have been that of priest-judges. The Merovingians became true kings by two means.
Childeric I, and perhaps Merovech before him, was an active ally of the Roman Empire
and was himself a Roman official. He would thus have been influenced by Roman
concepts of kingship. The takeover of the Roman administrative structure of Gaul by
Clovis I put him in the legal position of the Roman emperor there. Thus, from the
beginning of the Frankish kingdom, there were in theory no constitutional restrictions on
the power of the kings. The only limitation on their will was the willingness of their
subjects to tolerate their actions. Merovingian kingship was, as it has been said,
“absolutism tempered by assassination.”
It was Clovis I who made the spectacular rise from being the leader of the Salian
Franks around Tournai to becoming the founder of the Frankish kingdom. By warfare,
deceit, and treachery, he unified all of the Frankish tribes under his authority and
conquered northern Gaul after his defeat of Syagrius in 486 and southern Gaul after his
defeat of the Visigoths in 507. He also established his dominion over the Alemanni and
the Thuringians. By the end of his reign in 511, Clovis ruled over a kingdom stretching
from Germany to the Atlantic to the Pyrénées, in which the Franks were only a small
minority within a largely Gallo-Roman population. Clovis adopted the Roman
administrative structure intact, and he worked closely with the Gallo-Roman aristocracy
of his lands. The differences between Frank and Roman were further reduced by his
conversion to orthodox Christianity.
These characteristics were continued after Clovis by his sons, Theuderic, Chlodomer,
Childebert I, and Clotar I. In accordance with Frankish custom, they received equal
portions of their father’s lands. Although there were then four independent Merovingian
kingdoms, there was only one kingdom of the Franks. The next half-century saw the
conquest of the Burgundian kingdom by the sons of Clovis (534), but it also witnessed
vicious warfare within the family that led to the extinction of the lines of three of the
brothers and the reunification of the Merovingian kingdoms by Clotar I from 558 to 561.
At his death, however, there was another quadripartite division of the kingdom among his
sons, Charibert I, Sigibert, Guntram, and Chilperic I. Another half-century of bloody
warfare among the Merovingians ensued, and it was Chilperic I’s son Clotar II who again
reunited all the kingdoms (613). During this second major division, the four great distinct
regions of the Frankish kingdom emerged: Neustria, Austrasia, Burgundy, and Aquitaine.
They were to have a strong sense of identity as well as yearnings for autonomy. From
time to time, Austrasia received a son of the Merovingian king as an autonomous ruler.
Yet with or without their own kings, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy usually had their
own royal administration under the direction of a mayor of the palace.
Clotar II and his son Dagobert I continued to rule in the strong Merovingian tradition,
but the rising power of the aristocracy, led by mayors of the palace, was already evident.
After the death of Dagobert in 639, the position of the Merovingian kings declined
rapidly, and they fell under the domination of the aristocracy and the mayors of the
palace. Merovingian reigns tended to follow the pattern of a weak or sickly king’s death
at an early age, leaving minor heirs under the tutelage of the magnates. The unification of
the Frankish kingdom by Clotar II had the accidental effect of eliminating relatives as
fellow kings, who in the past had served as guardians of such heirs. In addition, the
Merovingians often married low-born women who
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