The Politics of Intellectual Networks in Early Medieval Late Merovingian Francia

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The early Merovingian kings and queens were not particularly interested in cultivating cultural activity.

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By Dr. Yitzhak Hen
Professor of Late Antique and Early Medieval History
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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Sometime between 664 and 666 ce, bishop Chrodobert of Tours sent a rhythmic letter to bishop Importun of Paris, complaining about the quality of the grain that was sent by Importun to Tours as the annual payment (annona).¹ Importun was furious, and he answered Chrodobert with two acerbic letters — a personal letter to Chrodobert himself and a public letter that was distributed throughout Francia and a copy of which was even sent to the king.² The gist of these letters that were addressed “To my lord Chrodobert, [a man] with no God, neither a saint, nor a bishop or a secular cleric, who is ruled by the ancient enemy of mankind”³ is simple. Because you complained about the grain I had sent to you, I will tell everyone how horrible you are. And the list of calumnies raised by Importun is long and colorful, ranging from heresy to sexual promiscuity, with a caustic comment on the size of Chrodebert’s penis, followed by a strong recommendation that he should castrate himself.⁴ Chrodobert could not keep quiet, and responded with a vicious circular letter of his own. After quoting king Solomon’s proverb — “Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself ” (Prov. 26:4) — Chrodobert elegantly ignored Importun’s accusations and simply asked those who read the letters to ignore the blasphemous allegations made by his infidel enemy, who “lies like an Irishman,” “has bad breath,” “is worth less than a chicken,” and “sings psalms like a babbling devil.”⁵ A fifth letter, which could have been written by either Importun or Chrodobert (although I think the attribution to Chrodobert is more likely because of its content) was addressed to a religious community of women, asking them not to believe the accusations made in the previous letters.⁶

These letters, which are unique and unusual even among the Merovingian letter collections that survive,⁷ are an excellent starting point for a discussion on intellectual networks and politics in Merovingian Gaul, for not only do they represent the culmination of a unique cultural phenomenon, whose origins could be traced back to the Frankish royal court and its vibrant elite, but they also give us a rare glimpse of the inventive ways in which the written word was used and abused by leading members of the Merovingian court circle.

The early Merovingian kings and queens, as far as we can tell, were not particularly interested in cultivating cultural activity, unless it was directly associated with exerting their authority over their kingdoms.⁸ This situation was about to change, and toward the middle of the sixth century something had happened in Austrasia. It was king Theudebert I who first made an attempt to turn his royal court into an intellectual center by surrounding himself with learned aristocrats, among them Asteriolus and Secundinus, who, according to Gregory of Tours, were both “sapiens et retoricis inbutus litteris,”⁹ and Parthenius, the grandson of Emperor Avitus and bishop Ruricius of Limoges, who was educated in Ravenna.¹⁰ Whether this was an attempt to imitate the Ostrogothic court of Theoderic the Great, who had recruited to his service both Boethius and Cassiodorus, is impossible to gauge.¹¹ Nevertheless, Theudebert’s acts set up a formidable model that was followed suit by future Frankish kings.

Twenty years later, when king Sigibert I recruited the learned Gogo as his advisor and probably as his maior domus, Theudebert’s and Parthenius’s legacy was still prominent in the Austrasian court.¹² Gogo, who was a student of Parthenius himself, was well versed in the culture of Antiquity, as the four letters from him that survive testify.¹³ But Gogo was not alone. A group of talented young aristocrats associated in one way or another with the Austrasian court began to crystallize around Gogo, and members of this group joined forces in political, diplomatic, and social struggles, and mobilized forces to protect their own personal interests.¹⁴ The formation of this Austrasian intellectual faction received a further boost with the arrival of the Italian poet Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus.

Having been cured of an eye infection through the agency of Saint Martin, Fortunatus decided to visit the saint’s shrine in Tours.¹⁵ Whether this was a true act of devotion or a mere cover-up story for a secret mission on behalf of the Byzantine exarch of Ravenna is unknown. Nevertheless, Fortunatus’s journey took him through Francia, and in 566 he arrived at the Austras-ian court in Metz just in time for the grand occasion of King Sigibert’s marriage to the Visigothic princess Brunhild. A versed panegyric and an epithalamium in honor of the royal couple on their wedding night¹⁶ provided Fortunatus with a grand entry to the Austrasian royal circle and paved his way for success as a poet in Merovingian Gaul.

This could have hardly been accidental. Wandering poets do not land out of the blue in royal courts and get admitted just like that to a royal wedding without any qualms or reservations. No doubt, Fortunatus’s appearance at the wedding of the royal couple was carefully planned well in advance and orchestrated by people from the court, if not by Gogo himself. Many of the Frankish aristocrats whom Fortunatus had met at the royal wedding in Metz, among them Duke Lupus of Champagne,¹⁷ the maiores Gogo and Conda,¹⁸ Dynamius and Iovinus of Provence,¹⁹ as well as various bishops and religious women of aristocratic origins, became the dedicatees of numerous poems and epitaphs.²⁰ This could only mean that by the mid-sixth century the royal court, under the auspices of the Austrasian king, was indeed becoming a cultural center that attracted talented intellectuals. But what the nature of this cultural center was, is very difficult to tell.

The Merovingian aula regis is a shadowy institution in the extreme. Unlike that of the Carolingians, it was never described in detail by a former member, nor do the documents issued by the Merovingian chancery provide much information on its inner workings,²¹ let alone its culture and social manifestation. Nevertheless, it seems that during the reign of Sigibert I, a certain group of aristocrats who were associated with the royal court of Austrasia in one way or another, or passed through the royal court, emerged as a unique intellectual group, “les amis de Gogo,” as Bruno Dumézil has so nicely called them.²² The time at court was a formative period for these young members of the Merovingian elite, during which they played a crucial role in the formation of the court’s written culture as an audience, producers, and, subsequently, chief disseminators. These young men developed a strong sense of camaraderie (contubernium) and friendship (amicitia) that were cultivated by the adoption of the insignia and gestures of the late Roman imperial bodyguard, and maintained through the exchange of poetry and letters.²³ At court, these were forms of courtly entertainment and maybe competition; beyond the court, such letters and poetic epistles served as a system for communicating social and political news. As the various letters collected in the so-called Epistulae Austrasiacae,²⁴ and the various poems by Venantius Frotunatus testify, even after they left court these friends exchanged letters to ensure support when needed, and these lines of communication ensured that old friendships were never forgotten.

That such poems and letters were written at all is a clear indication on the one hand of the strength of literary tradition within the court circle of Austrasia, and on the other hand of the innovative and widespread use of the written word in Merovingian Francia. Needless to say, this practice did not emerge ex nihilo, and it was deeply rooted in Roman tradition that went back to Cicero, and continued well into Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as attested by the letters of Pliny the Younger, Sidonius Apollinaris, Avitus of Vienne, Ruricius of Limoges, and Ferreolus of Uzès, whose letters unfortunately did not survive.²⁵ And yet, the Merovingian courtiers of Austrasia gave this tradition a new twist that, eventually, enabled them to mold a political and social support group. Against the background of the political turmoil of the late sixth and early seventh century, they surely needed such support.

Whether the Austrasian court with its intellectual circle was also an educational center for the young members of the Aus-trasian elite is not at all clear. We know that Gogo was entrusted with the education of the young prince Childebert II.²⁶ After Gogo’s death in 581, the duty was passed on to his successor, Waldelenus,²⁷ and after Waldelenus’s death, Brunhild herself took over and supervised the education of her son.²⁸ This, in fact, is the first evidence we have for the education of young princes in Merovingian Gaul, and from Praetextatus’s harsh criticism of Fredegund for neglecting the education of her son,²⁹ we may assume that whatever was going on in Austrasia was quite exceptional. However, the fact that Sigibert and Brunhild took care of the education of their son must not be taken to imply that a school for the education of young aristocrats was founded at the Austrasian court, nor is there any evidence to suggest that other young members of the Austrasian elite joined the young Childebert.

The first vague sign of the formation of some sort of a court school for the education of young aristocrats began to appear only in the next phase of Merovingian rule. Although Pierre Riché lamented the fact that King Chlothar II did not receive proper education at court, albeit the fact that his father, King Chilperic, was by far the most intellectually ambitious monarch of Merovingian Francia,³⁰ Chlothar was determined to provide a good education for his son, and for that he had to rely on the Austrasian court and its tradition. In 622/623, probably in response to demands from Austrasian magnates, Chlothar II appointed his eleven-year-old son, Dagobert I, as king of Austrasia³¹ and placed him under the close supervision of the Austrasian maior domus Pippin I and bishop Arnulf of Metz, two of the most prominent members of the Austrasian elite.³² If we are to believe the seventh-century Vita Arnulfi, and there is no reason why we should not in this case, Arnulf was also entrusted with the young prince’s education.³³

The increasingly sedentary nature of the royal courts after the unification of Francia in 613 facilitated the development of a cer-tain court “school.”³⁴ The existence of such a school is confirmed not only by the writings of its alumni (to which I shall return later), but also by the sole extant listing of dignitaries from the Merovingian kingdom, which is preserved in a compendium of legal material from mid-ninth-century Francia.³⁵ According to this list, the praeses was in charge of the scola regis and the domus palatii, and the emphasis on his wealth (multas divitias habet) and his authority over the duces civitatum suggest that this praeses was, in fact, the maior domus himself.³⁶ This list of royal officials is traditionally associated with the court of Chlothar II and Dagobert I,³⁷ but even if one questions its Merovingian authenticity, it is obvious that by the mid-ninth century someone in Francia thought that a school was part and parcel of the Merovingian royal court, and it accords extremely well with the Austrasian scholarly tradition of entrusting the education of the young prince in the hands of the maior domus, be it Gogo, Waldelenus, or Pippin I.

It seems that aristocrats from all corners of the Merovingian kingdom sent their children to be educated at court with the young princes and under the supervision of the maior domus. Such a practice was a direct development of the Austrasian tradition of educating the young prince that we have just seen,³⁸ but during the first decades of the seventh century it became more prominent and still more widespread. Consequently, a flow of talented young aristocrats frequented the Frankish court and turned it into a lively center of cultural activity.³⁹ Its fame grew far and wide, so that it even reached the Anglo-Saxon queen Æthelburh, who sent her sons to be educated at Dagobert’s court.⁴⁰ What was taught at court, and precisely in what context, is not at all clear. Pierre Riché has argued that it was not a school in the scholarly sense of the word, but more of a staff school that trained officers and bureaucrats to ensure a steady supply of loyal officers.⁴¹ This may well be true, but given the fragmentary nature of our evidence it is impossible to reconstruct the court school’s syllabus with any certainty.

As far as the elite is concerned, the aula regis was the best starting point for a young nobleman, and many of those who gathered at the courts of Chlothar II and Dagobert I became powerful and influential magnates in seventh-century Francia. A certain Desiderius, for example, the son of an aristocratic family from Aquitaine, reached the royal court around 614, where he met the young prince Dagobert and was educated with him. He later became Dagobert’s treasurer, and in 630 Dagobert himself nominated him to the bishopric of Cahors.⁴² Similarly, Audonius, the son of a Neustrian aristocratic family, was also sent to be educated at the court of Chlothar II, where he spent his youth with Dagobert and other aristocratic youngsters. He was later appointed referendarius (i.e., chancellor) by Dagobert, and in 641 he became the bishop of Rouen.⁴³

After several years at the service of the Merovingian kings, these successful courtiers retired from royal service and slipped effortlessly into high ecclesiastical offices. Eligius, King Dagobert’s counselor, became the bishop of Noyon; Desiderius, as already noted, was appointed to the see of Cahors; Faro, Dagobert’s referendarius, was appointed to the see of Meaux; Wandregisi-lus, another one of Dagobert’s counselors, found his way to the abbey that later was named after him — Saint-Wandrille; he was succeeded there by Ansbert, Chlothar III’s referendarius, who was later nominated to the see of Rouen; Geremer, yet another of Dagobert’s counselors, founded the abbey of Saint-Samson-sur-Risle and was its first abbot, while holding at the same time the abbacy of Saint-Germer-de-Fly; and Filibert, another aristocrat that was educated at the court, became the abbot of Rebais, Jumièges, and Noirmoutier.⁴⁴ This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is fairly representative, and it suffices to demonstrate the powerful network nurtured at the royal court — a network which Barbara Rosenwein would have defined as an “emotional community.”⁴⁵

Throughout their lives, these friends continued to exchange letters. Years after he left the royal court “the memory of the camaraderie and the sweetness of a youth passed under a cloudless sky,”⁴⁶ recalled Desiderius of Cahors in a letter addressed to King Dagobert. In another letter, to Audonius of Rouen, Desiderius mentions the good old times at the court of Chlothar II, where they met Eligius, the future bishop of Noyons, and many others:

May the old affection we had to each other and, indeed, to our Eligius, remain unchanged just as our close brotherhood used to be. In my silent prayers I beg that we shall be worthy to live together in the palace of the supreme heavenly king, just as we had been friends in the court of an earthly prince. And may we also have [with us] the two brothers from our fraternity [Rusticus and Sagitarius], who had already died, the venerable Paul, and the not less laudable Sulpicius.⁴⁷

These were not mere nostalgic sentiments. Desiderius’s correspondence with his old friends Eligius of Noyon,48 Paul of Verdun,⁴⁹ and Sulpicius of Bourges,⁵⁰ all mentioned in his letter to Audonius, illuminates the ways in which this network of amity provided moral as well as political support to its members. Moreover, Desiderius’s correspondence casts an interesting light on King Chlothar II’s court, and on the way of these brilliant young men. They were all talented authors, engaged in literary and artistic work that constituted the very essence of late Merovingian culture. Subsequently, they were the instigators of a creative and prolific literary activity, which some scholars may want to label the “Merovingian Renaissance.”

What is remarkable in this process is not so much that the Merovingian kings used their courtiers to control local politics or that royal administrators and churchmen used the written word to cultivate their friendship and sense of identity. Rather it is the fact that all those courtiers, who slowly took control of the highest ecclesiastical ranks in Merovingian Francia, brought with them into the Church the “secular” culture with which they were familiar.⁵¹ They did not stop communicating with each other in writing just because they became ecclesiastical dignitaries. On the contrary, most of the letters written by these courtiers were written after they had left the court for such appointments. Hence, these remarkable courtiers/ecclesiastics/scholars turned the ecclesiastical institutions throughout Gaul into centers of religious cultural activity, marked by their formative experiences at the royal court early in life.

Although the nature of our evidence, and the mobility of the Merovingian elites, especially after 613, make it difficult to discuss Merovingian culture in regional terms, it appears that the emergence of intellectual court circles and dulcedo networks of courtiers who used the written word as a means to preserve and cultivate their friendship and support was stronger in Austrasia and lived longer among members of the Austrasian elite, as the evidence from the mid-seventh century clearly points out. And here we get back to our dear old friend Chrodobert, with whom I began this essay.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Chrodobert was an honorable member of the Austrasian elite. The first accusations raised by Importun of Paris in his first letter associate quite explicitly Chrodobert with the Austrasian court of Sigibert and his maior domus Grimoald:

It is disgraceful what you have done in the kingdom of Sigibert concerning the maior domus Grimoald, from whom you took his sole sheep, his wife, and consequently he could never have honor again in the kingdom. As soon as [her] company arrived at Tours, you sent her to the holy community of the nunnery that was erected in honor of Saint Peter. There, you did not read [to her] lectiones divinis, but exchanged [with her] sermones libidinis.⁵²

Similar accusations were repeated by Importun in his circular letter:

Remember Grimoald! What a damage you have done [to him] that neither Jesus Christ, nor God, could ignore. For the good that he had done to you, what did he receive from you? You had his wife, who was innocent […] contrary to canon [law].⁵³

Obviously, the purpose of these lines was to defame Chrodobert. Importun did not hesitate to put the blame for Grimoald’s fall on Chrodobert and his supposed promiscuous relationship with Grimoald’s wife. But even from the biased picture that Importun portrays, it appears that Chrodobert was indeed a prominent member of the Austrasian elite. His father, according to Importun, was Grimoald’s companion, and it is very likely that Chrodobert himself was deeply involved in Austrasian politics and probably supported Grimoald’s moves. The friendship and trust between the two are also reflected in the acts of Grimoald’s wife. Soon after it was obvious that the coup had failed, she made her way to Tours, where Chrodobert was a bishop.⁵⁴ She knew she could rely on her husband’s old ally, and indeed Chrodobert did not disappoint her. He secured for her a place in a nunnery in the vicinity of Tours, where she could spend the rest of her life in relatively comfortable conditions.

As a friend and supporter of Grimoald, Chrodobert was appointed to the see of Paris in 656, when Grimoald was at the peak of his career. Although he was the maior domus of Austrasia, there is little place to doubt that he also had some influence on Neustrian politics, and Chrodobert’s appointment is a clear sign of that. As long as Grimoald was in control and Childebert the Adopted was sitting on the Austrasian throne, Chrodobert remained the bishop of Paris. But, in 662, when it was clear that the coup had failed, Chrodobert’s position in Paris must have been shaken. His involvement in the Grimoald affair, which had enraged the Neustrian nobility, must have made life in Paris very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, for a Grimoald supporter.⁵⁵ It was then that Chrodobert decided to look for a way out, and the death of bishop Popolenus of Tours early in 663 opened for Chrodobert a golden opportunity to escape the stifling atmosphere of Paris. Given the fact that Tours was still under Austrasian rule,⁵⁶ it was not that difficult to arrange the transfer, and it may well be that Chrodobert received the blessing of Queen Balthild and her maior domus Ebroin, both of whom were busy at the time securing Childeric II’s position in Austrasia. Moreover, the close proximity of bishop Dido of Poitiers, another prominent supporter of Grimoald, might have contributed to securing Chrodobert’s new position.⁵⁷ It seems that even after the colossal failure of Grimoald’s coup, his Austrasian circle of aristocrats was still strong enough to secure the survival of its members.

Chrodobert’s worries were not without any basis in reality. His successor as bishop of Paris, the Austrasian Sigobrand, was murdered in 664 by a faction of Neustrian aristocrats, probably at the instigation of Ebroin;⁵⁸ and Sigobrand’s own successor, Importun, was already replaced by Agilbert in 666.⁵⁹ Similarly, Grimoald’s daughter, abbess Wulfetrudis of Nivelles, was bullied by the Neustrian nobility. As the author of the Vita Geretrudis relates, “it happened […] out of hatred for her father that kings, queens, and even priests, through envy of the devil, wished to drag her from her place, first by persuasion and later by force, so that they might evilly possess the property of God, which the blessed girl oversaw.”⁶⁰ No wonder Grimoald’s wife sought refuge in Tours and not in her daughter’s nunnery, which, in other circumstances, would have been her obvious choice.⁶¹

As a member of the Austrasian elite, who belonged to a powerful network of intellectual courtiers, Chrodobert was well versed in the epistolary ways to communicate with his fellow Austrasian courtiers, who now held prominent positions in politics and the Church. Hence, when he encountered a problem with the grain that was sent to him, he communicated his com-plaint to Importun in a sophisticated rhythmic letter, just as he would have done with his Austrasian expatriates. But he failed to take into account the possibility that Importun, who was not associated with the Austrasian circle of Grimoald, was not familiar with the Austrasian way of doing things. Importun could not believe his eyes when he read Chrodobert’s letter, which he mistakenly interpreted as a vicious condescending attack on his position, and accordingly responded with the appropriate Merovingian aggressiveness, which went way out of the dulcedo that characterized the correspondence of the Austrasian court circles. This was a simple case of ignorance and misunderstanding that ended up in a bout of name-calling and slanders that resembled a vulgar street fight, albeit in a sophisticated rhythmic guise.

Appendix

Endnotes

1. Chrodobert-Importunus, Epistulae 1, ed. and trans. Gerard J.J. Walstra, Les cinq épîtres rimées dans l’appendice des formules de Sens: La querelle des évêques Frodobert et Importun (an 665/666) (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1962), 66–69. On these letters, see Dag Norberg, “Quelques remarques sur les lettres de Frodebert et d’Importun,” Rivista di filologia e di instruzione classica 92 (1964): 295–303; Dag Norberg, Manuel pratique de latin médiéval (Paris: Picard, 1968), 111–23; Michel Banniard, “Viva voce”: Communication écrite et communication orale du IVe au IXe siècle en Occident latin (Paris: Institut des études augustiniennes, 1992), 292–95; Danuta Shanzer, “The Tale of Frodebert’s Tail,” in Colloquial and Literary Latin, ed. Eleanor Dickey and Anna Chahoud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 376–405; Yitzhak Hen, “Changing Places: Chrodobert, Boba, and the Wife of Gri-moald,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 90, no. 2 (2012): 225–44; and Alice Tyrrell, Merovingian Letters and Letter Writers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 66–81. I would like to thank Michael J. Kelly and Sven Meeder for inviting me to present an earlier version of this paper as a keynote lecture at the workshop Networks of Knowledge (Nijmegen, August 31–September 2, 2017). A French version of this paper was published in L’ Austrasie: Pouvoirs, espaces et identités à la charnière de l’Antiquité et du Moyen Âge, ed. Adrien Bayard, Bruno Dumézil, and Sylvie Joye (Paris, forthcoming).
2. Chrodobert-Importunus, Epistulae 2–3, ed. Walstra, 68–75.
3. Ibid., 3, ed. Walstra, 70: “Domno meo Frodeberto, sine Deo, nec sancto nec episcopo, nec saeculare clerico, ubi regnat antiquus hominum inimicus.”
4. Ibid., 3, ed. Walstra, 72: “Per tua cauta longa — satis est, vel non est? — per omnia iube te castrare, ut non pereas per talis quia fornicatoris Deus iudicabit.”
5. Ibid., 4, ed. Walstra, 80, 78, 79: “ut Escotus mentit,” “non gaudeas de den-tes,” “non vales uno coco,” and “psallat […] ut linguaris dilator.”
6. Ibid., 5, ed. Walstra, 80–81.
7. On Merovingian letter-collections, see Ian N. Wood, “Administration, Law, and Culture in Merovingian Gaul,” in The Uses of Literacy in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 63–81; Ian N. Wood, “Letters and Letter-Collections from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: The Prose Work of Avitus of Vienne,” in The Culture of Christendom: Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis Bethell, ed. Marc A. Meyer (London: The Hambledon Press, 1993), 29–43; and Tyrrell, Merovingian Letters.
8. See Yitzhak Hen, Roman Barbarians: The Royal Court and Culture in the Early Medieval West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 97–100.
9. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, 3.33, ed. Wilhelm Levison and Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), 128–29.
10. Ibid.,3.36, ed. Levison and Krusch, 131–32.
11. On the Ostrogothic court of Theoderic the Great, see Hen, Roman Barbarians, 27–58.
12. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, 5.46, ed. Levison and Krusch, 256.
13. See Epistolae Austrasicae 13, 16, 22, and 48, ed. and trans. Elena Malaspina, Il Liber epistolarum della cancellaria austrasica (sec. V–VI) (Rome: Herder Editrici, 2001), 116–19, 126–29, 142–45, and 218–21, respectively.
14. See Bruno Dumézil, “Gogo et ses amis: Écriture, échanges et ambitions dans un réseau aristocratique de la fin du VIe siècle,” Revue historique 309, no. 643 (2007): 553–93.
15. On Venantius Fortunatus and his career, see Peter Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 1–37; Judith W. George, Venantius Fortunatus: A Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Luce Piétri, “Venance Fortunat et ses commanditaires: Un poète italien dans la société gallo-franque,” in Committenti e produzione artistico-letteraria nell’alto medioevo occidentale, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 39 (Spoleto: CISAM, 1992), 729–54; and Michael Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).
16. Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina, 6.1 et 6.1a, ed. and trans. Marc Reydellet, 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994–2004), vol. 2, 43–52.
17. Ibid., 7.7–8, 2, ed. and trans. Reydellet, 94–100.
18. Ibid., 7.1–2 and 16.2, ed. and trans. Reydellet, 85–88 and 111–14.
19. Ibid., 6.9–10 and 7.11–12, ed. and trans. Reydellet, 80–84 and 102–8.
20. See, for example, ibid., 4.26, 2, ed. and trans. Reydellet, 155–63 et passim.
21. The bibliography on the Carolingian court is enormous and cannot be fully listed here. One should only mention here Janet L. Nelson, “Aachen as a Place of Power,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Franz Theuws, and Carine Van Rhijn (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2001), 217–41; Janet L. Nelson, “Was Charlemagne’s Court a Courtly Culture?,” in Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: The Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, ed. Catherine Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 39–57; and Matthew Innes, “A Place of Discipline: Carolingian Courts and Aristocratic Youth,” in Court Culture, ed. Cubitt, 59–76.
22. Dumézil, “Gogo et ses amis.”
23. See Pierre Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West from the Sixth through the Eighth Century, trans. John J. Contreni (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1976), 236–46; Ian N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London and New York: Longman, 1994), 149–52; Wood, “Administration, Law, and Culture,” 67–71; Hope D. Williard, “Letter-writing and Literary Culture in Merovingian Gaul,” European Review of History 21 (2014): 691–710; and Tyrrell, Merovingian Letters, 25–30.
24. On the Epistulae Austrasicae, see the edition of Malaspina, 5–46. See also Graham Barrett and George Woodhuysen, “Assembling the Austrasian Letters at Trier and Lorsch,” Early Medieval Europe 24, no. 1 (2016): 3–57, and compare with Bruno Dumézil, “Private Records of an Official Diplomacy: The Franco Byzantine Letters in the Austrasian Epistular Collection,” in The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Mediterranean World: Revisiting the Sources, ed. Stefan Esders, Yitzhak Hen, Pia Lucas, and Tamar Rotman (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 55–62.
25. See Ian N. Wood, “Continuity or Calamity? The Constraints of Literary Models,” in Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, ed. John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 9–18; Wood, “Letters and Letter-collections”; Jennifer Ebbler, “Tradition, Innovation, and Epistolary Mores,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 270–84; Andrew Gillet, “Communication in Late Antiquity: Use and Reuse,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott F. Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 815–46; and Pauline Allen and Brownen Neil, Crisis Management in Late Antiquity (410–590 CE): A Survey of the Evidence from Episcopal Letters (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2013).
26. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, 5.46, ed. Levison and Krusch, 256.
27. Ibid., 6.1, ed. Levison and Krusch, 265.
28. Ibid., 8.22, ed. Levison and Krusch, 389.
29. Ibid., 8.31, ed. Levison and Krusch, 397–98.
30. Riché, Education and Culture, 226–27.
31. Fredegar, Chronicorum liber quartus, 4.47, ed. and trans. J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 39, and Liber historiae Francorum, chap. 4, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), 311–12. See also Margaret Weidemann, “Zur chronologie der Merowinger in 7. und 8. Jahrhundert,” Francia 25, no. 1 (1998): 177–230, at 178–82.
32. Fredegar, Chronicorum liber quartus, 4.58, ed. and trans. Wallace-Hadrill, 49.
33. Vita Arnulfi, chap. 16, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), 439.
34. Fredegar, Chronicorum liber quartus, 4.42–43, ed. and trans. Wallace-Ha-drill, 34–36.
35. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 1050, fols. 157v–158r. This treatise was edited in Max Conrat, “Ein Traktat über romanisch-frän-kisches Ämterwessen,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtgeschichte: Germanistische Abteilung 29, no. 1 (1908): 239–60, at 248–50. On the Vatican manuscript, see Hubert Mordek, Biblioteca capitularium regum Francorum manuscripta: Überlieferung und Traditionszusammenhang der fränkischen Herrschererlasse,HGH Hilfsmittel 15 (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae His-torica, 1995), 847–52.
36. Conrat, “Ein Traktat über romanisch-fränkisches Ämterwessen,” chap. 2, 248.
37. On this list, see Franz Beyerle, “Das frühmittelalterliche Schulheft vom Ämsterwessen,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtgeschichte: Germanistische Abteilung 69, no. 1 (1953): 6–10, and Yitzhak Hen, “The Merovingian Polity: A Network of Courts and Courtiers,” in Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 217–37.
38. See, for example, Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum, 5.46, ed. Levison and Krusch, 256–57; Vita Arnulfi, c. 3, 433.
39. See Hen, Roman Barbarians, 100–106, and Yitzhak Hen, “Court and Culture in the Barbarian West: A Prelude to the Carolingian Renaissance,” in Le corti nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di studi del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 62 (Spoleto: CISAM, 2015), 627–51.
40. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, 2.20, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 204.
41. Riché, Education and Culture, 239–46.
42. On Desiderius of Cahors, see Vita Desiderii episcopi Cadurcensis, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), 563–93. See also Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 149–52, and Jean Durliat, “Les attributions civiles de l’évêques mérovingiens: L’exemple de Didier, évêque de Cahors (630–655),” Annales du Midi 91, no. 143 (1979): 237–54.
43. See Vita Audoini episcopi Rotomagensis, ed. Wilhelm Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1910), 553–67. See also Paul Fouracre and Richard Gerberding, Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography, 640–720 (Manchester: Man-chester University Press, 1996), 132–52.
44. On all these functionaries, see Horst Ebling, Prosopographie der Amtstäger des Merowingerreichs von Chlothar II (613) bis Karl Martell (741), Beihefte der Francia 2 (Munich: Thorbecke Verlag, 1974), and Pierre Riché and Patrick Périn, eds., Dictionnaire des Francs: Les temps mérovingiens (Paris: Édi-tions Bartillat, 1996).
45. Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 135–55.
46. Desiderius of Cahors, Epistulae, 1.5, ed. Dag Norberg, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 6 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1961), 18: “ipsa tamen recorda-tio contubernii et dulcido auspicatae indolis pubertatis monet.”
47. Ibid., 1.11, ed. Norberg, 30: “Maneat pristina inter nos atque illum tuum, immo nostrum Elegium, inconvulsa caritas, indisiuncta, ut fuit, quondam, fraternitas. Motuis nos iubemus praecibus, ut, quemadmodum in aula ter-reni principis socii fuimus, ita in illo superni regis caelesti palacio simul vivere mereamur. Et licet de nostro collegio duos iam amiserim germanos, habemus pro his venerabilem Paulum, nec minus praedicabilem meretis Sulpicium.”
48. Ibid., 2.6, ed. Norberg, 52.
49. Ibid., 1.12 and 2.11–12, ed. Norberg, 30 and 61.
50. Ibid., 1.13, 2.1, 5, and 10, ed. Norberg, 33, 41–42, 50, and 58.
51. See Hen, Roman Barbarians, 101–11.
52. Chrodobert-Importunus, Epistulae 2, chap. 5–8, ed. Walstra, 68–71: “Illud enim non fuit condignum, quod egisti in Segeberto regnum de Grimoaldo maioremdomus, quem ei sustulisti sua unica ove, sua uxor; unde postea in regno numquam habuit honore. Et cum gentes venientes in Toronica re-gione, misisti ipsa in sancta congregatione in monasterio puellarum, qui est constructus in honore sanctum Petrum. Non ibidem lectiones divinis legistis, sed sermones libidinis inter vos habuistis.”
53. Ibid., chap. 11–13, ed. Walstra, 72: “Memores Grimoaldo; qualem fecisti damnum, Iesu Christo et Deo non oblituit. De bona que tibi fecit, quid inde a te recepit. Muliere sua habuisti conscientia nua nec […] norum peracta, sed contra canonica.”
54. See ibid., c. 7, ed. Walstra, 68–71. On the identification of this nunnery, see Hen, “Changing Places,” 236, n. 60.
55. On Chrodobert’s career and the coup of Grimoald, see Hen, “Changing Places,” 234–42.
56. Eugen Ewig, “Das Privileg des Bischofs Berthefrid von Amiens für Corbie von 664 und die Klosterpolitik der Königin Balthid,” Francia 1 (1973): 62–114, at 108.
57. On Dido’s role in the coup of Grimoald, see Jean-Michel Picard, “Church and Politics in the Seventh Century: The Irish Exile of King Dagobert II,” in Ireland and Northern France, AD 600–800, ed. Jean-Michel Picard (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1991): 27–52, and Yitzhak Hen, “The Structure and Aims of the Visio Baronti,” Journal of Theological Studies 47, no. 2 (1996): 477–97.
58. Vita sanctae Balthildis, chap. 10, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), 495.
59. Jacques Dubois, “Les évêques de Paris, des origins à l’avènement de Hugues Capet,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France 96 (1969): 33–97, especially 64–67.
60. Vita sanctae Geretrudis, chap. 6, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), 460: “Contigit autem ex odio paterno, ut reges, reginae, etiam sacerdotes per invidiam diabuli illam de suo loco primum per suasionem, postmo-dum vellent per vim trahere, et res Dei, quibus benedicta puella praeerat, iniquiter possiderent.” On Wulfetrudis, see Richard Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the “Liber Historiae Francorum” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 57–59, and Ian N. Wood, “Genealogy Defined by Women: The Case of the Pippinids,” in Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West , 300–900, ed. Leslie Brubaker and Julia M. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 234–56, especially 240–42.
61. On the connection between Merovingian elite families and the monasteries they had founded, see Régine Le Jan, “Convents, Violence, and Competition for Power in Seventh-Century Francia,” in Topographies of Power, ed. Mayke de Jong, Franz Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2001), 243–69; Alain Dierkens, “Saint Amand et la fondation de l’abbaye de Nivelles,” Revue du Nord 68, no. 269 (1986): 325–34; and Alain Dierkens, “Notes biographiques sur saint Amand, abbé d’Elnone et éphémère évêque de Maastricht († peu après 676),” in Saints d’Aquitaine: Missionnaires et pèlerins du Haut Moyen Âge, ed. Edina Bozoky (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 63–80.

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Chapter 3 (93-115) from Social and Intellectual Networking in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Michael J. Kelly and K. Patrick Fazioli (Punctum Books, 05.02.2023), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.