Over Seas the States in which they Came:Information about 'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks"
'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks" (b. 458, d. 26 November 481)
Notes for 'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks":
Name 'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks"
Birth 0458, Westfalen, GERMANY
Death 26 Nov 0481, Vexin, FRANCE Age: 23
Burial Church, Saint-Brice, Tournai
Father Merovee "Merowig" MEROVINGIAN "King of the Salian Franks" (~0416-0457)
Mother Verica "of Sweden" (~0415-)
Spouses
1 Basina Andovera de THURINGIA
Birth abt 0430, Thuringia, GERMANY
Children Chilperic
Andelfieda Audeflede (~0459-0535)
Auderdon
'Clovis I' "the Great" "the Riparian" (0466-0511)
2 UNNAMED
Children Chilperic II
Notes for 'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks"
[GREATx47 GRANDFATHER]+ [A] [K]
Julius Caesar subdued the Gauls, native tribes of Gaul (France) 58 to 51 BC after which the Romans ruled 500 years. The Franks, a Teutonic tribe, reached the Somme from the East 250 AD. By the 5th Century, the Merovingian Franks ousted the Romans. In 451, with the help of Visigoths, Burgundians, and others, they defeated Attila and the Huns at Chalons-sur-Marne.
Childeric I became leader of the Merovingians 458. His son Clovis I (Choldwig, Ludwig, Louis) was crowned in 481. - [1]
The Merovingians were a dynasty of Frankish kings who ruled a frequently fluctuating area in parts of present-day France and Germany from the fifth to the eighth century. They were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" (Latin reges criniti) by contemporaries, for their symbolically unshorn hair (traditionally the tribal leader of the Franks wore his hair long, while the warriors trimmed it short).
The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to Merovech (sometimes Latinised as Meroveus or Merovius), leader of the Salian Franks from c.447 to 457, and emerges into wider history with the victories of his son Childeric I (reigned c.457 – 481) against the Visigoths, Saxons, and Alemanni. Childeric's son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts.
He won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, on which occasion he adopted his wife's Roman Catholic faith, and decisively defeated the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. After Clovis' death, his kingdom was partitioned among his four sons, according to Frankish custom. Over the next century, this tradition of partition would continue. Even when multiple Merovingian kings ruled, the kingdom — not unlike the late Roman Empire — was conceived of as a single entity ruled collectively by several kings (in their own realms) and the turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole kingdom under a single king. Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success. - [2]
The Merovingian king was the master of the booty of war, both movable and in lands and their folk, and he was in charge of the redistribution of conquered wealth among the first of his followers. "When he died his property was divided equally among his heirs as though it were private property: the kingdom was a form of patrimony" (Rouche 1987 p 420). The kings appointed magnates to be comites, charging them with defence, administration, and the judgement of disputes. This happened against the backdrop of a newly isolated Europe without its Roman systems of taxation and bureaucracy, the Franks having taken over administration as they gradually penetrated into the thoroughly Romanised west and south of Gaul. The counts had to provide armies, enlisting their milites and endowing them with land in return. These armies were subject to the king's call for military support. There were annual national assemblies of the nobles of the realm and their armed retainers which decides major policies of warmaking. The army also acclaimed new kings by raising them on its shields in a continuance of ancient practice which made the king the leader of the warrior-band, not a head of state. Furthermore, the king was expected to support himself with the products of his private domain (royal demesne), which was called the fisc. Some scholars have attributed this to the Merovingians lacking a sense of res publica, but other historians have criticized this view as an oversimplification. This system developed in time into feudalism, and expectations of royal self-sufficiency lasted until the Hundred Years' War.
Trade declined with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and agricultural estates were mostly self-sufficient. The remaining international trade was dominated by Middle Eastern merchants.
Merovingian law was not universal law based on rational equity, generally applicable to all, as Roman law; it was applied to each man according to his origin: Ripuarian Franks were subject to their own Lex Ribuaria, codified at a late date (Beyerle and Buchner 1954), while the so-called Lex Salica (Salic Law) of the Salian clans, first tentatively codified in 511 (Rouche 1987 p 423) was invoked under medieval exigencies as late as the Valois era. In this the Franks lagged behind the Burgundians and the Visigoths, that they had no universal Roman-based law. In Merovingian times, law remained in the rote memorisation of rachimburgs, who memorised all the precedents on which it was based, for Merovingian law did not admit of the concept of creating new law, only of maintaining tradition. Nor did its Germanic traditions offer any code of civil law required of urbanised society, such as Justinian caused to be assembled and promulgated in the Byzantine Empire. The few surviving Merovingian edicts are almost entirely concerned with settling divisions of estates among heirs. - [2]
The Merovingian kingdom, which included, from at latest 509, all the Franks and all of Gaul but Burgundy, from its first division in 511 was in an almost constant state of war, usually civil. The sons of Clovis maintained their fraternal bonds in wars with the Burgundians, but showed that dangerous vice of personal aggrandisement when their brothers died. Heirs were seized and executed and kingdoms annexed. - [2]
Childeric's tomb was discovered in 1653 by a mason doing repairs in the church of Saint-Brice in Tournai where numerous precious objects were found, including a richly ornamented sword, a torse-like bracelet, jewels of gold and cloisonné enamel with garnets, gold coins, a gold bull's head and a ring with the inscription CHILDERICI REGIS ("of Childeric the king"), which identified the tomb. Some 300 golden bees were also found. Archduke Leopold William, Spanish governor of the Netherlands, had the find published in Latin, and the treasure went first to the Habsburgs in Vienna, then as a gift to Louis XIV, who was not impressed with them and stored them in the royal library, which became the Bibliothèque Nationale de France during the Revolution. Napoleon was more impressed with Childeric's bees when he was looking for a heraldic symbol to trump the Bourbon fleur-de-lys. He settled on Childeric's bees as symbols of the French Empire.
On the night of November 5-6, 1831, the treasure of Childeric was among 80 kilos of treasure stolen from the Library and melted down for the gold. A few pieces were retrieved where they had been hidden in the Seine, including two of the bees. The record of the treasure, however, now exists only in the fine engravings made at the time of its discovery, and in some reproductions made for the Habsburgs. - [3]
Children of 'Childeric I' "King of the Salian Franks" and Basina Andovera dr THURINGIA are:
- +THE RIPARIAN CLOVIS, KING OF COLOGNE, b. 466, Rheims, Mame, d. 11 November 511, St. Denis Basilica, Paris, FRANCE.