A daily post on the Middle Ages by Tim Shaw.
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The sons of Clovis saw Burgundy as a target. Sigismund of Burgundy (c.475 - 524) became king in 516. His father, Gundobad, had slain Chilperic II of Burgundy in 493. Chilperic's daughter was Clotilde , who married Clovis I , King of the Franks, and had four sons. Those sons inherited parts of the Frankish kingdom, and now Clotilde wanted revenge on Sigismund for his father's murder of her father.…
Clodoald (522 - c.560CE) was (along with Theodebald and Gunthar) one of the three sons of King Chlodomer of Orléans. When Chlodomer was killed during an expedition against the Burgundians, his sons were taken in by their grandmother, Clotilde . They were all very young, but as heirs to Orléans, they were an obstacle to anyone who wanted to take over Orléans. One of the people who wanted to rule…
When King Hermanfrid of Thuringia offered part of Thuringia to Theuderic if Theuderic would help him defeat Hermanfrid's brother and co-ruler Baderic, Theuderic agreed. During the conflict that followed, Hermanfrid reneged on the deal, and Theuderic (having been wounded in fighting), asked his brother, Clothar I , to carry on. This was in 531. As it happened, Hermanfrid was also wounded in the…
Radegund (c.520 – 13 August 587) was another wife of Clothar I . She was a princess, daughter of Bertachar, a king of Thuringia who co-ruled with his two brothers, Hermanfrid and Baderic (Baderic was the father of two of Clothar's wives). The co-rule was not always peaceful. Hermanfrid killed Bertachar and took Radegund into his household. Hermanfrid made an alliance with King Theuderic of the…
The father of the four sons who were mentioned fighting each other's divided Frankish kingdoms yesterday was Clothar I (one of the four sons of Clovis I, the king who first united all the Frankish kingdoms), who also spent his adult life trying to conquer others. The name Clothar (also Chlothar or Clotaire) means "glory." When Clovis died in 511, Clothar and his three brothers ( Childebert ,…
Yesterday's post mentioned that the Franks fell into civil war and became less of a threat to Lombardy . The Frankish Kingdom had a long history with lots of shifts in power. We should take a serious look at the history of the Franks, especially prior to Charlemagne, and right now let's talk about Guntram. Also called Gontrand, Gontran, Gontram, Gunthram, Gunthchramn, and Guntramnus, the man we'll…
There was a period in the history of the Kingdom of Lombardy when they had no king. Two kings in a row had been murdered—the first by his wife, the second by a young slave he had mistreated—and a decade followed of rule by the dukes. This was in the 570s. Paul the Deacon had nothing good to say about this era: After his death the Langobards had no king for ten years but were under dukes, and each…
The past few days have been filled with discussion about the Lombards, aka the Langobards, and their origin according to medieval texts. This blog has mostly dealt with them previously because of their occupation of the northern Italian peninsula. That's not where they started, however. They are mentioned by 1st-century Roman historians as a group occupying the Lower Elbe (the river that connects…
The History of the Lombards by Paul the Deacon drew heavily on other works, especially about prior times. One of these was a 7th-century work called Origio Gentis Langobardorum ("The Origin of the Langobard People"). From this work Paul got the mythical origin of the Lombards and the origin of their Langobard name. It starts with a group called the Winnilles on the island of Scandanan, a "great…
Paul the Deacon assembled information from some of the greatest scholars and historians and his own observations to assemble his Historia Langobardorum . Written between 787 and 796CE, he recounts the mythical origins of the Lombards. In his recording, he offers us such gems as this, from chapter 4: In the farthest boundaries of Germany toward the west-northwest, on the shore of the ocean itself,…
Paul the Deacon (c.720s – 13 April c.796-799) has many writing attributed to him (some probably erroneously, like a life of Gregory the Great , that was written much earlier than Paul). He was in the household of Adelperga, a daughter of King Desiderius of the Lombards. Adalperga, upon reading a history by a 4th century Roman named Eutropius that covered the founding of Rome to Eutropius'…
Winfrid was born about 720 in the Duchy of Friuli, the northern part of the Italian Peninsula that was the kingdom of the Lombards. His parents, Warnefrid and Theodolinda, were well-to-do, and Winfrid grew up well-educated, knowing some Greek along with Latin. Winfrid decided that rather than inherit from his father, he would join the clergy, taking the title Paulus Diaconus, Paul the Deacon. He…
There was a rebellion against Charlemagne in 792 by a handful of Frankish nobles headed by Charlemagne's eldest son, Pepin the Hunchback . An anonymous Saxon poet known only as Poeta Saxo, writing in Annales de gestis Caroli magni imperatoris libri quinque ("Annals of the Deeds of Emperor Charlemagne in Five Books"; see the illustration), summed up the plot: [W]icked men conceived a great crime…
Charlemagne's first son was named Pepin. Shortly after his birth he developed a spinal deformity that has caused historians to refer to him as " Pepin the Hunchback ." His mother was the concubine Himiltrude, a "noble girl" according to Paulus Diaconus (Paul the Deacon). At one point Charlemagne dismissed Himiltrude from his court, but Pepin remained living there as a royal prince. She was…
In William Shakespeare's Richard III , someone refers to Richard as “that foule hunch-backt toade.” It's the first recorded instance of that term for someone who had a less-than-straight spine, and—putting aside the question of whether Richard was "hunch-backed"—the term gets used in the literature of the next couple centuries to indicate a bad person. We know what a "back" is, but what is a…
Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, was one of the chief conspirators of the Southampton Plot to eliminate Henry V and replace him with Edmund Mortimer . He had an impressive lineage. His father was Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (and son of King Edward III). His mother was Isabella of Castile, daughter of the sometime King of Castile called Pedro the Cruel . Isabella had tried to…
I mentioned yesterday the links between the three men who hatched the Southampton Plot to assassinate Henry V and put Edmund Mortimer on the throne. Two of the men made a close tie with each other through the arranged marriage of their children. Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, had a daughter, Isabel. Isabel of Cambridge (1409 - 1484) was arranged to be married to Sir Thomas Grey. Her…
People in England during the reign of Henry V were still trying to use Edmund Mortimer as a focal point for a rebellion. Edmund's sister, Anne Mortimer, had married the 3rd Earl of Cambridge, Richard of Conisburgh. Richard was also a descendant of Edward III. Richard's daughter, Isabel, was betrothed to Thomas, the son of Sir Thomas Grey (Isabel was three years old, Thomas was eight, and there's…
Although he was a thorn in the side of King Henry IV —because he had a greater claim to the throne and was used as a focal point for rebellion — Edmund Mortimer (1391 - 1425) was nevertheless kept alive and safe. Near the end of Henry IV's reign, Edmund and his brother Roger were kept in the Tower of London. In 1409 they were given into the custody of the Prince of Wales, Henry, who was five years…
