain (1913) and (1945–6), Ewig(1965),

Gerberding (1987), pp. 47–66,Wood (1994), pp. 222–4, and Becher (1994).

Liber Historiae Francorum c.43;Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 87–8.

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Francia in the seventh century 387

is 656,adate which again clashes with the Liber if we are to ﬁt in a reign

for Childebert the adopted. Supporters of the Liber’sveracity, however, chal-

lenge the evidence for Sigibert’s survival beyond 651.

A further complication

has been the suggestion, based upon the confusion of an eighth-century King

Dagobert and Mayor Grimoald with their seventh-century namesakes, that

Sigibert’s son Dagobert ruled for a while before being exiled.

Attempts to interpret these events have been rather less ingenious than the

efforts to work out their chronology, for many historians have assumed that a

coup against a Merovingian by an ancestor of Charlemagne is self-explanatory,

an ill-timed rather than an ill-conceived venture. A variation on this theme

which works backwards from the consequences of the coup is that Grimoald

was ﬁrst encouraged and then betrayed by the Neustrians. The chronology

must remain a problem, but as one historian has recently shown, it is possible

to come up with an interpretation more satisfactory and less anachronistic than

one which sees the ancestors of Charlemagne having a trial run at fulﬁlling

their historical destiny.

Putting stronger emphasis on the female ﬁgures in

the historical background, this reinterpretation argues that if Himnechild was

not Dagobert’s mother, then it is likely that she would have colluded in the

latter’s exile in order to protect her own position. Some sort of arrangement

with Grimoald would have been necessary for her political survival, and from

Grimoald’s point of view, the marriage of his son to her royal daughter might

provide a route to the throne, rather as successive Lombards had become king

by marrying Gundeberga. When Grimoald lost support (not surprising in cir-

cumstances which may have allowed adherents of his murdered predecessor to

seek revenge), Himnechild might then have sought another match for Bilichild,

now arranging with Balthild for her to marry Childeric. This argument has the

virtue of accounting for Himnechild’s continuing inﬂuence, hitherto hardly

noticed in a coup said simply to have been Grimoald’s. All observers none

the less agree on one point: that at this stage it was plainly unacceptable for a

non-Merovingian to become king.

Of Himnechild’s regency we know little, but of Balthild’s more because of

the information contained in the Life of Balthild.She ruled from 657 until her

eldest son Chlothar reached the majority age of ﬁfteen in 664.Alongside her in

the palace were the bishops of Paris and Rouen, unnamed secular leaders, and

the mayor of the palace, ﬁrst Erchinoald and then Ebroin who took over on the

latter’s death in 658 or 659.More was written about Ebroin than about any other

non-royal secular ﬁgure in the seventh century, principally because he appeared

as the arch-villain in the widely circulated Passio Leudegarii, the story of the

martyrdom of his chief political opponent, Leudegar bishop of Autun. Ebroin’s

Gerberding (1987), pp. 47–66.

Wood (1994), pp. 222–4.

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388 paul fouracre

evil deeds subsequently became legendary, and it is hard for us now to put him

into neutral historical perspective. It nevertheless seems clear that Ebroin and

his supporting faction of Neustrian magnates upset the political balance in

Francia by excluding too many others from a share in the fruits of power. This

process arguably began with Balthild. Again, all of our information is about the

church, but Balthild can be seen pushing her supporters into positions of power

throughout the kingdom of Neustria-Burgundy, appointing them, for instance,

to the bishoprics of Autun, Lyons and Toulouse. In addition, according to her

Life, she forced the ‘senior churches’, that is, the major cult sites, to take on

monastic rules and she made their local bishops grant them independence in

Columbanan style, this being her so-called Klosterpolitik.

An English source,

the Life of St Wilfrid, tells of how Aunemund bishop of Lyons was executed

by Balthild in her attempt to control the church and kingdom and adds that

another eight bishops were killed too.

For such extensive bloodletting there

is no further evidence, but there is another account of how Aunemund met his

end, to be replaced by the queen’s palace chaplain.

This account also serves

to warn us against seeing the politics of this period simply in terms of a policy

of ‘centralisation’ directed by the palace against a provincial ‘separatism’, for

it tells of how local people in Lyons combined with the palace to bring down

Aunemund. Moreover, despite his princely power in Lyons, Aunemund was

an integral member of the wider magnate community, and was even said to

have baptised Balthild’s son Chlothar.

Soon after Chlothar had ofﬁcially reached manhood, Balthild was hustled

off the political stage into the monastery of Chelles, but Ebroin continued

in power. If Bede’s story of how in 668 on a journey from Rome to Canter-

bury, which took them right across Francia, Archbishop Theodore and Abbot

Hadrian were monitored all the way by Ebroin’s men is indicative of the range

and power of the mayor’s government, it was effective indeed.

But this kind

of government, in which the mayor ruled through the king and prevented the

other magnates from having access to him, broke with the traditional con-

sensus that was the very cement of the Frankish polity. According to the near

contemporary Passio Leudegarii,Ebroin became so tyrannical that he banned

magnates from Burgundy from coming to the palace unless they had his per-

mission to do so.

But then in 673 Chlothar III died, and although he tried to

prevent it, Ebroin could not stop the political community assembling to raise

Vita Balthildis c.9,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 125–6.

The Life of St Wilfrid c.6,pp.13–15.

Acta S. Aunemundi, trans. with commentary, Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 166–92.

Bede, HE iv.1.

Passio Leudegarii, trans. with commentary Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 193–253, here, c.4,

pp. 220–1.

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Francia in the seventh century 389

the new king to the throne. The assembly then turned on the mayor and he

was powerless to resist their collective force. The magnates did this, says the

Passio Leudegarii, because they feared that Ebroin would control the new king

(Balthild’s second-born, Theuderic) and if he could act in the king’s name with-

out check then he would be able to attack anyone he wished.

So Ebroin was

driven from power and sent into exile. The Neustrians and Burgundians then

called on Childeric king of Austrasia to become their king too, in place of his

elder brother Theuderic. But it proved impossible to rebuild consensus because

Childeric, naturally, brought members of his Austrasian entourage with him

and the palace was now riven by rivalry between the Neustro-Burgundians led

by Leudegar of Autun, and the Austrasians, led by the mayor of the palace

Wulfoald. Leudegar accused Childeric of going back on guarantees of non-

interference in the provinces, and he also, interestingly, tried to separate him

from his wife Bilichild. Not surpisingly, Childeric, Wulfoald (and Himnechild)

turned on Leudegar and sent him to join the exiled Ebroin. This was at Easter

675.About six months later the Neustrians killed Childeric and Bilichild (who

was pregnant) and their infant son Dagobert. They were determined to stamp

out the Austrasian branch of the dynasty.

On Childeric’s death both Ebroin and Leudegar returned from exile and

engaged in a dramatic race to reach the palace and set up a new regime with

King Theuderic. Ebroin, realising that he was the weaker party at this stage,

turned eastwards to gather forces in western Austrasia. The Passio Leudegarii

states that in order to do this he had to have a king of his own, so he set up

apretender called Clovis, supposedly a son of Chlothar III. He then attacked

the palace in Neustria, captured Theuderic and killed the mayor of the palace,

the recently installed Leudesius who was a son of Erchinoald. Ebroin then

dispatched an army to Autun against his old enemy Leudegar. Although the

bishop was captured, part of the same army failed to take Lyons and Provence.

Ebroin next dropped the pretender Clovis, reinstated Theuderic and then, once

he had become mayor of the palace again, began to use the judicial process to

punish his enemies. Leudegar was ﬁnally executed in 677 or 678, having been

blinded and mutilated. Ebroin himself met his end in 680, assassinated in a

pre-emptive move by another of his intended victims. This, basically, is the

narrative of the Passio Leudegarii,

and though it is plainly tendentious it is

essentially corroborated by other early sources.

The Liber Historiae Francorum shows that Ebroin had as his ally Audoin of

Rouen who was one of the most respected men in all of Francia.

The alliance

Passio Leudegarii c.5,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), p. 222.

Passio Leudegarii cc.4–35,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 220–48.

Liber Historiae Francorum c.45,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 89–91.

390 paul fouracre

suggests that the mayor was not just a political maverick but represented a

faction made up of leading Neustrian families. A certain degree of political

disintegration occurred when magnates outside this group understood that

they were or would be barred from that access to the king which allowed

them to safeguard their positions by participating in the making of decisions.

Contemporary sources make it clear that kings or mayors who did not listen

to the counsel of their magnates were regarded as intolerably dangerous. The

remedy to this injustice, as it was perceived, was to overturn the regime which

perpetrated it, and this happened in both 673 and 675.But there were limits to

disintegration, for widespread and prolonged disorder was also seen to threaten

property and privilege. It is this last perception which may explain how after

returning to power Ebroin was able to re-establish some sort of political con-

sensus and to go back to using the judicial process rather than armed conﬂict

to achieve his aims. Signiﬁcantly, one of the ﬁrst things he now did was to

bring order back to property relations.

Although the upheavals of this period were, as most historians would agree,

caused by feuding within the palace-centred political community rather than

by attempts by regionally based groups to separate from it, the events did lead

to the formation of an independent principality to the south of the River Loire,

that is, Aquitaine. In this region, Lupus, the duke based in Toulouse, seems to

have joined in the revolt against Ebroin in 673.Itwas Lupus who at this time

led the Frankish intervention into Visigothic Septimania referred to earlier in

this chapter. At a church council held in Bordeaux sometime between 673 and

675 he appears as a supporter of King Childeric and although he was said by

one source to have been involved in the latter’s murder, it is clear that after

this event he did not come to terms with Ebroin. So, rather like Radulf earlier

in Thuringia, he went his own way, able to secure his position because he had

military control of the region. In response, the Neustrian regime conﬁscated his

family lands in the Orl

eans area, thereby making it unlikely that he would ever

return to the fold. Another casualty of the feuding was the hitherto sometimes

strained but (since the very early seventh century) peaceful relationship between

Neustria and Austrasia.

The murder of Childeric and his family meant that the separate kingdom of

Austrasia would come to an end unless the Austrasians could ﬁnd themselves

another Merovingian. This they did. He was Dagobert, the son of Sigibert III

who had been exiled to Ireland twenty years earlier. What one thinks happened

next depends upon the reading of another chronologically difﬁcult passage in

the Liber Historiae Francorum. The most recent study of this work argues

convincingly for the following sequence:

after Childeric’s murder Wulfoald

Gerberding (1987), pp. 78–84.

Francia in the seventh century 391

ﬂed back to Austrasia and disappeared from the political scene (as did Him-

nechild). The leaders of the Austrasian magnates were then one Martin and

his probable kinsman Pippin, members of the family to which Grimoald had

belonged, known to historians as the ‘Pippinids’, or ‘Arnulﬁngs’. The Pippinids

had recovered their fortunes since the demise of Grimoald. It was they who

through the agency of the English bishop Wilfrid had Dagobert fetched from

Ireland. But Ebroin and the Neustrians did not recognise the latter as king and

forced the Austrasians to ﬁght for their independence. The Austrasians mus-

tered a large army around Dagobert and attacked Ebroin’s forces. In a great

battle in the Ardennes region, Martin and Pippin were beaten, and Martin

later killed. When this took place is uncertain, but in December 679 Dagobert

was murdered because, according to the Life of St Wilfrid,hedid not consult

his magnates and because he imposed tribute upon his people.

Perhaps he

had tried to recover his inheritance a little too vigorously. Despite being king-

less again, the Austrasians still preserved their independence, possibly because

within the year Ebroin too was dead. His successor as mayor, one Waratto,

made peace with Pippin.

At this stage opinion in Neustria appears to have been divided between

those who, like Waratto and Audoin of Rouen, wanted some sort of agreement

with Pippin, and those who, like Waratto’s son Ghislemar and his son-in-law

Berchar, wanted to attack him. Possibly the last group were still sore from

the uncomfortable experience of living with Childeric’s Austrasian entourage

a decade earlier. From the Austrasian point of view, access to, and inﬂuence in,

the royal palace was militarily, politically and legally a necessary safeguard to

power and privilege. Financially too it was a great attraction. In 684 Audoin

of Rouen died, so ending a career which had begun at the court of Chlothar II

and continued into his last year with a peace mission to Austrasia where he was

venerated as a holy-man. Then in 686 Waratto died and his son-in-law Berchar

became mayor, with some dissenting Neustrians crossing over to Pippin in

Austrasia. The next year Berchar and King Theuderic III met Pippin in battle

near the River Somme. Pippin won. His victory in 687 at this, the famous Battle

of Tertry, has often been said to have signiﬁed the end of the Merovingian era

and the effective beginning of Carolingian rule. This view, ﬁrst laid out in the

early ninth-century Prior Metz Annals, does not reﬂect the seventh-century

reality that Pippin and the Austrasians were ﬁghting to be included in the old

regime, not to replace it.

Pippin was certainly rich and powerful, with extensive family lands to the

east of the River Meuse, but he was not powerful enough to conquer Neustria

The Life of St Wilfrid c.33,pp.66–9.

Annales Mettenses Priores,Fouracre and Gerberding (1996), pp. 359–61.

392 paul fouracre

and Burgundy in 687.

About a year after Tertry, Berchar was murdered at

the instigation of his mother-in-law Ansﬂed, Waratto’s widow. Pippin’s son

Drogo then married Berchar’s widow Anstrude, with Pippin taking over the

functions of the mayor of the palace. It was Drogo’s match as much as victory

at Tertry which gave Pippin access to the Neustrian palace, and this in turn

helped him to extend his inﬂuence in Austrasia as well as in Neustria. It

might therefore be argued that the ‘rise of the Carolingians’ followed rather

than preceded the victory at Tertry, that it came about with Neustrian help,

and that it was far from assured by the time of Pippin’s death in 714. The

sources from which we can reconstruct something of the growth of Pippin’s

power are, as ever, ecclesiastical in origin and orientation, but they do at least

indicate where he had inﬂuence. After he had replaced Berchar he can be seen

making himself felt in the Rouen area where his daughter-in-law’s family was

based. Between 689 and 691 he forced Ansbert, Audoin’s successor as bishop

of Rouen, into exile and replaced him with Gripho, one of his own supporters.

Likewise in 701 another of his men became abbot of the nearby monastery of

St Wandrille. Elsewhere he appears in the 690s and in the early eighth century

with interests in a great arc of monasteries and bishoprics which stretched

from the River Sambre through his family lands on the Meuse across to the

Rhine and down to the Moselle. The monasteries included Lobbes, Mons,

Nivelles, Fosses, Stavelot-Malmedy, Kaiserwerth, St Hubert and Echternach.

The bishoprics were Utrecht, Tongres-Maastricht, Cologne, Trier, Metz and

Rheims. Impressive though this list is, it is immediately striking that with the

exception of Rouen, Pippin’s inﬂuence over ecclesiastical institutions did not

stretch into the Seine-Oise area, the heartlands of the Neustrian regime.

Pippin similarly did not displace the old Neustrian families who clustered

around the king, although he was able to make his son Grimoald mayor of the

palace in his stead. His eldest son Drogo was given the duchy of the Champagne

and did not settle in the Rouen area despite his marriage to Waratto’s daughter.

Hugo, the son born of this union, was brought up in Rouen, but in the

household of Ansﬂed, Waratto’s widow. The documents issued through the

palace at this time cast further light on the slow rate at which Pippin’s inﬂuence

in Neustria increased. The nineteen surviving original royal documents issued

in Neustria from 691 to 717 have the names of eighty people associated with

them.

Of these eighty, only nineteen can be connected in any way either with

Austrasia or with the family of Pippin, and of the nineteen names, only six can

be found amongst the ﬁfty-eight appearing in the witness lists of documents

issued by Pippin’s family in Austrasia in the period 702–726.Inother words,

M. Werner (1982) for a careful investigation of the family and its lands.

ChLA 14, documents nos. 572–9, 581, 583–91, 593.See also Fouracre (1984).