Although the real extent of the Arnulfings' interest to the recording of the past and to raising the general awareness of the importance of history is a matter of significant discussion, one may still accept as the fact that in their struggle to redefine
Merovingian political networks to create new political connections, the court of the Frankish mayor and later king Pippin III needed the new ways to construct his image.
We retreat further into the
Merovingian world in the final three chapters.
During the fifth century this lineage appears to have intermarried with the royal line of the Franks, thus engendering the
Merovingian dynasty.
The
Merovingian dynasty--the Frankish kings who ruled during the early Dark Ages before the era of Charlemagne--were of the bloodline of Jesus, says Brown, so the Holy Grail of medieval legend ("sangreal," or "royal blood" in medieval French, according to Brown) is also part of the story.
The conversion of Kent was, after all, the product of influence from a
Merovingian empire occupied with supplying its provinces with Latin law codes formed after the model of the Lex Salica.
After lying low for a while, the "Jesus family" legged it to the Provencal region of France, where they founded the
Merovingian dynasty of French warrior-kings, rumored to have gnarly mystical powers.
The advent of the Carolingian dynasty, and the energetic efforts of the Carolingians to blacken the name of the
Merovingian dynasty they replaced, mean that the
Merovingian period has suffered in the eyes of generations of historians.
`If anyone', he writes at the very beginning of his conclusion, `takes up this little work that I have made and begins to read it, he may indeed accuse me of rusticity of expression, but not lying'.(29) Such an apology is not uncommon among
Merovingian writers, and while it may be interpreted as a mere literary topos widespread at that time,(30) it may also be regarded as a true and sincere apology.
The moral aspect rang a high note in the treatise of Du Haillan, where he claimed that all kings of the first "race", the
Merovingians, were in their behavior were much like children, and thus period of the Frankish history could be considered childhood " Le second age qui est de ieiunesse et adolescence commance au Roy Clovis, qui fut le premier Roy Chrestien, et qui accreust le Royame de la soy Chrestiene ...
The first six chapters of the book are concerned with political history and center on several of the most important texts for studying the
Merovingians and Carolingians: the histories of Gregory of Tours and Fredegar, the Royal Frankish Annals and its various continuations, the Liber historiae Francorum and the Liber pontificalis, Einhard's Life of Charlemagne and Paul the Deacon's Historia langobardorum.
According to Einhard, the biographer of the most famous Carolingian, Charlemagne, the later
Merovingians were rois faineants, decadent and do-nothing kings, whose power had been effectively supplanted by the Carolingian dynasty in the form of Mayors of the Palace.
This is probably the reason for Ongentheow's choice of this moment to strike at the Geats--their king is recently dead of sorrow for a killing within his own family that has presumably done nothing to improve the group solidarity of the Geats, and so they are ripe for a raid.(11) This sort of political opportunism conditioning the timing of the feud is brought out elsewhere in the poem--especially in the messenger's prediction that the
Merovingians, Frisians and Swedes will choose the moment of Beowulf's death to settle their old scores with the Geats: