II The Merovingian Dynasty—"The Kings" From the work of Henri Lobineau (Henri de Lenoncourt)
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 Austrasia, 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. 13 In other words, the Merovingian bloodline was now allied to the royal bloodline of the Visigoths. Herein lay the seeds of an embryonic empire that 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.
When Dagobert married Giselle, he had already returned to the continent. According to existing documentation the marriage was celebrated at Giselle’s official residence of Rhédae, or Rennes-le-Château. Indeed, the marriage was reputedly celebrated in the church of Saint Madeleine—the structure on the site of which Bérenger Saunière’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-le-Château, watching the vicissitudes of his domains to the north. Finally, in 674, the opportunity 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 Austrasia. Wilfrid of York was instrumental in his reinstatement. According to Gérard de Sède, 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.14
Once restored to the throne, Dagobert was no roi fainéant. 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 Austrasia and reestablishing order. He ruled firmly, breaking the control of various rebellious nobles who had mobilized sufficient military and economic power to challenge the throne. And at Rennes-le-Château he is said to have amassed a substantial treasury. These resources were to be used to finance the reconquest of Aquitaine, 15 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 Frankish prelate to Wilfrid exists, condemning Dagobert for levying taxes, for "scorning the churches of God together with their bishops."16
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 toward 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 centralized 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, 17 on the fringe of the Ardennes. Near the royal palace at Stenay stretched a heavily wooded expanse, long deemed sacred, called the Forest of Woëvres. It was in this forest, on December 23, 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.
Toward 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 the royal 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 rationalize and justify the regicide.18
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 Rémy. 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 canonized—not by the Pope (who did not claim this right exclusively until 1159), but by a metropolitan conclave. The reason for Dagobert’s canonization 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 23, the anniversary of his death.19 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 canonization 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 nearby abbey of Gorze. Some years alter the church was appropriated by a local nobleman. In 1093 Godfroi de Bouillon mobilized an army and subjected Stenay to a 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 martyre 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. 20
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 fainéants. 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 Merovée. 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 signaling 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 d’Heristal, who engineered Dagobert’s death. And Pepin d’Heristal 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 accorded 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 "savior 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, though called king, who has no power at all?" The Pope pronounced in Pepin’s favor. 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. Four years later Childeric died, and Pepin’s claim to the throne was undisputed.21
A year earlier a crucial document had conveniently made its appearance; and subsequently altered the course of Western history. This document was called the "Donation of Constantine." Today there is no question that it was a forgery, concocted—and not very skillfully—within the papal chancery. At the time, however, it was deemed genuine, and its influence was enormous.
The "Donation of Constantine" purported to date from Constantine’s alleged conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. According to the "Donation" Constantine had officially given to the bishop of Rome his imperial symbols and regalia, which thus became the Church’s property. The "Donation" further alleged that Constantine, for the first time, had declared the bishop of Rome to be "Vicar of Christ" and offered him the status of emperor. In his capacity as Vicar of Christ the bishop had supposedly returned the imperial regalia to Constantine, who wore them subsequently with ecclesiastical sanction and permission—more or less in the manner of a loan.
The implications of this document are clear enough. According to the "Donation of Constantine," the bishop of Rome exercised supreme secular as well as supreme spiritual authority over Christendom. He was, in effect, a papal emperor who could dispose as he wished of the imperial crown, who could delegate his power or any aspect thereof as he saw fit. In other words, he possessed, through Christ, the unchallengeable right to create or depose kings. It is from the "Donation of Constantine" that the subsequent power of the Vatican in secular affairs ultimately derives.
Claiming authority from the "Donation of Constantine," the Church deployed its influence on behalf of Pepin III. It devised a ceremony whereby the blood of usurpers, or anyone else for that matter, could be made sacred. This ceremony came to be known as coronation and anointment—as those terms were understood during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance. At Pepin’s coronation bishops for the first time were authorized to attend with rank equal to that of secular nobles. And the coronation itself no longer entailed the recognition of a king, or a pact with a king. It now consisted of nothing less than the creation of a king.
The ritual of anointment was similarly transformed. In the past, when practiced at all, it was a ceremonial accoutrement—an act of recognition and ratification. Now, however, it assumed a new significance. Now it took precedence over blood and could "magically," as it were, sanctify blood. Anointment became something more than a symbolic gesture. It became the literal act whereby divine grace was conferred upon a ruler. And the Pope, by performing this act, became supreme mediator between God and kings. Through the ritual of anointment the Church arrogated to itself the right to make kings. Blood was now subordinate to oil. And all monarchs were rendered ultimately subordinate, and subservient, to the Pope.
In 754 Pepin III was officially anointed at Ponthion, thus inaugurating the Carolingian dynasty. The name derives from Charles Martel, although it is generally associated with the most famous of Carolingian rulers, Charles the Great, Carolus Magnus, or, as he is best known, Charlemagne. And in 800 Charlemagne was proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor-a title that, by virtue of the pact with Clovis three centuries before, should have been reserved exclusively for the Merovingian bloodline. Rome now became the seat of an empire that embraced the whole of western Europe, whose rulers ruled only with the sanction of the Pope.
In 496 the Church had pledged itself in perpetuity to the Merovingian bloodline. In sanctioning the assassination of Dagobert, in devising the ceremonies of coronation and anointment, in endorsing Pepin’s claim to the throne, it had clandestinely betrayed its pact. In crowning Charlemagne it had made its betrayal not only public, but a fait accompli. In the words of one modern authority: And again, "Rome showed the way by providing in unction a king-making rite ... that somehow cleared the consciences of ’all the Franks.’ "23
We cannot therefore be sure that the anointing with chrism of the Carolingians was intended to compensate for the loss of magical properties of the blood symbolised by long hair. If it compensated for anything, it was probably for loss of faith incurred in breaking an oath of fidelity in a particularly shocking way.22
Not all consciences, however. The usurpers themselves seem to have felt, if not a sense of guilt, at least an acute need to establish their legitimacy. To this end Pepin III, immediately before his anointment, had ostentatiously married a Merovingian princess. And Charlemagne did likewise.
Charlemagne, moreover, seems to have been painfully aware of the betrayal involved in his coronation. According to contemporary accounts the coronation was a carefully stage-managed affair engineered by the Pope behind the Frankish monarch’s back; and Charlemagne appears to have been both surprised and profoundly embarrassed. A crown of some sort had already been clandestinely prepared. Charlemagne had been lured to Rome and there persuaded to attend a special Mass. When he took his place in the church, the Pope, without warning, placed a crown upon his head, while the populace acclaimed him as "Charles, Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-loving emperor of the Romans." In the words
of a chronicler writing at the time, "He [Charlemagne] made it clear that he would not have entered the Cathedral that day at all, although it was the greatest of all festivals of the Church, if he had known in advance what the Pope was planning to do."24
But whatever Charlemagne’s responsibility in the affair, the pact with Clovis and the Merovingian bloodline had been shamelessly betrayed. And all our inquiries indicated that this betrayal, even though it occurred more than eleven hundred years ago, continued to rankle for the Prieuré de Sion. Mathieu Paoli, the independent researcher quoted in the preceding chapter, reached a similar conclusion:
For them [the Prieuré de Sion], the only authentic nobility is the nobility of Visigothic/Merovingian origin. The Carolingians, then all others, are but usurpers. In effect, they were but functionaries of the king, charged with administering lands— who, after transmitting by heredity their right to govern these lands, then purely and simply seized power for themselves. In consecrating Charlemagne in the year 800, the Church perjured itself, for it had concluded, at the baptism of Clovis, an alliance with the Merovingians which had made France the eldest daughter of the Church. 25
THE EXCLUSION OF DAGOBERT II FROM HISTORY
With the murder of Dagobert II in 679 the Merovingian dynasty effectively ended. With the death of Childeric III in 754 the Merovingians seemed to vanish from the stage of world history completely. According to the "Prieuré documents," however, the Merovingian bloodline in fact survived. According to the "Prieuré documents" it was perpetuated to the present day from the infant Sigisbert IV—Dagobert’s son by his second wife, Giselle de Razes.
Holy Blood, Holy Grail Page 29
