Arnebert

Arnebert , also Arnebertus or Arinbert , (* 6th century ; † 637 ) was a Frankish nobleman and under the rule of the Merovingian Dux des Pagus Neustroburgund in the area south of Paris .

Life

According to the Fredegar chronicle, Arnebert came from a Franconian family who were wealthy and influential in the area south of the Merovingian residence Clichy .

The chronicler mentions Arnebert as Dux von Neustroburgund as early as 626; According to the sources, he was one of the most loyal officials of the Merovingian kings Chlotar II and Dagobert I.

Arnebert was married to a daughter of the Burgundian housekeeper Warnachar II , who died in 627. His son Godinus laid claim to the office of his father by marrying his stepmother Bertha against the church ban. Chlotar II skillfully exploited this scandal to permanently break the power of the Burgundian caretakers and commissioned the Dux of Neustroburgund to kill his brother-in-law. Arnebert opposed his wife's family and pursued the fleeing Godinus - which suggests that Arnebert belonged to the group of Duces around Amalgar and Chramnelenus , who competed with the house of Warnachar for power in Burgundy. Godinus was able to escape to Neustria , but was shortly afterwards slain by Waldebert and Chramnulf, two followers of Chlotar near Chartres .

A few years later, in 630, Arnebert is involved in the elimination of the great Austrian Brodulf . After Chlotar's death, King Dagobert I took over rule in the Frankish Empire and passed over his half-brother Charibert II , who was described as simple-minded ( simplex ), in the usual division of the estate. As Fredegar reports, the king was forced to cede the sub-kingdom in Aquitaine to his half-brother under pressure from the Neustrian nobles around Charibert's uncle Brodulf . In order to prevent the enforcement of particular interests in the Franconian Empire in the future, Dagobert decided to have the influential uncle Chariberts eliminated. In 630 Brodulf, who was on his way to Aquitaine, was murdered jointly by Arnebert, Amalgar and Patricius Willibad at the instigation of the Frankish king during a stay in Saint-Jean-de-Losne in Burgundy .

In 637 Arnebert finally belonged to the Duces at the head of the Frankish army, which was summoned by Dagobert I to put down a revolt of the Basques . While the main part of the Franconian army was able to return without loss, Arnebert got into a Basque ambush with most of the great and noble of his army contingent and was killed in the Vallis Subola in the Pyrenees . Due to the parallelism of the events as well as their geographical proximity, research considers it likely that the historical circumstances of Arnebert's death could have served as a model for the much more recent Rolandslied and the myth of Roncesvalles .

Source editions

• Bruno Krusch (Ed.): Chronicarum quae dicuntur Fredegarii Scholastici libri IV. Cum Continuationibus. In: Bruno Krusch (ed.): Fredegarii et aliorum chronica. Vitae sanctorum (= Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores. 2: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum. Volume 2, ISSN  0343-7574 ). Hahn, Hanover 1888, ( digitized version )

literature

• Horst Ebeling: Prosopography of the officials of the Merovingian Empire from Chlotar II. (613) to Karl Martell (741). In: Supplements of Francia. Volume 2, Munich 1974, pp. 59-60.
• Eugen Ewig : The Merovingians and the Franconian Empire. 4th, supplemented edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-017044-9 , pp. 120, 126.
• Patrick J. Geary: The Merovingians. Europe before Charlemagne. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-49426-9 , p. 160.
• Jacques Descheemaeker: La mort du duc Arembert en Soule massacré par les Basques en 636. Société des sciences, lettres et arts, Bayonne 1974, OCLC 468897801 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Ferdinand Werner: Significant noble families in the empire of Charlemagne: a personal historical contribution to the relationship between royalty and nobility in the early Middle Ages , in Helmut Beumann (ed.): Karl der Große. Personality and history. Düsseldorf 1967, p. 101.
2. ↑ Helmut Brall-Tuchel: The heart of the king - Charlemagne, Roland and the battle of Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees on August 15, 778. In: Gerd Krummeich, Susanne Brandt (ed.): Battle myths . Event - narration - memory. Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-412-08703-3 , pp. 33–34.