Download PDF | (Mnemosyne Supplements 381) E. T. Dailey - Queens, Consorts, Concubines_ Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite-Brill (2015).
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Acknowledgements
Though the product of one hand, in truth many people deserve credit for bringing this monograph to press, chief among them being my wife, Henna Iqbal Dailey, who not only read through every draft, but who also provided the support necessary for me to see my research through to its conclusion. Ever the eager participant in our many conversations about Merovingian Gaul, Iam afraid that, for many years now, she has been subjected to a storyteller of far lower calibre than Gregory of Tours.
As the product of research that began during my doctoral studies at the University of Leeds, I must thank my PhD supervisor, Ian Wood. Indeed, Ian first recommended this topic to me, and his continuous input has helped shape the content of the volume and, I must admit, spared me many blushes along the way. I have also benefited from the assistance generously offered by many other scholars, including most especially Helmut Reimitz, Jo Story, and Emilia Jamroziak, who have been steadfast supporters of my research and career.
I am also indebted to the many organisers and participants involved in the annual conference on Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages, the related sessions presented at the annual International Medieval Congress held in Leeds, the conferences on Historiographies of Identity hosted by the Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the vIscom project team, and the conference on narrative construction and cultural memory, Erfahren — Erzdhlen — Erinnern, held at the Otto-Friedrich Universitat, Bamberg, in 2011.
To these individuals and institutions should be added the School of History at the University of Leeds, which served as the host institution for both my doctoral and Ma research (and which offered a generous bursary in support of the former), as well as the University’s Institute for Medieval Studies and the many young researchers therein who offered their advice and insight. Though there are too many individuals deserving thanks to mention by name, I must single out Nicky Tsougarakis, Meritxell Pérez Martinez, Stephen Werronen, Sheryl McDonald, Michael Garcia, and Hope Williard, who read drafts of my work and gave invaluable feedback. And I must thank Sylvie Joye, who kindly provided me with many useful materials in French that might otherwise have passed me by.
Lastly a special mention is reserved for Richard Gerberding, who first exposed me to the joy of studying the Roman Empire and its aftermath in the West, including the Merovingians and their most illustrious historian. Indeed, the research presented here is, in a sense, the final product of one of my early undergraduate assignments—a reading and analysis of the scandalous revolt of nuns in Poitiers as recounted by Gregory of Tours in Books 1x and x of his Histories. It is my hope that my work, and my enthusiasm for the history of Late Antiquity, can benefit not only the academic community but also a new generation of students, as Professor Gerberding’s passion for the subject and for teaching did for me and my peers: nemo nisi per amicitiam cognoscitur.
E. T. Dailey Leeds, West Yorkshire, 2014
Introduction
Gregory of Tours stands tall in the study of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. From his post in sixth-century Gaul, he witnessed key developments in the transformation of the West, and he produced a weighty corpus of writings that continues to attract the interest of scholars. Gregory also directed his own society through this transformation, both as an author who inspired his audience, and as a participant in the events he recorded. If Gregory had never taken up the pen, scholars would still know him as a bishop of an important see and a member of an old, prestigious family.
Any attempt to use Gregory’s writings as a historical source, therefore, must begin with an understanding of the bishop himself, both as an individual and as a representative of his society. Scholarship, particularly in the past quarter century, has shown this to be no easy task. Indeed, few other late antique authors have proved to be quite so difficult to evaluate. Gregory wrote engaging, even charming prose. He concealed his literary sophistication behind a simple style, keen to be seen as an honest, straightforward, and humble Christian.
Thus, Gregory has beguiled more than a few scholars into accepting his version of events without sufficient reservation. Indeed, there remains a tendency, especially in studies of medieval women, to treat his prose as a mine containing priceless nuggets of information that merely require extraction—without requisite critical judgement. Certainly there are gems to be found: Gregory was connected to many prominent women in his society and he wrote about them at length. However, before his writings can be used as a historical source, it is necessary to identify his views on issues relating to women and the literary techniques he used to express them.
Nor is this merely a point about the study of women in the sixth century: Gregory allowed such opinions and personal connections to influence his entire corpus, and therefore no study of the bishop, his society, or indeed the transformation of the West in general can proceed without sufficiently considering the women in his works.
Scholars have offered several interpretations of Gregory as an author, which, if put together, form a complex, perhaps even confused, picture. Giselle de Nie drew on Gregory’s use of metaphor and the intense, emotive, even poetic character of his miracle stories to demonstrate his thoroughly spiritualised interpretation of experience, in which divine agency abounded.! Walter Goffart also examined Gregory’s presentation of the miraculous as a common feature of a world that depended on God for its enduring existence. But Goffart concentrated more on the political within Gregory’s works and, in particular, his use of satire to express the ultimate futility of worldly endeavours.” Gregory's relationship with both the powers of this world and of the world to come were put into a more precise context by Ian Wood.
Thus, when it came to recounting the actions of kings, Gregory wrote as a political insider with his own set of personal allegiances that inspired words of praise or criticism accordingly.? Similarly, when it came to the veneration of saints, Gregory was particularly interested in highlighting those saints who had an association with his own family and the familial estates.4 Wood also stressed Gregory’s individuality and his cleverness as an author, two issues that complicate any attempt to use his writings as a historical source or to use his opinions as a representation of common views within society.
This should not, of course, lead one to question the authenticity of Gregory’s beliefs or his adherence to moral principle, two qualities that were made especially apparent in the scholarship of Raymond Van Dam. Gregory regarded himself as a ‘companion’ (alumnus) of the saints and he put this into practice.® Lastly, Martin Heinzelmann emphasised that Gregory’s role as a bishop simultaneously made him a pastor and a politician, which in turn impacted his writings—not only their content, but also their form and structure.’
There are clearly important differences between these interpretations, but they share much in common, and for us this is more important. Two points of agreement in particular deserve emphasis. Firstly, Gregory reworked his material in a sophisticated way so that it aligned better with his opinions and objectives. This contrasts the view prevalent in older scholarship that regarded Gregory as a simple and naive recorder of events.® Secondly, Gregory deployed various narrative strategies to effectively communicate his points to his audience.?
We will encounter these strategies and examine them in detail throughout this study, but let us note one in particular upfront. Gregory occasionally introduced himself as a character in his own works, sometimes as a witness to key events, sometimes as a participant in those events, and sometimes as a mouthpiece for orthodoxy. Though it is tempting to regard these passages as clear windows into Gregory’s thoughts and deeds, Guy Halsall has shown that they are often the most obscure.!° A more profitable approach assesses Gregory’s relationship with his contemporaries and analyses his presentation of them within the context of his literary themes. Thus we sometimes learn more about Gregory from his silences than from what he actually said.
Gregory knew many of the women who appeared in his works personally. Some even came from his own family, such as his mother, Armentaria, his niece, Justina, and his sister (whose name we do not know). On the whole, Gregory said rather little about his own family, but on several occasions he mentioned his mother, and she clearly had a great deal of influence on him, as we shall see in Chapter 1." Gregory also had dealings with royal and aristocratic women, in particular the queens Brunhild and Fredegund, discussed at length in Chapters 6 and 7.
As we shall see, Brunhild promoted Gregory’s career and she exercised considerable political influence throughout his lifetime, so he had every reason to treat her carefully within his works. In contrast, Gregory castigated Fredegund at every opportunity, detailing her murderous, treacherous, even sacrilegious scheming. On one occasion, Gregory was dragged before a tribunal in 580, charged with slandering her as an adulteress. Though he was probably guilty, he escaped conviction. Dramatic events such as this risk overshadowing less noticeable, yet equally important moments that offer insights into Gregory’s sympathies. For example, in 589 he journeyed to meet the dying Ingoberg, a former queen of Charibert 1, to help her draft her last will and testament.
His efforts were rewarded, as she included a benefaction for ecclesiastical institutions in Tours. Gregory also worked closely with a former queen of Chlothar 1, the Radegund of saintly medieval fame, who founded the convent of the Holy Cross in nearby Poitiers and excelled in her piety and asceticism. When she died, Gregory presided over her funeral, holding back his tears. As we shall see in Chapter 3, Gregory had a close relationship with Radegund’s nuns, though this caused him some trouble. Lastly, one must recall Gregory’s more mundane dealings with the women in his congregation and beyond, which he undertook as a pastor and as an important civic official. These duties surely took up a considerable amount of his time, even if they largely went without comment in his works.
The city of Tours itself took pride in a history that included important women. Queen Chlothild, for example, had spent most of her time there during her long widowhood, which lasted from 511 to 544. She thus had many years to develop a reputation for piety and to shape the legacy of her family. This family included her husband, Clovis, the great patriarch of the Merovingian dynasty, her sons, Chlodomer, Childebert 1, and Chlothar 1, who each ruled parts of Gaul during her lifetime, and her daughter and namesake, who married the Visigothic king Amalaric.
Tours also enjoyed visits from other queens, like Ultrogotha and the aforementioned Radegund, as well as various notable women. A convent, for example, had been founded there by Ingitrude, who was related to the royal family, while another had been founded by an aristocratic woman named Monegund.” Like the many other visitors to the city, these women were attracted by the shrine of St Martin, which was crucially important for Tours and its bishop.
Gregory took charge of the see in 573, appointed by King Sigibert and his wife Brunhild, together with Radegund.* After this, if not before, he was thoroughly entangled in the politics of his day—‘up to his neck’, in the words of Guy Halsall.!5 Yet this probably came naturally to Gregory: he had been born into a distinguished family, which owned estates and enjoyed influence throughout the Auvergne and beyond, and he had spent much of his youth in the ecclesiastical circles of Clermont and Lyon, where his relatives served as bishops.!6
Indeed, his face had probably become familiar to those in Sigibert and Brunhild’s court long before he acquired his episcopal post.!” Tours was not one of the largest cities, but it was one of the most important. Sitting astride the Loire, Tours served as a major crossing point for access into Aquitaine, a territory divided equally, in theory, among the various Merovingian kings, who therefore had an interest in the city and its bishop.!® Tours changed hands several times. It experienced the devastation of war and, in Gregory’s telling, it also came face-to-face with the devastation of the tax collector.!9
As Tours was a metropolitan see, Gregory oversaw several other bishops, whose neighbouring dioceses inconveniently fell under the jurisdiction of different kingdoms within Merovingian Gaul.?° The Merovingian royal family ruled a complex political entity, which, for most of Gregory’s lifetime, was divided into three kingdoms—Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy—based on multiple centres of power and dependent cities rather than clear territorial boundaries, though it is still possible to speak of heartlands and peripheries.?!
Occasionally attempts were made by ambitious claimants to carve out an extra share of territory and thus further divide the Merovingian realm. At other times, a strong king succeed in uniting the kingdoms under his rule. As we shall touch upon in Chapter 5, inheritance and succession were more flexible and ad hoc than appears at first glance, but in theory political legitimacy remained a matter of paternity: to rule, one needed to be the son of a former king (though this was no guarantee).2*
Numerous magnates and officials also exercised authority within each kingdom, including most importantly the dux, who governed large allotments of territory and also served a military role, and the comes, who acted as an agent of the king in a given city and whose secular power coexisted, sometimes uncomfortably, with the power of the local bishop.?? Although these titles later gave rise to the signifiers of ‘duke’ and ‘count’, in this study they have been rendered in their original Latin form, as with other offices such as that of the ex-domesticus, cobicularius, and maior domus, to avoid anachronism.
The Merovingians ruled over territory that had once formed part of the Roman Empire. Gregory proudly described his family as ‘senatorial’ in status, thereby identifying himself with the local, ancestral population rather than the ‘barbarians’ who had established themselves in Gaul during the twilight of imperial rule in the West—though by the sixth century the ‘senatorial’ title dependedas much on wealth and political connections as on ancient pedigree.?* Indeed, it is very difficult to describe the composition of Gallic society through such social signifiers. The use of ethnic terminology, for example, is fraught with risk, much like the word ‘barbarian’ itsel/—which is meant here only to signify those peoples who had originated from beyond the borders of the Empire, but which conjures up unhelpful images of the primitive brute.?5 The Merovingians rose to prominence as a leading family among the ‘Franks’, a group that began as a loose collection of warriors assembled from various ‘barbarian’ peoples living around the lower Rhine.
Though for later periods it is possible to describe the rulers, kingdoms, and people of Gaul as ‘Frankish’ without much fuss, such usage is anachronistic in a sixth-century context. Gregory used the term ‘Frank’ sparingly, primarily to describe high ranking men whose backgrounds were theoretically different from his own.”® I have therefore avoided using the term and its conventional counterpart, ‘GalloRoman; in this study.
I have also used the terms ‘aristocrat’ and ‘noble’ rather loosely, to describe high status individuals who were not clearly identified as members of the Merovingian family. Though we will focus largely on the upper echelons of this group (home to Gregory’s own social circles), the nobility stretched downward in great diversity to encompass lesser magnates and local notables of limited wealth and reach.?” Indeed, the sheer breadth and variety of this group thwarts efforts to define its constitution with precise terminology or to explain its origins with a single narrative.?*
Not that scholarship has been shy to try, but this academic project found itself sailing into an ever-thickening fog of complexity, and it was last seen beached on the shores of unresolvable questions over ‘Roman’ versus ‘Germanic’ customs and ‘public’ versus ‘personal’ bonds of loyalty.29 Thus we will only chart the waters of the second half of the sixthcentury and we will take irreducible diversity for granted, even if we contradict the attitudes of the elites themselves, who guarded their titles and family origins with reverence. While the elites may have thought of themselves as an exclusive group distinguished by noble birth, thereby rationalising family wealth and influence, in truth the aristocracy remained open and fluid.
Prospects for advancement, such as the acquisition of offices, arrangement of advantageous marriages, and service to superiors promised access to higher and higher tiers of society. Conversely, decline threatened even the wealthiest families. Inheritance required careful management, property required vigilant defending, and competitors needed to be checked at every opportunity. Indeed, the very insecurity of ‘nobility’ itself is largely to blame for the bewildering complexity of family relations, titles, and lineages that complicate efforts to categorise and describe the aristocracy with scholarly precision.
A different sort of confusion can arise from the names the Merovingians and the nobles gave themselves. These were usually formed by combining two elements taken from the names of close relatives, resulting in a relatively small pool of quite similar sounding or even identical names. Over the whole of the Merovingian period, for example, there were six members of the royal family named Theuderic and five named Dagobert. Likewise, during the specific period under consideration here we see one Gundobad who was a prince of the old ruling family of Burgundy, and another Gundobad who was the son of the Merovingian king Guntram, a later ruler of Burgundy.
There was also a dux named Guntram, which even Gregory found confusing, referring to this latter figure (sometimes, but not always) as Guntram Boso. Equally baffling might be that Childebert 1 was the uncle of Charibert, who was in turn the uncle of Childebert 11. Throughout this study I have sought to remain clear, avoiding the proliferation of such names when they may be safely omitted, but it is impossible to prevent every instance of potential confusion. Similarly, there is no academic consensus on the rendering of the names found in our sources into English. In general, I have retained Latin names in their original form (‘Innocentius’ rather than ‘Innocent’), dropped Latinate endings from non-Latin names (‘Gundulf’ rather than ‘Gundulfus’), and made exceptions where they seem prudent (‘Clovis’ rather than ‘Chlodovech’ for the famous king, ‘Guntram’ rather than ‘Gunthchramn/us;, ‘Gregory’ rather than ‘Gregorius’, and so on).3°
Gregory himself navigated these pitfalls in nomenclature and terminology, in addition to the more obvious challenges presented by his social and political context, to produce a literary corpus that must be regarded as a monumental achievement.*! His most substantial work is undoubtedly his Ten Books of Histories, referred to hereafter simply as the Histories, which he began to write shortly after he took up his post in Tours in 573. Gregory continued to work on this text over the next two decades of his life until his death in or around 594,32 expanding, amending, and modifying his material in ways that are only occasionally traceable, as he did with most of his other works.??
These other works include: The Suffering and the Virtues of St Julian, The Glory of the Confessors, The Glory of the Martyrs, The Life of the Fathers, and The Virtues of St Martin. Gregory also wrote a treatise On Reckoning the Course of the Stars, a commentary on the Psalms, and a preface to the Masses of Sidonius (the latter two are now lost), and he has been attributed as the author of a work on The Miracles of the Blessed Andrew, and on The Seven Sleepers in Ephesus. To produce such a weighty corpus was clearly exceptional. Nevertheless, one must assume the presence of a flourishing literary culture in which such an output was likely to be appreciated, even if Gregory himself downplayed this as part of his complex rhetorical strategies.34
In this exceptional corpus of writings, the Histories merit special attention. In composing narrative history, Gregory entered lonely waters. Few in the West had struck such a course the previous century and a half (though one must mention Cassiodorus’s lost history of the Goths).3° Gregory was joined, at least, by chronicles produced in Gaul around this time, though these merely included short annalistic entries on key events.*° This certainly complicates attempts to test the accuracy of Gregory’s Histories, but there are many texts belonging to other genres available for the task, including several works of hagiography.3”
As we shall see in Chapter 3, for example, two hagiographic texts were produced on Radegund and these are key to evaluating Gregory’s discussion of the queen and saint.3® A substantial collection of letters from the sixth century also exists, which is especially useful for identifying Gregory’s strategic silences.°° To these one might add documentary sources of relevance: diplomata and capitularia produced by the royal administration, legal texts then in circulation, and the promulgations of church councils.*° Finally, two later narrative histories written in Gaul also help contextualise Gregory’s information by indicating alternative readings of the same events, even if they were many years removed and largely dependent upon the Histories for information: the Chronicles attributed to Fredegar (which were in fact the work of multiple, unidentified authors working in the latter half of the seventh century),*! and the anonymous History of the Franks (Liber historiae Francorum), written c. 727.42
Gregory only mentioned his audience directly on a few occasions, but it is clear from these and from the thematic content of his works that he expected to reach a wide audience—one that included elites and those of lower status, secular and ecclesiastical, male and female. He wrote in a Latin drawn from the vernacular speech of sixth-century Gaul, though his prose took different forms and sometimes employed elevated language.*? Gregory’s field of vision centred on Gaul; when it extended further, it gazed toward the Mediterranean and then the East, rather than to the hinterlands of the north.44 Since he mostly wrote hagiography, and since texts of this genre were often intended to be read out in liturgical contexts, Gregory probably had an audience in mind that included clerics, monastics, and pious laypeople, especially pilgrims to St Martin’s shrine.*°
Given the close relationship between secular and ecclesiastical hierarchies in Merovingian Gaul, this necessarily included the secular elite as well—the great families, royal and aristocratic, that provided the church with the bulk of its personnel, funding, and protection (and even the occasional pilgrim). This obviously prevented Gregory from writing with complete candour, especially regarding sensitive political issues, but it also served as an opportunity to influence those who were in power indirectly through subtle arguments and well-considered examples.
Gregory located his many opinions and arguments, spread across his works, within a single setting that unifies his entire corpus. In this temporal world, with its vicissitudes and vanities, the devout struggle to live a moral life in the midst of violence, heresy, apathy, and ignorance. Yet it is also possible to discern the agency of God and his saints, breaking through the veil of the unseen to offer guidance and mercy, rigour and discipline, or justice and retribution, as required. This metaphysical primacy of the eternal imbues Gregory’s works with a sense of permanence and security. Whenever turmoil or desperation appears, the reader knows that a reckoning is due, on the Last Day if not before, that will set everything right. It was no mere convention that Gregory chose to include a creed near the beginning of his Histories, or that in Book I he covered events from Creation.
To read Gregory’s works is to breath an atmosphere of divine authority and certainty. Yet one must not become light headed. Gregory lived during a time of tremendous social, political, and cultural change. A mere two hundred years before he became bishop in 573, Christianity had not yet become the official state religion of the Roman Empire. By Gregory’s day, Christianity was the chosen religion of nearly every important, newly-formed kingdom in the West. Advance a mere one hundred years and most of what Gregory took as certain is up for grabs: armies from Arabia, celebrating the conquest of the East and North Africa, are poised to incorporate the Iberian peninsula and perhaps even Constantinople into the new Caliphate.
Among the many transformations of the period, one must include the position of women in society. This topic has received its share of scholarly attention, especially in recent years, and scholars have naturally included Gregory’s works in their studies.” Yet there have been remarkably few examinations of Gregory’s overall presentation of women or his underlying opinions.+® Over the following seven chapters, we will examine these issues, including Gregory’s opinions on widowhood, sanctity, authority, agency, marriage, queenship, and court politics. These subjects mattered to Gregory and consequently they shaped much of what he wrote, sometimes unexpectedly. By gaining a better understanding of the women in Gregory’s works, we will develop a better understanding of Gregory himself and his society, which was rushing headlong through a period of great change.
Through this process, I also hope we will glimpse the engaging, charming writer I mentioned above. For all the talk of their scholarly importance, Gregory’s works have remained popular for more than just their historical value. Indeed, I fear the preceding discussion has been unduly austere. A master storyteller, Gregory knew how to retain the interest of his audience and conjure emotions through delightful prose. If, as I claimed, he has ‘beguiled more than a few scholars’, then I must include myself among the enchanted, and that is surely no misfortune. After many years of study it remains a pleasure to read through Gregory’s writings, and to allow his stories to entertain, as they always have, since he last set down his pen.
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