Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T13:46:54.586Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - Omni ecclesiastica dignitate nobilitavit: “Good King Dagobert”

from Part II - Bears and Wolves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2023

Yaniv Fox
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Get access

Summary

Of all the Merovingian kings who came after Clovis, none has received more accolades than Dagobert I, considered to have been the last effective Merovingian, succeeded by increasingly less capable kings until the dynasty’s demise. Dagobert as a literary convention nevertheless had to be constructed, a process that began in the Chronicle of Fredegar. Fredegar’s portrayal is favorable up to a point, beyond which the chronicler singled out the king for reproof. The idealization of Dagobert reached new heights with the ninth-century Gesta Dagoberti I regis Francorum, which accentuated the king’s monastic patronage, particularly regarding Saint-Denis, where the composition was penned. In the early tenth century, Regino of Prüm used the Gesta Dagoberti to narrate the life ofDagobert in his Chronicle. The character Regino extracted from the Gesta Dagoberti was remolded to serve different aims. This chapter follows the story as it was related in Fredegar and the transformations it underwent in the Gesta Dagoberti. It then turns to the adaptation of the hagiographically inflected Dagobert narrative back into historiography in the tenth-century Chronicle of Regino of Prüm.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Merovingians in Historiographical Tradition
From the Sixth to the Sixteenth Centuries
, pp. 170 - 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×