martel

Civil war!

by

“At this time Pippin was struck down by a high fever and died. He had held the chief position under the king for twenty-seven and one half years. Plectrude governed everything discreetly with her grandchildren and with the king.”1.Liber Historiae Francorum, ch.51, p.111. With the characteristic understatement of the early medieval chronicler, everything that is wrong is laid out in three simple sentences. Another chronicler ably lays out what happened next. “When Pippin died, the greatest disorder grew up among the people of the Franks.”2.Late Merovingian France, Annals of Metz, p.365.

Late in the year 714 Pippin of Herstal, Charlemagne’s great-grandfather, was almost eighty years old, and he was dying. He was the latest and most powerful member of the Pippinid family (also called the Arnulfings), who had first been noticed in the early 7th century. After waging wars of unification he had held the positions of both Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia and Neustria for more than twenty-five years, and had seen kings come and kings go. Most recently King Childebert III, the last strong Merovingian, had died in 711, after a reign of sixteen years. His son, Dagobert III, succeeded him, but the boy was only twelve at his ascension. It fell to Pippin to run the kingdom for the child monarch, which he did until he felt his end was near.

Read more

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Liber Historiae Francorum, ch.51, p.111.
↑2 Late Merovingian France, Annals of Metz, p.365.

Mayor of the Palace – not what you think it is

by

Before we get into what the Mayor of the Palace was, let’s be clear about what it wasn’t: using today’s definitions, there was no mayor (the leader of a city), and there was no palace (a permanent royal residence). The Latin term is maior domus. A better reading of the term would be something like “leader of the domicile.” Let’s talk about what the position meant for those who held it, and by the end we’ll have a better understanding of the position by comparing the mayor to a modern equivalent.

As with many things in early medieval Francia, the maior domus and other court positions (known as the palatium) originated from Roman institutions. In any monarchical government power is highly personal, and in Francia that personal power was held by the Merovingian kings and their court. “The Frankish royal court consisted of a permanent establishment of household officials who were drawn from the magnates. The court revolved around the king, and it was held wherever the king was, which was usually in one of a half a dozen or so favoured places situated on royal estates.”1.Fouracre, Charles Martel, p.28. Here we can see where the idea of the ‘Palace’ part of the job title comes from. In the Frankish world there was no equivalent to Buckingham Palace, a single building solely associated with the head of state.2.Charlemagne attempted to build something like that with his palace at Aachen, but that took many decades yet. Instead, the palace, the embodiment of the state, was wherever the king and his court happened to be, or, you could say, domiciled.

Read more

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Fouracre, Charles Martel, p.28.
↑2 Charlemagne attempted to build something like that with his palace at Aachen, but that took many decades yet.

Friends with benefits

by

No, not those friends with benefits. We’re talking about real benefits: the right to power and land. The granting of those rights formed the backbone of the Frankish economic, political, and social worlds.

The Germanic tribes, of which the Franks were one, had a custom in which war band leaders granted their faithful followers land or gold, both to reward them and to bind them to the leader in the future. By the 6th and 7th century this custom was practiced on a greater scale.1.Stephenson, Mediaeval Feudalism, pp.2 – 6. The essential elements remained the same: a man pledged himself to his lord (fealty and homage), and the lord in turn granted his new man something material in return, as well as the promise of protection.

By the 8th century under this tradition the king (or the mayors of the palace, acting in the king’s name) would grant usage of something valuable to one of his loyal followers. This grant, known as a benefice,2.From the Latin beneficium, a noun meaning a benefit. was made for, and in expectation of, past and future service to the king. The benefice could be fishing rights, a toll, an administrative office, or land.

Read more

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Stephenson, Mediaeval Feudalism, pp.2 – 6.
↑2 From the Latin beneficium, a noun meaning a benefit.

Francia travelogue – Lombardy

by

The Lombard tribes came out of the north and east of Europe in the sixth century, under their king Alboin. They settled in northern and central Italy, an area which came to be known, if you can believe it, as Lombardy. The river Po drains from the Alps in the west to the Adriatic in the east, and most of the major Lombard cities, including Milan and the Lombard capital Pavia, sat along the river or its tributaries. The only outposts of the non-Lombard rule were the papal areas and the regions of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which were a part of the eastern Roman empire.

As with all of the Germanic “barbarians,” the Lombards remained pagan through the seventh century. Barbatus of Benevento (admittedly to the south) records that “the people of Benevento indulged in many idolatrous behaviors, including veneration of a golden viper and a local tree.“

Read more

Half brother, all trouble, second half

by

When we last left Grifo, he had just gained his freedom after being imprisoned by his half-brother Pepin after the death of their father, Charles Martel. Pepin, in charge of the whole kingdom under the nominal rule of the last Merovingian king, Childeric III, had evidently decided to give his half-brother, now years wiser, a second chance. Perhaps Pepin had visited Grifo during his imprisonment, and in their talks together the younger man had convinced the older of his readiness to serve the man and the kingdom.

Pepin assigned Grifo twelve counties in western Neustria, with a capital at Le Mans. This was no mere sinecure, a backwater outpost of no value. Grifo’s lands would act as a bulwark to the Bretons to the west and the Aquitanians to the south. If need arose this duchy could be a springboard to invade either region. All in all a fine collection of lands, of strategic and political import, and the source of a lot of revenue.1.Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, p.43. But as the Royal Frankish Annals note, “Grifo… did not want to be under the thumb of his brother Pepin, although he held an honorable place.”2.RFA, 747.

Read more

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, p.43.
↑2 RFA, 747.