The Rise of Mayors and Dynasty End

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We let you browse shows, see who's listening, and book host reed sponsorships or run your own ads all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real time data, complete control. Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast dot com slash advertise I'm Dror Eleanor Yaga, and welcome to Gone Medieval fromom History H. podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history We uncover the greatest mysteries Gobbsmacking details and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans From kings to popes too the crusades We delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here When asked what to think about the history of medieval France Most people usually name check the big hits The Normans. Joh of our. Perhaps even the towering exploits of the Emperor Charlemagne But before all these legends of French history arrived onto the scene There existed a dynasty as dramatic, entertaining. and downright cutthroat any medieval ruling family that succeeded them. They are called the Merovingians The long haired Kings And they were the first ruling dynasty of the people known as the Franks. They came to power in the mid fifth century during the death throes of the Roman Empire and the barbarian explosion that followed Naturally, their origins are shrouded in early medieval mystery and myth making But when that leads to a tale of a king being born to a supernatural seaahorse makes the murky depths of the medieval deep time worth it Over the space of two hundred years These Merovingian warlords gobbled up territories from the ruins of Roman Gaul expanding west of the Rhine until the land itself bore their name Frankah the land of the Franks This success had a lot to do with wararrior Kings waging brutal wars adopting a new fangled version of Christianity And harking back to the might of their fallen Roman forebearers As with many later medieval dynasties It success was never guaranteed. Almost as soon as this United Frankish kingdom had been assembled, it fell apart. as Brother turned on Brother And Mother turned on Mother to birth a series of unrelenting civil wars Fall to the brim with backstabbing pooison lacing. horse ribbing violence and yet Despite this salacious Merovvingian melodrum France's first dynasty has been forgotten destined to reside in the shadows of their better known predecessors Carolyn Jens who were only too happy to cast them as indolent Do nothing kings. So today, I'm joined once again by Dr. James Palmer Professor of history at St. Andrew's University and Author of Merovingian Worlds To do this dynasty the justice they deserve Together, we'll explore where the Franks came from why their warlords became kings and how they founded an unrivaled kingdom in the wake of Roman crisis But before discovering how the conniving exploits of queens and princes, bishops and mayors brought the Merivvinge world crashing down eclipsed by a new dynamic dynasty. who consign their old Frankish predecessors to obscurity. James, welcome back to Gone Medieval Hi Eleanor. Thankks for having me back The three peat He's a champion. He's a champion of Gone Medievil. Yeah. my mission to own all of the early Middle Ages. That's great. You know, I'm gonna let you have it. Matt and I are fine with that. We don't care. We only want to pares than I have. Yeah, exactly. so it's fine. It's fine But as the early Middle agges go, we've got a bit of a cracker today because One of the more fun dynasties to talk about, I think, and in particular, I think we've got a lot of cool women in this one. Gm dive in. I'm gonna dive in. Big question for you Who are the Mar ofingians you know, it's a Mar Vinans that's one of those big name families, but what's their deal? Where are they from? What were they ruling? Why are all of us obsessed? A lot of people are not obsessed. I will concede that from the beginning Who are the Merovingans The Meroenans are a ruling dynasty who start in northern France and Germany and they very quickly build up a very large kingdom that basically looks quite a lot like modern France for the first time In the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire, with lots of the Rhinland added. Eastern side And they reign for three hundred years, which is very successful, M of the most successful Dynasties of the Middle Ages The Carl engine to everyone thinks is much better only for not even half the time They have a huge success story. but There were also the kings who were in charge after the Roman Empire in the dark ages. So everyone thinks of them as brutal nasty barbarians who were really stupid Of course, you know, that's I think it's one of these things where as you rightly point out, they get done a disservice just because they're in this period of time where we have few resources And there are all these assumptions that get made, you know You know, indeed, because what I kind of always say, if I'm teaching students about this, I say, okay, well these are like the first kings and queens of France And there are people who will sort of push back against that and say, hm, I don't know that they're really kings They're more like prono kings. They're more like warlords. And I'm like, what's the difference between a warlord and a king reallyally if you're being honest with yourself they are called kings. Yeah. What more do you need? Look, if it looks like a king, quacks like a king, that's how that story goes, right After the Merovingians, which we're not talking about, there are so many Vikings who look and sound like kings that every second one who turns up is a king in the sources. And so at least these ones have things like a throne coins with their heads on them. proper things that you think about. What does the proper king look like? Well he looks like the guy on the chair over there doing law and fighting and he has people gathered around him.'s There's not a warlord in the sense that he's like in a tent in a corner, just going, I'm king, honest . Yeah, they've actually they have halls, you know? They have halls. An important thing about the Merovingans as kings is that they are very much the heirs to a Roman way of doing things. A lot of the places that they would have lived at were probably the old Roman villas around Paris, mostly to the north of Paris So we can imagine that they still have those zkes. In fact, we have palaces that have mosaics in them. They're still quite Roman They have people around them who speak Latin. they Most of them speak Latin. so They're not some kind of like gruff German warlords who have just turned up. They are living the Roman life, probably not toogas some wine as well as their biter, like a bit of poetry And that's their kind of vibe. They are very happy Be in charge doing admin One of the big failings of the latater Mor of Vengeance is they get so good at doing admin, they're not really doing any fighting. and people will get bored of Oh, you're hearing more legal cases today. Have you thought about fighting a war? Oh no, yeah, effective law. It's it's effective law is me used student Yeah, exactly And as kings, they have special things, really special stories that they like to tell. So one of the things about the Merovingians, everybody who's ever heard of Merinians knows first thing, they have long hair and they're not supposed to cut their hair while they're So they have this whole Samson thing going on. You cut the hair, you lose power which sometimes they do actually and they're having little fight with each other and they go, I cut your hair, you've got to go and live in a monastery until your hair's grown back. And they actually go and do it. And then they just grow their hair back in a monastery, go My hair's on again now. I can come back. I'm king now again. Wh is a very strange way of dealing with things, but I think the thing is then it has a look You dress the right kind of way, you have the right kind of Oh, he must be king. He has long hair And it's actually in law codes, it's illegal to do things to long haired people because they're special. See, this is an important point because really in a lot of ways, the look of monasticism is specifically curated in opposition to the Mer ofvingians because like the kings have long hair and the monks have none, right? It's like that's how you can tell you've given up on the noble way of life influance at the time is because you've been torchured. So everyone goes ah, not a noble, right? Yeah The very last memer ofinian king. they don't just cut your headir just like yeah, tocer him and put them in a monastery. That'll do it Okay, well, now speaking of monks and Latin and all of this jazz How do we have sources on these guys? Because you know, this is the point in time when sources are a little fewer. on the ground, I mean, largely just because it's a very long time ago, but what are we working with When we're talking about what are we wearing? Yeah we have a series of Chronicles and they're pretty lively chronicles. The best one people know about is Gregory Ou's histories, sometimes called the History of the Franks, but he just called it histories So Gregory Aor was a bishop who lived Iour, funnily enough right at the end of the sixth century. he writes a history, Gaull's history from the beginning of time. starts with Adam and very quickly comes up to his own day and he was not just a bishop looking at what Kings were doing, he was actively involved in a lot of what was going on. So these are often firsthand stories. I met this king and I thought he was a bit of a jerk. I met this king and he was very learned and interesting. I met this queen, and we will not say too much about her in case we get in trouble It's quite gossipy and very interesting. and he starts off his chronicle by saying that the standards of Latin have become so poor that there was nobody around to record the history of his days, apart from him That' a very grand statement. and of course also untrue because we have lots of other little histories books Nobody had set out to write a big literary history in the way that Gregory did. And Gregory's history is such a classic and so literary is actually translated into the Penguin cllassics series in English But just to really stress just how important this is. But it is also fair to say that there were not other big scale histories around. It's not like when you get to the fourteenth century and every second nobleman and bishop with an education is writing an epic history When he dies his work is effectively then continued a couple of decades later by a different person altogether, a guy called Freredigar So then we have two chronicles And then about another fifty years after Freredear dies, somebody else extends Gregory again, but not with Fredigar. And so we have three chronicles riant For three hundred years three Chronicles. Now, but it's not quite as bleak as that may sound because we have lots of saints' lives. they the hundreds of saints' lives. We have lots of little bubbles of what saints and monks are up to. And look these are often people at court getting into scrapes, hanging out on boats with merchants and telling us whole all kinds of exotic things that you wouldn't necessarily about So a lot of people are writing Just because we have three chronicles doesn't mean people aren't interested in history. And there's a kind of background thing as well about We don't have any sources because it was a long time ago It's quite clear from the stories they're telling. There are loads and loads of stories circulation, there are lots of books in circulation. There are lots of letters. We only have a couple of letter collections from the time people in the our chronicles and in our Saints' lives are always sending each other's letters Sometimes in secret, there's a great story about somebody who wants to send a very one of the queens wants to send a secret political letter And so writes it on a bit of parchment and then gets a wooden board that's on the wooden board, puts wax over the top so that you can't see that there's a letter underneath and then writes a different message over the top. So if anyone captures her or the letter, then they wouldn't be able to see what the actual message was Now you don't do that in an illiterate society when people aren't writing act We do that in a society when everybody can read and you're paranoid about how communication works in a written form. Okay, so given that, given that clearly people are reading and writing. and we've got good old Greg over here saying that no one is as good at Latin as he is anymore. How much can we trust what he's writing right now? Is this just an exercise in self aggrandisement? It's not just an exercise in self aggrandisement Gregory says many things which are verifiable in other ways, shall we say There was this turn of phrase once about Gregory's works which said that he was writing satirically. Unfortunately the author who said that he was writing modern author who said he was writing satirically decided to disown that statement, but I kind of liked it. So it's not that that he's lying, it's just that there's often a particular slant on things. And there are often little jokes and little stories that don't go anywhere, but almost kind of a wink to camera as he does it it's kind of fun. And while he says that there isn't anyone who has the stylish polished Latin that the old writers used to have in the Roman Empire. What Gregory does have as a stylist is a style of Latin which is kind of direct and what we often forget for this period, people have forever complained about the barbaric standards of Latin in the period, which proves that everybody was really stupid. And actually what they're really speaking is very, very old French Because Latin becomes French and Italian and Spanish and it's just very at the beginning of its journey. It's not really Latin anymore, but it's not yet French either. It's in this kind of interesting no man's land. And so modern scholars in the nineteenth century would be very angry at this barbaric way of writing. But people at the time, it's just how they spoke. So it wasn't even written in Latin because it was a learned language and so normal people couldn't get it It's the language that the normal people spoke as well. peopleople were expected to read and engage and have fun. So in that sense, Gregory expected to have an audience and you can lie to your audience, but given that a lot of his audience were people at court that he was hanging around with There's a kind of social network of truth. See You can probably tell a few lies and half truths and get away with it But if you go too outrageous, then everyone's go, Greg, that didn't actually happen. We were there. We remember this one So there was some He does tell stories about when he gets in trouble for various things and how he talks his way out of it The law of the truthful historian is that you don't just say the things you approve of, you alsoort talk about the things you don't approve of and vice versa. So All the bad characters or some of the bad characters. tries to say something good about them as well and some of the good characters are entirely flawless. There's an interesting mix of characters All right, okay, so we're going to believe, Greg. We're going with it.re We're going to squint our Eyes squint while we're reading his re newspaper. As long as you remember which newspaper you're reading, you know the tone of voice That's coming in Okay All right Given that, we're going to use him We're going to begin at the beginning So you've got The Merovingians and they're coming out of the Franks. who are one of these Germanic tribes that we've heard so much about who have moved in during the great migration period Where did they come from? right? How do they be the ones who end up in what we now would think of as the French lands? The Franks themselves like to tell a variety of interesting stories because the very boring story is that they come from Western side of Germany They move into places like Tria, which is a very nice city. Old Roman city, old Roman capital. Then they move into Belgium and they move from Belgium into northern France. It's not a very big migration. you have seen those maps of barbarian migrations ars all over the place. basically moveved down the road. Be they are a manner and archaeologically people have tried to follow their metal work and their weapons. It doesn't really work because what happens is when they get into Northern Gaul, they adopt dress in and the weapons of people in Northern Gaul Migration sometimes involves integration But the stories the Franks like to tell are a bit more exotic and some Franks And so Gregory tells this story as well. but it some people say, you always know that Gregory is telling stories say. that they are from Pannonia, basically Hungary, and that they've kind of gone through this very long arc specific beyond to the Danube and the Rhine to reappear in northern history. And we think that he tells this story because he likes it because one of his heroes is an old Roman saint called Saint Martin of Tour. who wasn't actually from Tah, he was from that region of the old Roman Empire And so maybe there's a bit of hero worship there. But other people, and Gregory doesn't even tell this story, as our other chronicles tell this, say that they were actually descended from the Trojans and that after the Trojan wars in ancient history Some of their kings go on this kind of exciting jaunt and they spend some time hanging around in a swamp in what's now Ukraine. and then they get to Ponnonia and then they head up north and back in. So this gives them an ancient pedigree. So they're not just the rough and tumble barbarians who have suddenly appeared from the north interestnteresting way of pronouncing Latin words. They are people who have been involved in Roman history forever. And this is like one of these things that is very much the style at the time, right? Like everyone invents for themselves a pedigree that goes back to the Trojan War. I mean, they do it in England as well And I think that this is a really important point because there tends to be this way of looking at the early medieval period as though it is a giant breakaway from what was happening in Rome, but all of these people see themselves as these successors who are linked very much to the Roman world. Yeah. And some of it is of the secret story The Roman historians forgot to tell this bit, but there was this exciting group who came and fought with the Romans and they were the best ones and they only won this war because them and now they are this kingdom. And the Franks really like to lean into that. they're not there to replace the Romans, They're there to succeed the Romans take everything that was good about them, but better and we'll get rid of all the stuff that was really bad And for what most people this means is that the Franks are committed to fighting bad guys and not taxing people Well, how Roman can you be if you're not taxing people, though, come on. That's the opposite of Roman. Well it's said that they are so wealthy that they don't need to tax people. Oh I see, gotch you. I mean, okay, Weve got these Franks. They are saying we are descended from the Trojans. They are up in these formerly Roman lands They are telling you that they're reading and writing in Latin. They are dispensing law. They're living in old villas They have long hair though, which is not very Roman. and they're not wearing toas What are we what are wearing What's the what's the fashion scene, right? I want to know about that Merovingian drip, James trousers They was very excited about their trousers. Wow Yeah. Yeah they've pretty got a proper tunic. They love brooches of one of the things that we have some difficulty with from an archeological perspective is that the clothing doesn't last very well just as well as some of their old manuscripts But the brooches are great. So They often have nice things that go over their shoulder and with a nice big badge with nice decorations, some exotic stones on them. They particularly like garnets. I'm really into their garnet stones. The thing that does survive archaeologically is we have lots of adornment so that the kind of badges that hold the tuns together, which have lovely exotic garnet stones very intricate interlace gold designs. They like their blom. It's a very showy culture. So if the Romans have going through this period of being quite austere The Franks are there to be a little bit more exciting and visually announced that they are not Roman which is then an interesting thing. We're here to do law and justice and read Latin poetry in all the ways that you would expect, but we're going to address different and never forget where we came from. I think that's kind of interesting thing about that never forget where we came from while doing all these Roman things. So we're going play along but be different at the same time As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwixt the sheets the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit. Okay, but speaking of where they came from, can we talk about my favorite thing about the Merovingians, which is this story that they are descended from a sea monster? Aome I love it. I'm sorry. I do. All the Fervenients descended from a sea monster. So there is this story that one day a queen is swimming in a lake and she encounters a sea beast And it is it's like a queen at all, a five horned. Beast. And then the chronicler, this is not Gregory the chronicler, this is Freredeggar, the second chronicler He says and shortly after she encountered the beast she gave birth to the King Merevet Some said that he was the son of the king and some said that he was the son of the sea monster I mean they're trying to silence Fredegar for truth, James. Yeah. ye She came home I'm pregnant and it was a sea monster definitely Oh The thing about the sea mononster story is if you would a lot of people say, well, this is because The Franks att the beginning of this period Pagan They convert under their very scary king Clovis, who kills a lot of people They are pagan. and so I it being descended from sea monsters y. Pagan thing to do Yes. But they never make any political capital about it. There aren't lots of images of sea monsters. They don't keep going on about we are descended from sea monsters There's just this one story and one chronicle. And there's a weird thing about this as well. So this is the birth of the King Merevek The name Merek possibly means se cow. So horrifically, this might actually just be a joke about his name means sea monster. and he descended from a sea monster because they like really bad dad jokes. Puns are everywhere. All right, okay, well, now you've mentioned the household name, Maravvingianough. We gotta talk about Clovis My friend and yours. Listen, Clovis, thank goodness for him because he's one of these ones that has helped me teach armies. of undergrad. Oh yes about the Merovingians. He's kind of like our Mervingian par Excellence, right? Is it canan you tell us a little bit about him? Oh yeah Yeah. Clovis is one of those classic Merovingian dynastic figures who he is so successful, he sets the samee. He's like a Proto Charlmagne in that sense. He's just so ammazingly successful. Everybody thinks that he's brilliant. The ways in which he is brilliant are slightly odd at times But the headline is that he starts off basically in charge of the area north of Paris, not including Paris And by the end of his reign, he rules the whole of France He has defeated the G Gothic Kingdom of Tououse, which was the major barbarian successor state for the Romans that everybody thought was the best and most sophisticated of all the Roman successor states until then. But he smashes them beats up various other barbarian peoples. he fights heretics. He allies with the church when he converts. He's pagan at the beginning But then his wife is Christian and has a long series of words with him until one day he's in a battle against the Almani who are different Germanic people. And again he just has this battlefield vision. and that it was kind of if I could fight under the sign of Christ, I will wit does this. But he doesn't make a big deal about this, but then afterwards, then he talks to a bishop and said, know, I'm afraid to God I one. does that mean I'm Christian now? And eventually said, We should have a word with your men. And he goes and has a word with three thousand of his men. go, Lads, I'm thinking about converting. and then he'll go, Hoay And they all convert on mas Storytelling and it's compidus. I'm sure that is exactly how armies are very well, actually armies are very concerned with theological issues, but on spur of the moment, mass conversion maybe not normally what they would go for But this means that Clovis is not just a very violent warlike king. He's a very pious Christian at the same time, which leads to some very strange imageries. in the story is of Gregory of Tour talking about how he has an interesting sense of humour in is often winking to camera A lot of his stories end with Clovis or one of Clovis's allies smashing in the skull of one of Clovis's enemies. And there's even a story at one point that Clovis runs out of people to fight against brutally and murder. So he has this public assembly where he announces this fact just to see if anybody will secretly announce that they're a dynastic rival to him and he just missed them It just I have so many cousins. Where have they all gone? Are they all dead anyybody But this is Gregory's great Christian hero. is somebody who goes around smashing in his rival skulls on a regular basis. But you Gregory is all for righteousness But at the same time, Gregory clearly also is playing a kind of funny little game because he makes these really important comparisons to the Eperor Constantine. The Emperor Constantine is the first Christian Roman emperor. And a lot of read at face value, we go, o, This must mean that Covis is being built up to be just as important as the first Christian Roman emperor that this is a great honor until if you read carefully through Gregory's works The only story that Gregory tells about Constantine is that he had his wife murdered in the bath. So basically Konstenstein is was, we would think, oh yeah, Christian hero. Gregory thinks murdering psychopath Warlord. Whose to say Gregory is the answer, I guess. Clearly there is some respect here because from G Greg At least that guy got stuff done. And in his own day, he's living in the days of the grandchildren of Clovis and they are constantly at war with each other. I think he finds them yes, warlike At least Clovis fought external enemies rather than internal enemies. and it's like you're fighting civil wars, he at least fought heretics. Well, okay, speaking of this, you know, in terms of conversion of Clovis. One of the things that's actually really important about him is that he converts to the kind of Christianity that we now consider to be Like the Trinitarian model. Catholic Christianity, which is sort of a big deal because A lot of people at the time are Aryan, right? And so yes, Aryanism, let me see if I've got this right Aryanism, that's where you believe that there is a hierarchy within the Trinity. It goes God, the Father Jesus and then the Holy Spirit and it's like a top down thing as opposed to Orthodox Catholicism I know that's confusing phrase but it is correct where you're like, there's a Trinity It's all the same thing, right? Yeah, it's horizontal. And then there's the concern that if you're saying that it's a hierarchy, are you saying that Christ isn't as divine as God. And a lot of the theologians in the fifth sixth century will tell you That's exactly what were say. and there are huge fights about it. Yeah and people get very animated because if you are Are you saying that Christ Is a person? and some like yes. I get Okaykay, so is he human and divine or human or divine Do he have a human will, a divine? will? It's the kind of thing which if you're not religious and you say these people are fighting over this. this looks very obscure. But people at the time, this is absolutely the most important thing that you can be arguing about they're not heresies in the sense that people might imagine that kind of lead off into like secret witchcraft cults They are having very hard theological discussions about what is the divine and human nature of Christ and how do they Yeah, but a lot of the barbarian groups, such as the Goths had converted to Christianity when That was the mainstream Aryanism was the mainstream view in the Roman Empire. The Franks is one of the last ones in and they were pagan goes straight to Catholicism, which at that point is once again, the default position of the Roman Empire So there's an interesting timing issue. It has often been suggested that a lot of the Goths could have switched over but they liked in the same way that they dressed differently to Romans, they liked having a variation of Christianity which wasn't the Romans either. And this has lots of benefits. You don't have to do what the pope tells you. N anybody does what the pope tells them. Yeah att this point no they could really like, you may say that, but I think that this is you know one of these really interesting conversions because in many ways it is the classic, right? Because you get yourself a Christian wife You resist it for a while. There's sort of a battlefield conversion One of the things I get asked a lot about these things is people say, okay, well how genuine in this O is it political And I'm not sure we can untangle those two things here, especially in the person of Clovis. I mean, everything is political when you are the king, right? And yeah. I don't think there's a lot of space for personal beliefs which you take home with you. that's just not how it works. Religion is a community business. so Everybody is broadly on the same page. It's about the rituals. everyveryone's in church to celebrate Easter, to celebrate Christmas. They have the same saints. They have some different local saints. There's a lot of that that goes with mutual respect. There'll be some differences in what we believe, but the core stuff is the same The king is an important figure in this, not there's no divine right of kings or anything which kind of gives him of dispensation to do whatever he wants because he's God. If he does bad things, they are quite clear that God is going to strike him down or they can remove him on behalf. 'cause otherwise he's just being a tyrant. What Clovis's role is is to help bring order to things So where he really puts a lot of his effort with the church in the early days is that he summons church councils more acts of politics, he's not intervening in theology so much as getting the bishops around and helping them be able to legislate about how the church should be run and how they should do things. He brings order. so it's just an extension of his secular role. If you've murdered people, I'm going to make sure you're brought to justice. and in the church is Sh we just make sure that bishops do things properly and people are baptized when they're supposed to be those kind of things. Fundamentally Clovis is one of the best to ever do it. You know, he really plays a blinder in terms of saying he is carrying on this kind of Roman legacy in a lot of ways. I think now there is kind of a resistance to this idea, but listen, he's got the bishops on side. He's promulgating law. He is marrying girls from the Roman syyrup influence. I mean, what more does a man have to do prove to you that he understands even sent presents from the Byzantine empire of in Constantinople. he sent a tunic, a nice purple tunic's a symbol of effectively being a conssole of the the Roman Empire. He's basically going to be the local administrator on behalf of the empire. Gregory tells a little joke here as well that he then parades through the street being hailed basically as Caesar Augustus, having misunderstood that he hadn't been actually made emperor of the West. He was just an admin official. Clois was a great figure. However, he didn't understand what was himself, what was good or bad about himself They are They're not the enemies of Rome. they are part of Rome and they celebrate that as much as possible. So what happens after Clovis dies, right? Because we've got a series of sons. He does a good job having his sons Do they kind of have the same killer instinct for expanding territories? They do have the same killer instinct for expanding territories, but at the expense of each other. So When you built a kingdom for the first time, there is no tradition of how things should be divided And what they decide to do or what Clovis decides to do probably is that they each of his four sons will have a kingdom based in a city. and rather than having a clearly defined territory they will have cities. So you will have Paris plus these places and you will have Soisson plus these places. So there's four sons and then they divide it up and they've got their capital. And then they start competing to win over the different cities and then they start fighting. There are some times when they do go in fight external enemies. There's an exciting bit where their mother clotted ot to another one of these very determined women and she gets them together and said, look, rather than fighting each other let's go and kill the Burgundians because she herself is Burgundian and and her father had been murdered. and let's go get vengeance So when you do that kind of thing, you go, rather than fighting each other, let's go this way and we will fight other people And there's kind of a limit to how much expansion you want to do from there. The easy place that they can expand into is southern France, which they already sort of have and maybe into Spain because One of the last things that Clois does is that he destroys the Gothic kingdom in the south of France and takes the border the Frankish Kingdom basically all the way down to the Pyrenees The Gothic kingdom has sort of collapsed. reallyally kind of what it does is the Goths all move into Spain and then you get vis of Gothic Spain to start off with There's a very exciting bit where there's a big gotothic kingdom in Italy And they keep part of Provence. So actually you have a United Kingdom of Spain and Italy with Pvence linkking the two. And that's kind of nice. So the one really big expansion that they managed to get during that period is that the Goths in Italy end up fighting this hugely complicated war against the Byzantine Empire because a different wonderful queen gets murdered in the bath And Justinian swears vengeance and sends a big army and they have a big fight so that the Goths don't have to fight the Franks and the Byzantine Empire at the same time, which would be way too much. he said Could you not fight us if you have Pvence? And the Franks like, Yeahah, that sounds like a fair deal. sorted But even if they didn't really have to fight even for that, that was just a kind of nice presence that they got. There is a very exciting bit when they also go and invade part of Western Germany called Turingia and they this is again in the spirit of destroying rival kingdoms. And that isself brings yet another one of the wonderful queens in because one of them kidnaps the princess of King a woman called Radigund and then puts her in a monastery in the West of Frs, and then when she grows up, he marries her veryery sinister And then she and she doesn't like being married. And so she keeps running away and crying a lot as you would if you've been kidnapped and forced into marriage And But then she becomes one of the great queens because eventually this's like, arere you going come back to be married with me? And He said, Of course not. I'm going to stay she stays in Poitier and she founds a mon monastery there and becomes kind of beacon for the spiritual life. a kind of a renegade of royal powers and actually lots of queens end up either retiring there young princesses hide out there becomes kind of nice that shelter for Royal women who feel that their lot in life is in Women helping women, we love to see it. We absolutely do. What happens that we got basically a bunch of sons fighting with each other in varying cities after Clovez And then we get to the last of Clovis' son Lothar and he dies. So where happens then they start all over again Au They They Like Clovis, having Lothar has four sons. He had five sons, but he had one of them burned to death in a barn for allying with one of his rivals. Oh yeah, as you do. So with the four remaining sons, they each take one of the exact same cities that Clois' sons had originally And then it all goes veryy gossppy and very exciting One of them straight off the bat gets in a lot of trouble because he leaves his wife to run off with two Shepherdesses Hm not one two All right And then so he is excommunicated for not good moral behaviour and then he ends up dying. But this kind of gives an opportunity for one of the other brothers, Sigybert. And Siggybert goes, well, if we're at the kind of level where our queens are going to be shepherdesses I'm going to marry a proper princess. So he approaches the the Visig Gothic King of Spain and Have you got a beautiful daughter that I could call my wife? said, Well, I'll send you my daughter, Brun Hel They are Aryans, but Brerenhild part of the agreement is that she will convert to Catholicism and bring a lot of treasure. very important in Gregory's telling of the story And that way that Sigerberg can say that he's the best brother because he's the one who married the brilliant, beautiful princess while the others were running around the shepdesses. Well, then his half brother Chilric decides that anything that Sygy Burt can do, he can do too. So he writes to the Visigothic king and s, have youve got any other daughters I do actually and sends Frunhild's sister Gelswinder and a lot of treasure. It's quite clear that Childrick is much more excited about the treasure than Gelfswindcer. Not least because he was already married or at least marriage is a bit spuny as a concept in this period, but we already had a very serious live in relationship with a girl called Fredigund. and Fredigund was not very happy about being ousted for this princess with lots of money. So she convinces Chill prick to have her assassinated and obviously to keep all the money. Oh, that's expedient. This all goes well, then Brunhild decide this is outrageous. Death to your lot and Fredigams well like, what, I' never really appreciated your family anyway, death to your lot And it Civil war. the brothers hate each other because it's just one upmanship. The wives hate each other There are assassination attempts left, right and center on everybody's life. Some of them quite successful. Brunhild's husband Sigibbert is allegedly bumped off by assassins sent by Fredigund Eventually Frediggan's husband is bumped off by assassins allegedly s by Brunhild. Although it is also said in a different source that what had actually happened is that she had her own husband bumped off because he found out that she was having an affair during a hunting Oh, o, okay. See it's just it's just wall toall gossip and scandal at this point Listen, where is our really gossipy soap operay version of this I'm talking to you producers of Kight of the Seven Kingdoms. let's get it done.act The Mare ofinginans would make a great TV series. It really would As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodysiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit Okay, so we got mess. We got queens at each other's throats I mean, this is it slightly ridiculous? Yes, Is it soap barpery? Yes, but I mean, I think it says a lot about society. I mean, it does show us that we have these women who certainly are able at the very least to command violence, which is not something that we necessarily associate with queenship in the medieval period. I would argue wrongly. But we really do see some women here who are quite involved, know? Yeah, these are very important women. they explitly part of the royal infrastructure. We talk about kings and their law giving and their war likeke nature. Queens are counsellors. They are valued. Yes, they are valued for being beautiful, but they are also valued for being wise And not even just these queens. a number of queens are mentioned that what they do is that they're the ones who are taking the kings to one side to advise them on policy which nobles are the ones that they should be listening to? they should be dealing with diplomats. They're the people It sounds quite in the old fashioned, they're the ones running the household, but in the powerful sense of they're the ones running the household. You want to speak to the king? you're going to be nice to the quQueen That's how you get access. They are very much political figures who are controlling how the conversation works That sense of queenship does get pushed away a little bit in the second half of the Merivinine rain. There's a variety of reasons for that partly, I think they're trying to keep away from the chaos of the Brun Hild and Fredigund era for return to civil war. partartly polygamy, the way that kings work through having lots of partners blunts the power that some of those women have. So the King Daggerbert, who's really the second king after that age of chaos and he's a unifying king. he rules the entire kingdom by himself. the Chronicle at Fraredear says And he had three wives and so many girlfriends that if we listed them all, the chronicle would become too long. Al right, player, okay. yeah, I love it Okay, well, all right, what brings this particular era of instability to an end then? How do we get out of this mess? Brutally. This is often the way There is a guy called Klotter II Loth are the second. He is the son of Chilbrick, and he's kind of the last man standing, as it were, because Brunhild, who after an epic nearly over forty years of political activity, not just as queen, but as regent for then her son and grandson and is attempting to be the regent for her great grandson as well. The nobles of Burgundy fall out with her and basically betray her to Klotar who had been had not even being born when his father was assassinated. So he neverew never knew his father, but he's grown up. And finally, this is the time right at the beginning of the seventh century when he is old enough to be So it's not with a war, but he marches his army down at the request of the Burgundians and says, Hi Burgundians, I'm now reuniting the kingdom. I'll be the first unifying king since Lothar the first Clois' son. He then has Brunhild paraded naked on a camel Where one found the camel ineed? I was about to ask. sure Wh are we getting camels from Flake? Come on, come on. What would be really weird and memorable? A camel, we'll get a camel, and then has her trampled to death by wild horses. That's a symbol of the decline of that end of the dynasty. That family is done. And then he holds two big councils, big council of all his bishops, bigig council all the nobles, and they swear that they are going to do things legally and Pace And fairly from there on, there's a kind of big document which sometimes is dramatically called the Magna Carta of the Franks of the Council of Paris in six hundred and fourteen, which is not really anything of the sort. They just agreed to do things like make sure that judges judge cases where they are But if they judge cases from two hundred miles away and they just do really bad things, there's not really much of a cause to get justice properly done. Basically, judges have to be responsible for what they say Imagine. Imagine that And so then The kingdom is unified again and What you then get is a century there's still a little bit of civil war because there's always a little bit of civil war to come. but not so much between brothers anymore. The tensions increasingly become between the kings and their nobles. This is almost like when it starts to become really medieval Who has more power, the nobles or the kings, in shuffping out and occasionally there's important bishops hanging around as well who are orchestrating things it gets a lot more complicated. But it just it also becomes a lot more serious. You get a series of kings whose deeds are mostly that they heard legal cases. Not civil war. Is this the period when we also start getting these guys the mayors of the palace crop up? Is that correct This is exactly that. us of the rise of the nobles. we shouldn't really rec call it. The nobles are just always powerful Kings are only ever kings with the consent of their people They really are supposed to be elected people. Any king who decides that they're just going to do whatever they feel like is a tyrant. There's this one king Childeric II. The nobles invite him to become king of the western part of the Frankish kingdom at one point And he does things like beat up noble people that he doesn't like. And so they kill him. Right, fair enough. There's another one Dacabt I second who He's actually put in exile in Ireland for a while because of a coup at his palace, but then he's invited back the help, the machinations of the serial exiled English Bishop Woolfrred of York. Dagab II brings back his team of people who've been advising him back in Ireland, which means that people the nobles who are actually in charge of his kingdom don't have access to the king and they don't like it, so they kill him And this is kind of the vibe in the six sixties, the six seventies, it's easy you can getet rid of a king if they're a tyrant and they're not listening to the people and they're not doing justice. That's quite traumatic. And interestingly, in almost all of those cases where kings get bumped off, they all get replaced by the same young guy guy called Tuderic III. who is considered one of the do notothing Kings, mostly because all he's really ever invited to do is take over when everything is falling apart. Can you tell us more about this concept of the Do Nothing Kings?ight Because that's one of the things that you hear all the time about the late Mor of Inangegeans. They're The Do notothing Kings. Well it's bound up with the rise of the Mor palace. The mayor of the palace is the senior noble who makes sure that courts run properly and helps diplomats when they come visiting and make sure that armies are called when they need to be called And is there a point then where they're basically doing all the thing you expect a king should be doing? And you get a series of kings who are quite young And so if you've had quite a long period of time when you only ever had young kings and then they die in their early twenties without having really done anything But the mayors of the palace are still going, they become the wise old heads who hold everything together. In many respects, they'd been doing exactly what Brunhild had been doing in the previous century. She had all the experience and all the know how They become the mayors become the trusted officials, they make everything actually happen. So what are the kings doing? And they become increasingly unpopular. The tag the Do Nothing King, I think is first attributed to them in about the seventeenth century. It's not But there are chronicles from the ninth century which describe them as useless But even that's from a propaganda point of view, because when the last Merovingian king is dethroned in seven hundred fifty one, and that one does seem to be pretty useless. The only thing we know about him, even though he's king for eight years is that he was dethroned If that's the only thing you can do in eight years, it's not a good sign Okay, well, if you're getting dethroned though, if we're at this point in time where you can get toppled, who's doing it? These are the palace mayors that are doing it The palace mess, but again they don't be tyrants either T in the case of seven hundred fifty one when it gets deposed. What the mayor of the palace at that point a guy called Piipppin What Pippin III does is send some messengers to the pope. with this message saying, I basically have all the power, but I'm not king And the king doesn't have any power, but is king. Could I be king? And the Pope wrriites back Sure. That sounds incensible Ext Pope, but that itself doesn't You can't just makeake yourself king because the Pope said sure. So he has a proper election and they remove Childeric by cutting his hair and sending him off into a monastery. It's possible even that Childeric really kind of wanted that at this point, but it's difficult to We can imagine, but we don't know. Pippin then has to be elected by the nobles and so that they all get together and proclaim him to be king. And he is elected. is It's not like there's another candidate, though. It's like, do you want this guy or this guy? Maybe there were the sources just say, and then he was chosen by all the people. And then the position was confirmed by all the bishops who get together and say a little prayer or So that way he has the whole of the church and the whole of and ability have given him permission to do this. And so if you want power, and this has really been the case ever since the beginning of the seventh century, if you want to have that kind of royal power, you need the backing of the nobles and the church. And if you've got that kind of backing then you can hold power, then you can make a change Be if you're just going around murdering kings, there's other words for But now we've got a palace Mor who's on the throne. Is that it? Like this is this how these wonderful sea monster Trojans meet their head That's how they meet that end There's a little bit more to it, of course, because it's history. There's always a little bit more to it. It's not like there have been really good kings and them one day head gone.' it gets difficult to find Merovingian kings something about the bloodline goes wrong. And dynasties are always a very complicated thing because how, okay, you have a great ruler like Clovis, but what if your son's an idiot? What if he's not very good at fighting These things trouble dynasties the whole time. It's often in a sequence, you get the really good one, then you might get the great one, but then you have the one who's a bit of rubbish and then you have the one that's terrible and it all falls apart. Very few medieval dynasties last a couple of generations. So the last effective Merovingian king is a good early medievalist pub game, which is the last effective one Harsh people, the hardcore line is that there haven't been an effective king since Losar II right at the beginning of the seventh century. Some people will say that his son Daggabbert, the one with all the girlfriends pretty good veryer few people would vote for any of the kings therea for most of the seventh century. There's a guy right at the beginning of the eighth century The only thing that is said about him in the Chronicles is that he was good and just listen, That's all you need to know though. That's all you need. Yeah. So he's a good and he's a just king. But after him, he seems to be quite young when he dies. his successor dies very young, his successor dies very young. This is a whole group that they get through a series of kings in quick succession. onlynly one of them