Warnachar II.

Warnachar II. (French Warnachaire II. Or Garnier II .; * Around 580; † 627 in Mâcon ) was a Frankish nobleman and under the rule of the Merovingian house-keepers from Burgundy and Austrasia .

family

Warnachar II. Was born around 580 in Gâtinais , probably in Château-Landon , as the son of Warnachar I , the first Burgundian house merchant.

From the first marriage with his unnamed woman's son came Godinus and a daughter who later the Dux of Neustroburgund, Arne Bert , took the husband. In his second marriage, Warnachar II was married to Bertha, who after his death married her stepson Godinus; King Chlotar II took this canonically invalid marriage as an opportunity to have Godinus eliminated and to eliminate the Burgundian caretakers as power factors in Frankish politics.

Life

In two letters from Pope Gregory I of November 602, Warnachar II is named as Vir illustris . As a close confidante and domesticus of the Burgundian King Theuderich II and the regent Brunichild, he was entrusted with the administration of the royal court. Theuderich appointed him majordomo of Burgundy in 613 and in the same year, after the king's victory over the Austrasian ruler, his older brother Theudebert II in the battles of Toul and Zülpich , he was caretaker of Austrasia.

When Theuderich II died unexpectedly in Metz in 615 at the age of only 25 , Brunichild had her great-grandson, Sigibert II , raised to the rank of King immediately, as she feared, not without reason, that Theuderich and Theuderbert's uncle, Chlothar II , the King of Neustria , could endeavor to give up his policy of neutrality and strive for power in the entire Franconian Empire.

Unbeknownst to the elderly regent, Warnachar II and other Burgundian greats had already contacted Chlothar II shortly after Theuderic's death in order to prevent Brunichild from reigning and the associated strengthening of the central royal authority in Burgundy; at the same time, the Burgundian nobility allied with the Queen's Austrasian opponents. The main reason for Warnachar's pact with the Neustrian king, according to Fredegar's chronicle , was probably an intercepted letter from Brunichild in which the regent ordered the murder of the Burgundian housekeeper.

When Chlothar II invaded Austrasia with an army in 613, the decisive battle took place in the Austrasian-Neustrian border region northwest of Châlons-sur-Marne , which took place in the presence of Brunichild and Sigibert II. On Warnachar's orders, the Burgundian-Austrasian army refused battle and withdrew into the hinterland without a fight. The now defenseless King Sigibert II was slain by the troops of Chlothar II, while his great-grandmother managed to escape. Brunechildis was told by Warnachar and other Burgundian Great in today Romandie found and extradited to Neustria where Clotaire II made her tortured first and then drag a horse to death..

Warnachar II. Remained until full unification of the Frankish kingdom of parts into a unified Franks in 617 major-domo of Austrasia, where he 616 the monk Amarinus supported them, in what is now Saint-Amarin , the Doroangus to found called monastery. But then he immediately withdrew from this office and was confirmed in the same year by Chlothar II for life in the office of the house keeper of Burgundy.

In 618 Warnachar II played a key role in the efforts of the Lombards to get rid of the annual tribute payments to the Franks, alongside the house chests of Neustria and Austrasia, Gundolandus and Chugus . The Maioresdomus mentioned, the highest officials in the Franconian Empire, each accepted a Longobard bribe of 1000 solidi and finally worked successfully on Chlothar II to stop the tribute claims.

Since Chlothar II stayed in Burgundy only once during his reign, the actual reign was incumbent on his caretaker and gave him a special position of power. In view of the fact that Warnachar, against his will, urged the king to convene the Synod of Mâcon in 627 , the aim of which was to review the complaints of most of the Burgundian bishops against the teachings and rules of St. Columban of Luxeuil , this can be assumed that there must have been a rift or power struggle between Chlothar and his majordomo. In the absence of the king, who, according to Fredegar's report, had great sympathy for Saint Columban, the synod decided in accordance with the Regula Columbani - thanks to the intercession of Bishop Donatus of Besançon , who, as the offspring of the powerful Jura dukes from the house of the Waltriche, made the appropriate decision Influence of his family behind him, as well as the skillful argumentation of Eustasius , who as abbot of Luxeuil represented the Colomban cause.

Shortly after the end of the synod, Warnachar II died in Mâcon.

Chlothar II then called a meeting of the Burgundian nobility in Troyes to discuss the succession of the deceased. The great Burgundians, however, refused to elect a successor to the office of housekeeper - this and the removal of Warnachar's II son, Godinus, meant that Burgundy was ruled immediately by the king in the following decades.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Friedrich Immanuel Türk: Research in the field of history: History of the Longobard people, except for Desiderius, in the year 774. The Longobard People's Law . Oebergsche Universitätsbuchhandlung, Rostock 1855. p. 78.
2. ^ Caitlin Corning: The Celtic and Roman Traditions: Conflict and Consensus in the Early Medieval Church. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2006. ISBN 978-1-349-53424-1 . Pp. 53-55.

literature

• Horst Ebeling: Prosopography of the officials of the Merovingian Empire from Chlotar II. (613) to Karl Martell (741). In: Beihefte der Francia, Volume 2, Munich 1974, pp. 235-238.
• Eugen Ewig : The Merovingians and the Franconian Empire. 4th supplemented edition, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-17-017044-9 , pp. 93, 117, 119 f., 125.
• Patrick J. Geary: The Merovingians. Europe before Charlemagne. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-49426-9 , pp. 155, 157-158.
• 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. Vol. 2, ISSN  0343-7574 ). Hahn, Hanover 1888, ( digitized version )