Franks, and the Lex Ribuaria was for Austrasia. The Carolingians and their early
supporters were Austrasians.
Austrasia first appears in the sources in the later 6th century as the kingdom of
Childebert II (r. 575–95), and it was not truly based on the divisions of the Frankish
kingdom among the sons of Clovis I in 511 or the sons of Clotar I in 561. It probably had
its origins with the 5th-century kingdom of the Rhineland Franks centered on Cologne
and taken over by Clovis I. From the later 6th century, Austrasia was seen as a distinct
region within the Merovingian kingdom, with its own administration led by an Austrasian
mayor of the palace even when it did not have its own king. With the Carolingian and
Austrasian triumph in 687, it no longer enjoyed a separate administration, though
Austrasians dominated early Carolingian government.
Much of later Merovingian history can be seen as a struggle for domination between
the magnates of Austrasia and those of Neustria, which was more Roman in language,
culture, and population. More than a century of Neustrian supremacy ended with the
victory of the Austrasian mayor Pepin II at Tertry in 687. Most of Austrasia was allotted
to Lothair I by the Treaty of Verdun (843), and it comprised most of the kingdom that
went to his son Lothair II in 855, which then came to be called Lotharingia, or Lorraine.
However, some of western Austrasia was assigned in 843 to Charles the Bald, who ceded
the region to Hugues l’Abbé. It later made up most of the lands of Herbert II of
Vermandois, but at his death in 943 his lands were divided among his heirs, as well as
Hugues le Grand and King Louis IV.
Steven Fanning
[See also: CAROLINGIAN DYNASTY; LORRAINE; MEROVINGIAN
DYNASTY]
Dhondt, Jan. Études sur la naissance des principautés territoriales en France (IXe-Xe siècles).
Bruges: De Tempel, 1948.
Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843–1180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Ewig, Eugen. “Die fränkischen Teilungen und Teilreiche (511–613),” “Die fränkischen Teilreiche
im 7. Jahrhundert (613–714),” and “Descriptio Franciae.” In Spätantikes und fränkisches
Gallien: Gesammelte Schriften (1952–1973). 2 vols. Munich: Artemis, 1976, Vol. 1, pp. 114–
230, 274–78.
James, Edward. The Franks. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
AUTUN
. Saint-Lazare at Autun (Saône-et-Loire) exemplifies the Burgundian Romanesque style.
Construction began ca. 1120 south of the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire, which the new
church, consecrated in 1130, replaced. Building was almost complete by 1146, when the
relics of St. Lazarus were translated. Work continued with completion of the west porch,
additions of flying buttresses in the 13th century, and building of towers and side chapels
off the aisles in the 15th and 16th centuries.
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