Holy Blood, Holy Grail (37 page)

England, establishing residence at York, in the kingdom of Northumbria. Here he formed a close friendship with Saint Wilfrid, bishop of York, who became his mentor.

During the period in question a schism still existed between the Roman and

Celtic Churches, with the latter refusing to acknowledge the former’s authority. In the interests of unity Wilfrid was intent on bringing the

Celtic Church into the Roman fold. This he had already accomplished at the famous Council of Whitby in 664. But his subsequent friendship and patronage of Dagobert II may not have been devoid of ulterior motive.

By

Dagobert’s time Merovingian allegiance to Rome as dictated by the Church’s pact with Clovis a century and a half before -was somewhat less fervent than it might have been. As a loyal adherent of Rome, Wilfrid was eager to consolidate Roman supremacy not only in Britain, but on the continent as well. Were Dagobert to return to France and reclaim the kingdom of Austrasie, it would have been expedient to ensure his fealty.

Wilfrid may well have seen the exiled king as a possible future sword-arm of the Church.

In 670 Mathilde, Dagobert’s Celtic wife, died giving birth to her third daughter. Wilfrid hastened to arrange a new match for the recently bereft monarch, and in 671 Dagobert married for the second time. If his first alliance was of potential dynastic import, his second was even more so.

Dagobert’s new wife was Giselle de Razes, daughter of the count of Razes and niece of the king of the Visigoths. ‘3 In other words the Merovingian bloodline was now allied to the royal bloodline of the Visigoths. Herein lay the seeds of an embryonic empire which would have united much of modern

France, extending from the Pyrenees to the Ardennes. Such an empire, moreover, would have brought the Visigoths still with strong Arian tendencies firmly under Roman control.

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When Dagobert married Giselle, he had already 2 The Merovingian Dynasty The Kings

From the work of Henri Lobineau (Henri de Lenoncourt)

Su mbrun ~ ~ Sal~an Frank

MERO VEE SIEGSECLODION VI

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Pagan h of The Young’

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EVOCHILDE CLOVIS 1I eapnad by CLOTHILDE

(pagan) 456-511St. Remi(Chnrrun)

King of she Franks24.12.496tit of Icing of Burgundy

THIERRY 1 CLODOMIRCHILDEBERTCLOTHILDECLOTAIRE 1 -6 wives King f Auurasia King of OrleansKmj of Pansm. AmalncKing of Soisrons 511-34

511-24511-.58King of VisiBoths511-58

King of the Frwcs 4 other children

SIGISBERT ICHILPERIC 1 =GALESWINTHE (sixer of Bounehaut) King f Aussrasia 561-84 561-75 King of SoiswnsFREDEGONDE B.-hut d. of Visigoth King rtomarciil CLOTn B=Fm 3

SIGONIUS 584-628

of she Francs Prefect of the Gauls DAGO BERT I- 5 wives

V,vgorh 602-38

King f Ausrcasia 622

TULCA SERA IANNEMUNDUSKing of the Fnolcs 630 lu Count of 0.aass Bishop of Lyons 653 King g of Visigoth, d. 642 IMMACHILDE -SIGISBERT BIBATILDE

f= CLOVIS If

King of Aussrasia 632 I633-56

GISLICA - BERA 11 629-56

r of Wamba, Count of Rash Kmg of Vistgoshs I from 6J I

sours

Inch I 666DAGO BERT BBLICHILDE CHIMERIC 11

MATHILDE 651-79T651-74

671King of Austrasia 674I (“ISELLE DE RAZESA^s.”by unde rI 653-76 f Pew,rlie Fin’I

CHILD ERIC m Depored 751 Peps the Shon’,

SIGI$BERT Iv ho uwrped htmse wnh the 676-758 P~ Count of RAZ2a (FaA~^ of Ch’ of th, ldmr 11)

Ilast known Merovingaai

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Lt. continua ire turned to the continent. According to existing documentation, the marriage was celebrated at Giselle’s official residence of Rhedae, or

Rennes-leChateau. Indeed, the marriage was reputedly celebrated in the church of Saint Madeleine the structure on the site of which Berenger Sauniere’s church was subsequently erected.

Dagobert’s first marriage had produced three daughters but no male heir. By

Giselle, Dagobert had two more daughters and at last, in 676, one son the infant Sigisbert IV. And by the time Sigisbert was born, Dagobert was once more a king.

For some three years he seems to have bided his time at

Rennes-leChateau, watching the vicissitudes of his domains to the north. Finally, in 674, the opportunity had presented itself. With the support of his mother and her advisers, the long-exiled monarch announced himself, reclaimed his realm and was officially proclaimed king of Austrasie. Wilfrid of York was instrumental in his

reinstatement. According to Gerard de Sede, so too was a much more elusive, much more mysterious figure, about whom there is little historical information Saint Amatus, bishop of Sion in

Switzerland. ‘4

Once restored to the throne, Dagobert was no roi faineant. On the contrary, he proved to be a worthy successor to Clovis. At once he set about asserting and consolidating his authority, taming the anarchy that prevailed throughout Austrasie and re-establishing order. He ruled firmly, breaking the control of various rebellious nobles who had mobilised sufficient military and economic power to challenge the throne. And at

Rennes-leChateau he is said to have amassed a substantial treasury. These resources were to be used to finance the reconquest of Aquitaine,”5 which had seceded from Merovingian hands some forty years previously and declared itself an independent principality.

At the same time Dagobert must have been a severe disappointment to Wilfrid of York. If Wilfrid had expected him to be a sword-arm of the Church,

Dagobert proved nothing of the sort. On the contrary he seems to have curbed attempted expansion on the part of the Church within his realm, and thereby incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. A letter from an irate

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Frankish prelate to Wilfrid exists, condemning Dagobert for levying taxes, for “scorning the churches of God together with their bishops’

.”6

Nor was this the only respect in which Dagobert seems to have run foul of

Rome. By virtue of his marriage to a Visigoth princess he had acquired considerable territory in what is now the Languedoc. He may also have acquired something else. The Visigoths were only nominally loyal to the

Roman Church. In fact their allegiance to Rome was extremely tenuous, and a tendency towards Arianism still obtained in the royal family. There is evidence to suggest that Dagobert absorbed something of this tendency.

By 679, after three years on the throne, Dagobert had made a number of powerful enemies, both secular and ecclesiastic. By curbing their rebellious autonomy, he had incurred the hostility of certain vindictive nobles. By thwarting its attempted expansion, he had roused the antipathy of the Church. By establishing an effective and centralised regime, he had provoked the envy and alarm of other Frankish potentates the rulers of adjacent kingdoms. Some of these rulers had allies and agents within

Dagobert’s realm. One such was the king’s own Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Fat. And Pepin, clandestinely aligning himself with Dagobert’s political foes, did not shrink from either treachery or assassination.

Like most Merovingian rulers, Dagobert had at least two capital cities.

The most important of these was Stenay,” on the fringe of the Ardennes.

Near the royal palace at Stenay stretched a heavily wooded expanse, long deemed sacred, called the Forest of Woevres. It was in this forest, on December 23rd, 679, that Dagobert is said to have gone hunting. Given the date, the hunt may well have been a ritual occasion of some sort. In any case, what followed evokes a multitude of archetypal echoes, including the murder of

Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied.

Towards midday, succumbing to fatigue, the king lay down to rest beside a stream, at the foot of a tree. While he slept, one of his servants.

supposedly his godson stole furtively up to him and, acting under Pepin’s orders, pierced him with a lance through the eye. The murderers then returned to Stenay, intent on exterminating the rest of

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the family in residence there. How successful they were in this latter undertaking is not clear. But there is no question that the reign of Dagobert and his family came to an abrupt and violent end. Nor did the Church waste much time grieving.

On the contrary, it promptly endorsed the actions of the king’s assassins. There is even a letter from a Frankish prelate to Wilfrid of York, which attempts to rationalise and justify the regicide.”

Dagobert’s body and posthumous status both underwent a curious number of vicissitudes. Immediately after his death, he was buried at Stenay, in the

Royal Chapel of Saint Remy. In 872 nearly two centuries later he was exhumed and moved to another church. This new church became the Church of

Saint Dagobert, for in the same year the dead king was canonised not by the pope (who did not claim this right exclusively until 1159), but by a

Metropolitan Conclave. The reason for Dagobert’s canonisation remains unclear.

According to one source, it was because his relics were believed to have preserved the vicinity of Stenay against Viking raids though this explanation begs the question, for it is not clear why the relics should have possessed such powers in the first place.

Ecclesiastical authorities seem embarrassingly ignorant concerning the matter. They admit that Dagobert, for some reason, became the object of a fully fledged cult and had his own feast day December 23rd, the anniversary of his death.”9 But they seem utterly at a loss as to why he should have been so exalted. It is possible, of course, that the Church felt guilty about its role in the king’s death. Dagobert’s canonisation may therefore have been an attempt to make amends. If so, however, there is no indication of why such a gesture should have been deemed necessary, nor why it should have had to wait for two centuries.

Stenay, the Church of Saint Dagobert and perhaps the relics it contained were all accorded great significance by a number of illustrious figures in the centuries that followed. In 1069, for example, the duke of Lorraine -Godfroi de Bouillon’s grandfather accorded special protection to the church and placed it under the auspices of the near-by Abbey of Gorze. Some years later the church was appropriated by a local nobleman. In 1093

Godfroi de Bouillon mobilised an army and subjected Stenay to a

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full-scale siege for the sole purpose, it would appear, of regaining the church and returning it to the Abbey of Gorze.

During the French Revolution, the church was destroyed and the relics of

Saint Dagobert, like so many others throughout France, were dispersed.

Today a ritually incised skull said to be Dagobert’s is in the custody of a convent at Mons.

All other relics of the king have disappeared.

But in the mid-nineteenth century a most curious document came to light. It was a poem, a twenty one verse litany, entitled “De sancta Dagoberto mar tyre prose’ implying that Dagobert was martyred to, or for, something. This poem is believed to date from at least the Middle Ages, possibly much earlier. Significantly enough, it was found at the Abbey of Orval.z

The Usurpation by the Carolingians

Strictly speaking Dagobert was not the last ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. In fact Merovingian monarchs retained at least . nominal status for another three quarters of a century. But these last Merovingians did warrant the appellation of rois faineants. Many of them were extremely young. In consequence they were often weak, helpless pawns in the hands of the Mayors of the Palace, incapable of asserting their authority or of making decisions of their own. They were really little more than victims; and more than a few became sacrifices.

Moreover, the later Merovingians were of cadet branches, not scions of the main line descended from Clovis and Merovee. The main line of Merovingian descent had been deposed with Dagobert II. To all intents and purposes, therefore, Dagobert’s assassination may be regarded as signalling the end of the Merovingian dynasty. When Childeric III died in 754, it was a mere formality so far as dynastic power was concerned.

As rulers of the Franks the Merovingian bloodline had been effectively extinct long before.

As power seeped from the hands of the Merovingians, it passed into the hands of the Mayors of the Palace a process that had already commenced before Dagobert’s reign. It was a Mayor of the Palace. Pepin the Fat,

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who engineered Dagobert’s death. And Pepin the Fat was followed by his son, the famous Charles Martel.

In the eyes of posterity Charles Martel is one of the most heroic figures in French history.

There is certainly some basis for the acclaim given him.

Under Charles the Moorish invasion of France was checked at the Battle of

Poitiers in 732; and Charles, by virtue of this victory, was, in some sense, both “defender of the Faith’ and “saviour of Christendom’. What is curious is that Charles Martel, strong man though he was, never seized the throne -which certainly lay within his grasp. In fact he seems to have regarded the throne with a certain superstitious awe and, in all probability, as a specifically Merovingian prerogative. Certainly Charles’s successors, who did seize the throne, went out of their way to establish their legitimacy by marrying Merovingian princesses.

Charles Martel died in 741. Ten years later his son, Pepin III, Mayor of the Palace to King Childeric III, enlisted the support of the Church in laying formal claim to the throne. “Who should be king?” Pepin’s ambassadors asked the pope. “The man who actually holds power, or he, Pepin’s favour. By apostolic authority he ordered that Pepin be created king of the Franks a brazen betrayal of the pact ratified with Clovis two and a half centuries before. Thus endorsed by Rome, Pepin deposed Childeric

III, confined the king to a monastery and to humiliate him, to deprive him of his “magical powers’ or both had him shorn of his sacred hair.