Arnegunde

Golden ring of the Arnegunde with name inscription

Arnegunde (also Aregunde, * around 515/520; † around 565/570) was a wife of the Frankish king Chlothar I.

Life

Arnegunde was the sister of Chlothar's first wife Ingund and mother of Chilperich I. Since Chilperich was born around 534, Arnegunde's marriage is dated to around 533/534. Ingund was still alive then.

Pair of disc brooches from the Arnegund grave

Belt from the Arnegund grave

The Arnegund grave

In 1959 a sarcophagus with the extraordinarily rich, well-preserved burial of an approximately 45-year-old woman was found in the Saint-Denis Basilica (in Saint-Denis near Paris ) . The dead woman was dressed in a linen shirt, a knee-length tunic and a lavishly decorated ankle-length coat made of silk, as well as stockings , shoes and a veil . Over her dress she wore a belt with elaborate buckles , the coat was closed by two disc brooches and a large needleon the chest. A gold ring with the inscription ARNEGUNDIS REGINE on the left thumb enabled the identification of the dead.

Doubts about identification

The identification of the buried with the wife of Chlothar has occasionally been doubted in research. The animal style decorations of style II of individual finds are to be set so late that the objects could not have been made at the time of Chlothar's wife. It is therefore probably a question of a later queen of the same name not mentioned in the written sources. In the meantime, however, due to new dates, these finds are considered to be particularly early examples of the animal style II, which was reflected in the Franconian royal court.

literature

• Eugen Ewig : The naming of the oldest Franconian kings and the Merovingian royal family . In: Francia. Research on Western European History . Volume 18, 1, 1991, ISSN  1867-6448 , pp. 21-69, here pp. 55f.
• Albert France-Lanord, Michel Fleury: The grave of the Arnegundis in Saint-Denis . In: Germania . Volume 40, 1962, ISSN  0016-8874 , pp. 341-359.
• Martin Last :  Arnegunde grave. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 1, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1973, ISBN 3-11-004489-7 , pp. 426-432.
• P. Périn: Pour une révision de la datation de la tombe d'Arégonde, épouse de Clotaire Ier, découverte en 1959 dans la Basilique de Saint-Denis . In: Archeology médiévale . Volume 21, 1991, pp. 22-50.
• Alexandra Pesch: Pitfalls and black ice: Die Germanische Tierornamentik In: Altertumskunde, Altertumswwissenschaft, Kulturwissenschaft. Income and prospects 2012 pp. 633–688