Adalrich (Dux)

Adalrich , also Adalricus , (* around 615 ; † 663 ) was a Burgundian nobleman and under the rule of the Merovingian Dux des Pagus Attoriensis in the area around Dijon .

Life

Adalrich was born as the eldest son of the Attoarian Duke Amalgar and his wife Aquilina, the daughter of Waldelenus , the Dux of Transjurania . His younger brother Waldelenus was abbot of the Saint-Pierre monastery in Bèze and his sister Adals are the abbess of the Saint-Martin convent in Brégille, now a district of Besançon .

After the death of his father Amalgar in 643, Adalrich succeeded him as Duke of the Pagus Attoriensis. Although he is only mentioned in the records of the Bèze monastery, the Chronicon Besuense, as Dux for the year 658, it can be assumed that the ducal dignity passed to the son without interruption after the death of Amalgar.

Adalrich tried to limit the extensive donations from his parents to the Abbey of Saint-Martin in Brégille and to return the land to the property of the ducal family. This undertaking met with considerable resistance from the nobility around Besançon, probably also from the Dux of Transjurania, Chramnelenus , his uncle. After his sister, Abbess Adalsind, transferred ownership of the abbey to the Bèze monastery in 657/658, violent clashes broke out between the opposing parties over the monastery properties - eventually Adalsind and her nuns were expelled from the abbey in Brégille and had to give it up. The convent of nuns found acceptance in the monastery of Saint-Pierre in Bèze, which was led by Adalsind's brother Waldelenus and from then on led by him as a double monastery .

The property disputes between the Burgundian noble clans continued in the following years and finally escalated in 663, when King Chlothar III. , probably at the instigation of the Transjuran party, deposed Adalrich as Dux des Pagus Attoriensis and allowed the ducal dignity to pass to the Burgundy Sichelm.

Since Adalrich is no longer mentioned in the Merovingian sources from 663 and disappears from Burgundian history, research generally assumes that Adalrich died that same year.

progeny

A son of the same name, Adalrich, is documented several times, and that of Chlotar III. The Sichelm used as a duke and later became known under the name Eticho , as duke in Alsace , father of St. Odilia and ancestor of the noble family of Etichones , to which later dynasties, for example the Habsburgs , trace their origin.

literature

• Horst Ebeling: Prosopography of the officials of the Merovingian empire from Chlotar II (613) to Karl Martell (741) (= supplements of Francia. Volume 2). Fink, Munich 1974, pp. 32-33.
• Eugen Ewig : The Merovingians and the Franconian Empire. 4th supplemented edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-017044-9 .
• Suzanne Fonay Wemple: Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1981, ISBN 978-0-8122-1209-9 .
• Charles de Montalembert: The monks of the West from St. Benedict to St. Bernard. Nabu Press, Charleston 2011, ISBN 978-1-175-39936-6 .