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Dukes of Bavaria
Sources: —
Lives of Rupert, Emmeran, Corbinian, and Boniface in the Acta Sanctorum.
Letters of Boniface in Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Guides: —
There is a neighbour land of Italy to whose history we must give some little attention if we would understand the events which preceded and followed the downfall of the Lombard state.
Extent of the Bavarian duchy. We have seen how closely for more than a century the dynasty which reigned over the Lombards was connected with the rulers of Bavaria. The two countries touched most closely in that region which we now know as the Tyrol, where the valley of the Adige from a little above Trient downwards was ruled by a Lombard duke, while the upper waters of the Adige and the Eisach, with the Vintschgau, Meran, Botzen and Brixen were all as a rule subject to the Bavarians.1 p65 With the addition of this Alpine territory and of Upper Austria and Salzburg and with the subtraction of a strip of land west of the river Lech, and of the valley of the Main in the north-west, the duchy of Bavaria corresponded pretty closely with the modern kingdom of that name. A large square block of fruitful land watered by the Danube and the Inn, this duchy, bordering on Alamannia on the west and Italy on the south, was sure to play an important part in the politics of central Europe. The Bavarians themselves appear to have been a Suevic tribe who wandered into the old Roman province of Vindelicia, then lying desolate and unoccupied, a sort of No‑man's-land between the Danube and the Alps, and to have settled there in the early part of the sixth century. Almost from the very beginning of their Danubian settlement they seem to have been subject to the overlordship of the Frankish kings, but the yoke was lightly imposed, perhaps as the result of peaceful arrangement rather than of war, and does not appear to have involved, as in many other cases, the payment of a tribute.2
Reigning house: the Agilolfings. Almost at the outset of their history as settlers in Vindelicia we find the Bavarians under the leadership of a great ducal house, the Agilolfings.3 Of the origin of this family we have no certain information, but there are many indications which point to the conclusion p66 that they were themselves of Frankish descent,4 possibly allied to the Merovingian kings.
Duke Garibald I, 553‑596? The first of these Agilolfing rulers of whom history makes mention is Garibald, husband of the Lombard p67 princess Walderada, who was the divorced wife of the Frankish king Chlotochar.5 His daughter Theudelinda was the celebrated and saintly queen of the Lombards. The reader may remember the romantic stories of her wooing by the disguised Authari and of the cup of wine which she handed to the favoured Agilulf.6 From some cause which is unknown to us Garibald incurred the displeasure of his Frankish lords and probably had to submit to a Frankish invasion.7 There is no proof however that he lost his ducal crown, Tassilo I, 596‑611? and about the year 596 he seems to have been succeeded by a son named Tassilo I (596‑611). It is indeed nowhere distinctly stated that this was the relationship between the two princes, but the fact that Tassilo's son and successor was named Garibald II renders it probable.
Garibald II, 611‑660? Of the reigns of these early dukes of Bavaria we know very little, nor can we with any certainty fix the date of the second Garibald's possession of power.8 It seems clear, however, that through the greater part of the seventh century the bond of allegiance to the Frankish monarchy was growing looser and looser; fainéant Merovingian kings and warring Mayors of the Palace having little power to enforce its obligations. The duke seems to have surrounded himself with seneschal and marischal and all the other satellites of p68 a sovereign prince, and his capital, Ratisbon on the Danube, doubtless outshone Paris and Metz in the eyes of his Bavarian subjects.
Theodo I, 660‑722. With the accession to the ducal throne of Theodo I9 we gain a clearer vision of Bavarian affairs from the lives of the saints, Rupert, Emmeran, and Corbinian, who came from Gaul and from Ireland to effect the conversion of the people. Missionary operations among the Bavarians. It is indeed surprising to us who have witnessed the earnest zeal of the Bavarian Theudelinda, not merely for Christianity but for orthodoxy among her Italian subjects, to find that, two generations later, her own Bavarian countrymen still needed conversion. But apparently the Christianity of Garibald's court was not much more than a court fashion (the result very possibly of his Frankish origin), and had not deeply leavened the mass of his subjects. Probably we are in the habit of under-estimating the stubbornness of the resistance of Teutonic heathenism to the new faith. When a tribe like the Franks or the Burgundians settled in the midst of a people already imbued with Christian ideas through their subjection to the Empire, it was comparatively easy to persuade them to renounce idolatry or to change the Arian form of Christianity for the Athanasian. But when the messengers of the church had to deal with nations all Teutonic and all heathen, like the Frisians, the Saxons, or the Bavarians, the process of conversion (as we know from the history of our own forefathers) was much slower and more laborious. Thus it came to pass that in the middle of the seventh century the mass of the Bavarian folk were apparently p69 still heathen, worshipping the mysterious goddess Nerthus,10 and venerating a statue of Irmin in the sacred wood, feasting on horse-flesh in the half-ruined temple which had perhaps once been dedicated to Jupiter or Isis,11 and offering, with drunken orgies, sacrifices of rams and goats beside the bier of their dead comrades, to commemorate their entrance into Walhalla.
Bishop Rupert. Into this rude, more than half-Pagan world came towards the end of the seventh century12 bishop Rupert or Hroudbert of Worms. His ancestry and birthplace are doubtful. Some have described him as sprung from Ireland, while others make him a Frank, of kin to the royal house of the Merovingians. He came into Bavaria, we are told, at the invitation of the duke, but probably also with the full consent if not at the actual suggestion of the great Frankish Mayor, Pippin of Heristal, who at this time not only by warlike expeditions but also by wise and politic counsels was tightening once more the loosened bonds which bound p70 the Bavarians as well as the other nations east of the Rhine to the Frankish kingdom.13
Rupert's missionary operations. At the outset of his operations Rupert baptized duke Theodo and then proceeded with the conversion of the heathen remnant of his people to Christianity, reconsecrating old temples which still bore the names we are told of Juno and Cybele, and dedicating them to the Virgin, and ever on the quest for some one place where he might found a monastery which he might make the centre of his missionary work. Not desirous apparently of too near neighbourhood to the ducal court of Ratisbon, he decided at last upon the little Waller See •about seven miles from Salzburg, where he founded the monastery of the Church-by‑the‑Lake (See‑Kirche). But not long had he dwelt here when the desolate ruins of the once stately Roman city of Juvavia attracted his notice. Still desolate, two centuries after that destruction which St. Severinus had foretold of them and the other cities of Noricum,14 they attracted and fascinated him by the mouldering greatness. He settles at Salzburg. He obtained from duke Theodo a grant of the old city and of the fort above, with twenty farms and twenty salt-pans at Reichenhall, eighty 'Romans' with their slaves, all the unoccupied lands in the district of Salzburg, and other rights and royalties. High up on that noble hill which still bears the name of the Monk's Mountain15 Rupert reared his church, which he dedicated to St. Peter, and p71 founded there his monastery, which he put under the guidance of twelve young Franks, his disciples and fellow-countrymen. Such was the beginning of the great and rich bishopric of Salzburg.
Theodo divides his duchy with his sons. It was probably about the time of Rupert's first missionary operations in Bavaria that duke Theodo, now past the middle of life, divided his duchy between himself and three of his sons.16 Of these sons the only one of whom we hear anything important is Grimwald,17 whose capital was Freising, •about twenty miles north-east of Munich, and who probably ruled over that part of Bavaria which lies between the Danube and the Alps.
Arrival of Bishop Emmeran. Soon after this division of the duchy and about the time of the death of Pippin of Heristal, we may conjecturally place the appearance of the second great Frankish missionary in Bavaria, Emmeran of Poictiers; a meteoric appearance which heralded storm and was strangely quenched in darkness. Emmeran came, we are told, into Bavaria, intending only to traverse the country on his way to the barbarous Avars, of whom he desired to make proselytes. He came to the strongly fortified city of Ratisbon and stood before duke Theodo, but an interpreter was needed to mediate between the speech of Aquitaine and the speech of Bavaria. He explained to the duke the object of his mission, and Theodo replied, 'That land to which thou wouldest fain go, on the banks of the Ens, is lying all waste and p72 desolate, through the incursions of the Avars. Stay rather here, and I will make thee bishop in this province, or give the oversight of some abbey.' And Emmeran, learning that the conversion of the Bavarians was yet but half-accomplished and that they still blended their heathen sacrifices with the Supper of the Lord, was persuaded to stay in that fruitful land, whose inhabitants pleased him well, and he preached there during three years.
His tragic death. Now Emmeran was a man of noble stature and comely face, generous both of speech and of money, and 'extraordinarily affable to women as well as to men': evidently a courtly bishop rather than an austere recluse. Unfortunately at the end of the three years the princess Ota, duke Theodo's daughter who had fallen into sin, accused the Frankish missionary as her seducer, and either through consciousness of guilt, or through unworldly carelessness as to his good name, he took no steps to clear himself of the charge. He left Bavaria indeed, but it was not to prosecute his journey to Avar-land, but to cross the Alps to Rome. A son of duke Theodo named Lantpert pursued after him, and having overtaken him ere he had reached the mountains, inflicted upon him the punishment of an incontinent slave, mutilation of the tongue, the hands and the feet. He died of his wounds, and the church (which was persuaded of his innocence of the charge against him) reverenced him as a martyr.
Duke Theodo visits Rome, 716. In the year 716, soon probably after the death of Emmeran, Theodo with a long train of dependants visited Rome to pray at the tomb of St. Peter.18 As has been already suggested, the visit was probably p73 connected in some way with the terrible event which had preceded it, and it is possible that the reconciliation of the ducal family to the Pope may have been accomplished at the price of some concessions which made the Bavarian Church more dependent on the see of Rome.19
Mission of Corbinian. The third great Frankish missionary, Corbinian, was a man of hot and choleric temper, and he, like Emmeran, had his quarrels with the ducal house of Bavaria. Born at a place called Castrus near Melun about the year 680, he was the son of a mother already widowed,20 who probably fostered her child's domineering and impetuous disposition. He seems also to have been a man of wealth and some social importance, and accordingly, when his genius took the direction of miracle-working and monastic austerity, the fame of his young saintliness easily penetrated the court and reached the ears of the aged Pippin of Heristal, who probably encouraged him to turn his energies to the building up of a Frankish-Christian Church in barbarous Bavaria. After fourteen years of retirement in his cell, he journeyed to Rome, 'in order to ask of the p74 Pope permission to spend his life in solitude,' says his admiring biographer Aribo. But the Pope, we are told, perceiving his fitness for active work in the Church, and determined that he should not hide his light under a bushel, utterly refused to grant him the required permission to lead an anchorite's life, pushed him rapidly through all the lower grades of the hierarchy and consecrated him a bishop, without however assigning him any definite see, so that he must have been looked upon as a bishop in partibus. After this consecration we are surprised to hear of his spending the next seven years in the cell of St. Germanus in his native place. This and some other suspicious circumstances of the story incline some scholars to believe that the whole tale of this earlier episcopate is a figment of the biographer.
After this interval of seven years Corbinian appears in Bavaria, intent, we are told, on undertaking a second journey to Rome.21 He chose, says Aribo, 'the more secret way through Alamannia, Germany, and Noricum' [Bavaria], instead of taking 'the public road' from the regions of Gaul. Arrived in Bavaria he found there the devout Theodo, who had lately accomplished the partition of his duchy with his sons. The eldest survivor of these sons, Grimwald, eagerly welcomed the saint, and offered if he would remain to make him co‑heir with his own children, doubtless only of his personal property. Corbinian however rejected the offer, and insisted on continuing his journey to Rome. Finding it impossible to change his purpose, Grimwald dismissed him with large presents and gave p75 him an honourable escort, but at the same time gave secret orders to the dwellers in the Vintschgau that on his return he should be arrested at the moment of his crossing the Bavarian frontier. We see at once that there is something more here than the biographer chooses to communicate. The Bavarian prince looks on the expected return of the great ecclesiastic from beyond the Alps with the same sort of feelings which induced Plantagenet princes to decree the penalties of praemunire against any one who should import into England bulls from Rome.
Corbinian accomplished his journey into Italy. He was ill‑treated by Husingus, duke of Trient,22 who stole from him a beautiful stallion which he refused to sell, but was kindly received by king Liutprand at Pavia. He remained here seven days, chiefly occupied in preaching to the king, who listened with gladness to his copious eloquence. When he was leaving the capital he again had one of his horses stolen, by a Lombard courtier, whose dishonesty he detected and whose punishment he foretold. At last after divers adventures he reached Rome, and here, in spite of his entreaties and his tears, the Pope (probably Gregory II)23 ordered him once more to abjure a life of solitude and to undertake active ecclesiastical work. On his return he again visited Pavia, and on his arrival at that place the first object that met his gaze was the body of the Lombard nobleman who had stolen his horse laid upon a bier p76 and carried forth to burial. The horse was restored, and the widow of the culprit, grovelling at the saint's feet, besought him to accept 200 solidi (£120), which her husband on his death‑bed had ordered her to pay as the penalty of his crime.24
With a long train of horses and servants Corbinian now took his journey up the valley of the Adige in order to return into Bavaria by the pass of the Brenner. Scarcely, however, had he entered the Bavarian territory when by Grimwald's orders he was arrested at Castrum Magense.25
Corbinian's dispute with duke Grimwald. And now we hear something more of the cause of Grimwald's fear of the holy man. The Bavarian duke had married a young Frankish lady of noble birth named Piltrudis, who was the widow of his brother Theudebald. Against this kind of union, as we know, Rome uttered strong though not always irrevocable protests, and it was possibly from fear of Corbinian's bringing across the Alps a bull of excommunication of the guilty pair that Grimwald had given orders for his arrest on entering the duchy. However, after a struggle, the details of which are very obscurely given, Corbinian obtained a temporary victory. Grimwald obeyed the order of the saint, backed as he probably was by the Frankish Major Domus, and within the specified time of forty days put away Piltrudis.
It is needless to say that the divorced wife, who is looked upon by the ecclesiastical historians as another p77 Herodias, was full of resentment against the author of her disgrace and vowed to compass his downfall. If we read the story rightly, the saint's own choleric temper — even his biographer confesses that he was easily roused to anger by vice, though ready to forgive26 — aided her designs.
One day when Corbinian was reclining at the table with the duke he made the sign of the cross over the food set before him, at the same time giving praise to God. But the prince took a piece of bread and thoughtlessly threw it to a favourite hound. Thereat the man of God was so enraged that he kicked over the three-legged table on which the meal was spread and scattered the silver dishes on the floor. Then starting up from his seat he said, 'The man is unworthy of so great a blessing who is not ashamed to cast it to dogs.' Then he stalked out of the house, declaring that he would never again eat or drink with the prince nor visit his court.
Some time after this there was another and more violent outbreak of the saint's ill‑temper. Riding forth one day from the royal palace he met a woman who, as he was told, had effected the cure of one of the young princes by art‑magic. At this he trembled with fury, and leaping from his horse he assaulted the woman with his fists, took from her the rich rewards for the cure which she was carrying away from the palace, and ordered them to be distributed among the poor. The beaten and plundered sorceress, who was perhaps only a skilful female physician, presented herself in Grimwald's hall of audience with face still bleeding from the saintly fists, and clamoured for redress. Piltrudis, who p78 seems to have returned to her old position, seconded her prayer, and Corbinian was banished from the ducal presence. He had already received from his patron a grant of the place upon which he had set his heart, Camina, •about five miles north of Meran in the Tyrol, with its arable land, its vineyards, its meadows, and a large tract of the Rhaetian Alps behind it, and thither he retired to watch for the fulfilment of the prophecies which he had uttered against the new Ahab and Jezebel.
Death of Grimwald, 729. The longed‑for vindication came partly from foreign arms, partly from domestic treachery. It is possible that Grimwald had to meet a combined invasion both from the north and from the south, for, as Paulus Diaconus informs us, Liutprand, king of the Lombards, 'in the beginning of his reign took many places from the Bavarians.' This may be the record of some warlike operations undertaken in the troublous years which followed the death of old duke Theodo (722), and may point to some attempt on the part of the Lombard king, who had married the niece of Grimwald, to vindicate the claims of her brother Hucpert, whom Grimwald seems to have excluded from the inheritance his father's share in the duchy. This however is only conjecture, and as Liutprand came to the throne in 712 it is not perhaps a very probable one.27 But it is certain that in 725 the great Frankish Mayor, Charles Martel, entered the Bavarian duchy, possibly to support the claims of Hucpert, but doubtless also in order to rivet anew the chain of allegiance which bound Bavaria to the Frankish monarchy.28 In 728 he p79 again invaded the country,29 and this invasion was speedily followed by the death of Grimwald (729). He was slain by conspirators30 says the biographer of Corbinian, who adds, with pious satisfaction, that all his sons, 'deprived of the royal dignity, with much tribulation gave up the breath of life';31 but it is probable that all these events were connected with the blow to Grimwald's semi-regal state which had been dealt by Charles the Hammer.
Charles Martel marries the Bavarian princess Swanahild. After one of his invasions of Bavaria, perhaps the first32 of the two, Charles Martel carried back with him into Frankland two Bavarian princesses, Piltrudis, the 'Herodias' of Corbinian's denunciations, and her niece Swanahild, sister of Hucpert. The latter lady became, after the fashion adopted by these lax moralists of the Carolingian line, first the mistress and afterwards the wife of her captor, and she with the son Grifo whom she bare to Charles caused in after years no small trouble to the Frankish state.
Hucpert, duke of Bavaria, 729‑737. The result of this overthrow of Grimwald was the establishment on the Bavarian throne of his nephew Hucpert, son of Theudebert, brother-in‑law of Liutprand the Lombard and Charles the Frank, who ruled for eight uneventful years, at peace apparently with his p80 nominal overlord the Merovingian king and his mighty deputy. On his death in 737 the vacant dignity was given to his cousin Otilo,33 who ruled for eleven years (737‑748), and to whom Charles Martel gave his daughter Hiltrudis in marriage.
Boniface's missionary labours in Bavaria. The reign of Otilo was chiefly memorable for the reorganisation of the Bavarian Church by the labours of an Anglo-Saxon missionary, the great archbishop Boniface. The offshoot of Roman Christianity planted in Britain by direction of Gregory the Great had now at last, after much battling with the opposition both of heathenism and of Celtic Christianity, taken deep root and was overspreading the land. It is not too much to say that in the eighth century the most learned and the most exemplary ecclesiastics in the whole of Western Christendom were to be found among those Anglian and Saxon islanders whose not remote ancestors had been the fiercest of Pagan idolaters. But precisely because they were such recent converts and because the question between the Celtic Christianity of Iona and the Roman Christianity of Canterbury had long hung doubtful in the scale, were these learned, well-trained ecclesiastics among the most enthusiastic champions of the supremacy of the Roman see. To us who know what changes the years have brought, it seems a strange inversion of their parts to find the Celtic populations of Ireland and the Hebrides long resisting, and at last only with sullenness accepting, the Papal mandates, while a sturdy Englishman such as Boniface almost anticipates Loyola in his devotion to p81 the Pope, or Xavier in his eagerness to convert new nations to the Papal obedience.
Born at Crediton in Devonshire about 775, and the son of noble parents, the young Wynfrith (for that was his baptismal name), after spending some years in a Hampshire monastery and receiving priest's orders, determined to set forth as a missionary to the lands beyond the Rhine, in order to complete the work which had been begun by his fellow-countryman Willibrord. With his work in Frisia and Thuringia we have here no concern. We hasten on to a visit, apparently a second visit, which he paid to Rome about the year 722 when he had already reached middle life. It was on this occasion probably that he assumed the name of Bonifatius;34 and at the same time he took an oath of unqualified obedience to the see of Rome, the same which was taken by the little suburbicarian bishops of the Campagna, save that they bound themselves to loyal obedience to 'the most Pious Prince and the Republic,'35 an obligation which Boniface in his contemplated wanderings over central Europe, free from all connection with Imperial Constantinople or with the civic community of Rome, refused to take upon himself. His eager obedience was rewarded by a circular letter from the Pope calling on all Christian men to aid the missionary efforts of 'our most reverend brother Boniface,' now consecrated p82 bishop in partibus infidelium, and setting forth to convert those nations in Germany and on the eastern bank of the Rhine who were still worshipping idols and living in the shadow of death. At the same time a letter of commendation addressed to the Pope's 'glorious son duke Charles' obtained from Charles Martel a letter under his hand and seal addressed to 'all bishops, dukes, counts, vicars, lesser officers, agents and friends,'36 warning them that bishop Boniface was now under the mundeburdium37 of the great Mayor, and that if any had cause of complaint against him it must be argued before Charles in person.
As has been already observed, the protection thus granted by the mighty Austrasian to the Anglo-Saxon missionary powerfully aided his efforts for the Christianisation of Germany. The terror of the Frankish arms, as well as a certain vague desire to watch the issue of the conflict between Christ and Odin, may have kept the Hessian idolaters tranquil while the elderly Boniface struck his strong and smashing blows at the holy oak of Geismar. At any rate, true-hearted and courageous preachers of the faith as were Boniface and the multitude of his fellow-countrymen and fellow-countrywomen who crossed the seas to aid his great campaign, it is clear that the fortunes of that spiritual campaign did in some measure ebb and flow with the varying fortunes of the Frankish arms east of the Rhine.
Some time after the death of Gregory II Boniface again p83 visited Rome (about 737) and received, apparently at this time, from Gregory III the dignity of Archbishop and a commission to set in order the affairs of the Church in Bavaria. In fulfilling this commission he must have had the entire support of the then reigning duke Otilo; but it is not so certain that he was still acting in entire harmony with the Frankish Mayor. We have seen that after his death the memory of Charles Martel was subjected to a process the very opposite of canonisation, and there are some indications that at this time the obedient Otilo of Bavaria was looked upon at Rome with more favour than the too independent Mayor of the Palace who refused to help the Pope against his brother-in‑law the king of the Lombards.38 However this may be, it is clear that Boniface accomplished in Bavaria something not far short of a spiritual revolution. He had been instructed by the Pope to root out the erroneous teaching of false and heretical priests and of intruding Britons.39 The latter clause must be intended for the yet unreconciled missionaries of the Celtic Church. Is it possible that the Frankish emissaries were also looked upon with somewhat of suspicion, that the work of the Emmerans and Corbinians was only half approved at Rome, even as the life of Boniface certainly shines out in favourable contrast with the ill‑regulated lives of those strange preachers of the Gospel?
Papal letter to Boniface. 'Therefore,' says the Pope to the Archbishop, 'since you have informed us that you have gone to the p84 Bavarian nation and found them living outside the order of the Church, since they had no bishops in the church save one named Vivilo [bishop of Passau], whom we ordained long ago, and since with the assent of Otilo, duke of the same Bavaria, and of the nobles of the province you have ordained three more bishops and have divided that province into four parrochiae, of which each bishop is to keep one, you have done well and wisely, my brother, since you have fulfilled the apostolic precept in our stead. Therefore cease not, most reverend brother, to teach them the holy Catholic and Apostolic tradition of the Roman see, that those rough men may be enlightened and may hold the way of salvation whereby they may arrive at eternal rewards.'
Here then at the end of the fourth decade of the eighth century we leave the great Anglo-Saxon archbishop uprooting the last remnants of heathenism which his predecessors had allowed to grow up alongside of the rites of Christianity; forbidding the eating of horse-flesh, the sacrifices for the dead, and the more ghastly sacrifices of the living for which even so‑called Christian men had dared to sell their slaves; everywhere working for civilisation and Christianity, but doubtless at the same time working to bring all things into more absolute dependence on the see of Rome. In him we see the founder, perhaps the unconscious founder, of that militant and lavishly endowed Churchmanship which found its expression later on in the great Elector-Bishoprics of the Rhine. We shall meet again in future chapters both with Boniface and with the Dukes of Bavaria.
1 And therefore if one went far enough back into medieval history there was good precedent for that annexation of Tyrol to Bavaria by Napoleon which led to the insurrection under Andreas Hofer.
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2 See Quitzmann, pp137‑143.
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3 We get the name of the reigning house from the Lex Baiuvariorum, II.20 (ed. Lindenborg): 'Dux vero qui praeest in populo, ille semper de genere Agilolfingorum fuit et debet esse, quia sic reges antecessores nostri concesserunt eis, ut qui de genere illorum fidelis Regi erat et prudens, ipsum constituerit ducem ad regendum populum illum.'
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4 For this conclusion (which must be taken as modifying the remarks in vol. V p285, n.), Quitzmann brings forward the following arguments (pp146‑158): —
1. The name Agilulf is often found in documents relating to Rhineland but does not seem to be indigenous among the Bavarians.
2. We meet in 'Fredegarius,' IV.52, with a Frankish (Austrasian) nobleman named Chrodoald, 'de gente nobili Ayglolfinga.'
3. The weregild paid for the murder of an Agilolfing is not 640 solidi, as it should have been according to the Bavarian Code, but 600, which (as the threefold composition of a private person) is the right sum according to the Salian Code for an antrustion of the king.
4. And this rank exactly suits the first mention of Garibald, the first of the Agilolfings of whom we hear anything. We are told (by Paulus, H. L. I.21) that Walderada, the divorced wife of Cusupald (Theudebald, king of Austrasia), was given 'uni ex suis qui dicebatur Garibald.' This unus ex suis just describes the position of a companion or kinsman of the Frankish king.
5. It is suggested that the Agilolfings might be descended from Agiulf, twenty-sixth bishop of Metz, of whom we hear from Paulus (Liber de ordine Episcoporum Mettensium) that he was 'ex Chlodovici regis Francorum filiâ procreatus.' But this seems to me most improbable and I attach no importance to this argument.
6. The statement of 'Fredegarius' (IV.34) that queen Theudelinda was 'ex genere Francorum' now assumes additional importance.
7. Similarly the undoubted fact that Gundiperga, daughter of Theudelinda, was twice delivered from imprisonment (see vol. VI pp162, 166) by the intercession of a Frankish king, and in the first instance on the ground of her being 'parens Francorum' (Fredegarius, IV.71), is now seen to fit in with the circumstances of the case. On the whole therefore I am disposed to accept the theory which I before rejected, that Garibald, head of the Agilolfing dynasty, though duke of Bavaria, was himself by descent a Salian Frank and probably a kinsman of the Merovingians.
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5 See vol. V p285.
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6 See vol. V pp236‑238, 281‑287.
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7 'Cum propter Francorum adventum perturbatis Garibaldo regi (sic) advenisset (Paulus, H. L. III.30). Quitzmann's scepticism as to this 'perturbatio' of Garibald (p165) does not seem to me to be legitimate.
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8 Quitzmann assigns to Garibald II the years from 611 to 660, but admits that the latter date is conjectural.
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9 Probably a relation, possibly a son of Garibald II. The accession of Theodo may have taken place about 660. He died in 722.
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10 Or Hertha (see vol. V p83).
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12 'In the second year of Childebert, king of the Franks'; that is, evidently, Childebert III who came to the throne in 691. There have been extraordinary diversities of statement as to the date of Rupert's mission, some of the later chroniclers assigning it to 580, some even to 517; and the Childebert with whose reign he was contemporary has been taken accordingly for Childebert II or Childebert I. All this has worked necessarily great confusion in early Bavarian chronology; but the Rupertus-frage, as it is called, may now be considered to be closed. It is practically settled that he and the duke Theodo whom he baptized lived at the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries, and were contemporary with Childebert III, who reigned from 695 to 711 (see Quitzmann, 209‑230).
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13 'Hinc Suavos et Bauwarios, Toringos et Saxones crebris irruptionibus frequentibusque proeliis contritos suae ditioni Pippinus subjugavit. . . . Harum etenim gentium obstinationem invictus Pippinus princeps crebris expeditionibus utilissimisque consiliis et frequentibus populationibus, Domino coöperante, compescuit.' Ann. Mettenses, s. a. 687.
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14 See vol. II p174 (158, 2nd edition).
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15 Mönchsberg.
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16 So I understand the words of the biographer of Corbinian: 'Eo tempore Theodo dux . . . Provinciam ipsam sibi et suboli ipsius in quatuor partes divisit.'
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17 There was thus a Bavarian prince of this name besides the Frank and the Lombard.
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18 See vol. VI p440.
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19 This interesting fact, the visit of duke Theodo to Rome, is mentioned by Paulus (H. L. VI.44), but is apparently borrowed by him from the Liber Pontificalis (Vita Gregorii II): 'Theodo quippe dux gentis Baioariorum cum aliis gentis suae ad apostoli beati Petri limina orationis voto primus de gente eadem occurrit.' The last words are important as confirming the conclusion of recent scholars that the arrival of Rupert in Bavaria and the conversion of the mass of the people did not take place till the end of the seventh century.
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20 His father's name was Waldehisus (Teutonic); his mother's Corbiniana (Gallo-Roman?).
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21 The date assigned by the Bollandists for this visit (717) appears to me more probable than Quitzmann's date (722).
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22 Aribo calls Husingus comes, but we are probably safe in rendering this 'duke.'
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23 Aribo makes the Pope who received Corbinian on his first visit Gregory II, but this, as the Bollandist commentator points out, is probably a mistake for Constantine.
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24 Probably this was the octogild, or eightfold composition, over and above the return of the article stolen, which was prescribed by the Lombard law (see vol. VI p211). If so, the estimated value of the horse was 25 solidi.
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25 Mais near Meran.
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26 'Contra vitia ad irascendum facilis, velox ad ignoscendum conversis.'
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27 Since 725 could hardly be called 'the beginning of his reign.'
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28 Annales Laubacenses, s. a. 725: 'Carlus primum fuit in Bawerias.' Annales Petaviani: 'Karolus primum fuit in Bawarios.'
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29 Annales Sancti Amandi, s. a. 728: 'Iterum Karlus fuit in Baioaria.' Annales Tiliani: 'Karolus secunda vice pugnavit in Baioaria.'
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30 'Ab insidiatoribus interfectus est.'
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31 'Cum multa tribulatione regno privati vitalem amiserunt flatum.'
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32 The date of the birth of Grifo, who was old enough in 741 to play a part in politics, seems to necessitate this supposition, though one might have rather expected Piltrudis's captivity to take place after the second invasion and the utter collapse of Grimwald's power.
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33 The place of Otilo in the Agilolfing genealogy is doubtful. Quitzmann conjectures that he may have been the son of Tassilo II and grandson of Theodo I.
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34 Bonifatius, not Bonifacius, says Dahn (Urgeschichte, III.763); 'good speaker,' not 'good doer' (or ? fair-faced one).
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35 'Promittens pariter, quia, si quid contra rempublicam vel piissimum Principem nostrum quodlibet agi cognovero, minime consentire' are the omitted words. The full form is found in the Liber Diurnus, LXXV (p79 ed. Sichel). This important omission is pointed out by Breysig, Die Zeit Karl Martells (p42, n. 6).
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36 This letter is addressed to the above dignitaries and also to 'omnibus agentibus junioribus nostris seu missis decurrentibus,' an interesting anticipation of the missi dominici of Charles the Great (Ep. 42).
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37 Personal protection: compare the Lombard mundium of a female, a client, or a slave (see vol. VI, pp180, 197‑205, 207).
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38 Vol. VI p476.
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39 'Et gentilitatis ritum et doctrinam vel venientium Brittonum vel falsorum sacerdotum hereticorum sive adulteros aut undecunque sint rennuentes ac prohibentes abjiciatis.' Ep. 44 apud M. G. H. p292.
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