national German independence was represented and championed by the mayors of the palace of the line of Arnulf and Pippin, and to their history we now turn.
The ancestors of Charlemagne first emerge into the light of history at the time of the downfall of Queen Brunechildis. No student of Frankish history can ever forget the tragic figure of that queen or her life-long duel with her ignoble and treacherous sister-in-law Fredegundis. While Brunechildis was still in early womanhood (576) came reverses, the murder of her husband, imprisonment, a second marriage, separation from the young husband whom she had so strangely chosen, followed by his death at the bidding of Fredegundis. Meanwhile she returned to Austrasia and ruled there for a time, first in the name of a son, then of a grandson. Driven from thence (600) by the turbulent aristocracy whose power she had striven to quell, she escaped to Burgundy, and governed it for thirteen years in the name of her grandson Theodoric. We have just seen her “instigating” the appointment of Protadius as mayor of the palace and the punishment of his murderers. All through these later years of her life the once fascinating and beautiful woman seems like a lioness at bay. If Mary, Queen of Scots, had escaped from Fotheringay, even so could we imagine her, grown gray and hard and cruel, confronting John Knox and the Scottish lords. Her grandsons perished early. Theodoric renewed the war with Theudebert, defeated and slew him, but died himself at the Austrasian capital in the year 613. And now were left of the race of Clovis only the four infant sons of Theodoric II. and their distant relation, Chlothair of Neustria, son of the hated Fredegundis. War was inevitable. Which would prevail, the old lioness fighting for her cubs or the whelp of Neustria? At this crisis the adhesion of two Austrasian nobles to the party of Chlothair decided the day in his favor. These two Austrasian nobles were Pippin “of Landen” and Arnulf, afterwards Bishop of Metz.
Pippin of Landen (so called)16 had large possessions in the country between the Meuse and the Moselle, stretching in an easterly direction toward the Rhine, including the forest of the Ardennes, and apparently including also the city of Aquisgranum, which was one day to be the home of Charlemagne. Pippin was born about 585, and was therefore somewhere about thirty years of age when war broke out between Brunechildis and Chlothair. His friend and contemporary, Arnulf, born of a noble and wealthy Frankish family, had received a better education, apparently, than fell to the lot of most of his class, and, on the recommendation of the “sub-king” Gundulf (possibly mayor of the palace), had been taken into the service of Theudebert, who had assigned to him the government of six provinces. He had married a girl of noble family, by whom he had two sons, Chlodulf and Ansigisel. The latter was the ancestor of Charlemagne.
It was, as we are told, by the secret advice of these two men and other nobles of Austrasia that Chlothair invaded the kingdom. However strong might be their disinclination to the rule of a Neustrian King, their determination not to submit again to “the hateful regimen of a woman,” and that woman their old foe Brunechildis, was even stronger. The folly of the old queen, who was at the same time secretly plotting against the life of her Burgundian mayor of the palace, Warnachar, aided their designs. When it came to the decision of battle, the soldiers who should have defended the cause of the young king and his great-grandmother turned their backs without striking a blow. Chlothair had only to pursue and to capture the little princes and their ancestress. One of the princes escaped, and was never heard of more; another was spared as being the godson of Chlothair; two were put to death. The aged Brunechildis was, we are told, tortured for three days by the son of her old rival Fredegundis, led through the camp seated on a camel, then tied by her hair, by one foot and one arm, to a most vicious horse, and dashed to pieces by his furious career. Such were the tender mercies of a Merovingian king.
This first appearance of Pippin and Arnulf on the stage of history is not a noble one, yet of actual disloyalty or ingratitude they were probably not guilty, since to Theudebert, the victim of the resentment of Brunechildis, rather than to the family of Theodoric, his vanquisher and murderer, they owed allegiance and gratitude. The subsequent career of the two nobles, however, is more to their credit. In the year after the overthrow of Brunechildis, the see of Metz having fallen vacant, there was a general outcry among the people that none was so fitted to fill it as Arnulf, the domesticus and consiliarius of the king. There was on his part the usual tearful protestation of unfitness and unwillingness, but the curtain fell on his acceptance of the episcopal dignity. His biographer tells the story of his three-days’ fastings, his hair shirt, his boundless hospitality to poor vagrants, to monks, and to other travellers. We perceive, however, that he had not wholly lost his interest in state affairs, for in the year 624 he, with his friend Pippin, the major domus, procured the disgrace of a certain nobleman named Chrodoald, who was charged with having abused the king’s favor to his own enrichment and the spoliation of the estates of other Austrasians. In the next year, too, when Dagobert I., son of Chlothair, who had been sent to rule over a shorn and diminished Austrasia, met his father near Paris, and had a sharp contention with him over the narrow limits of his kingdom, it was Bishop Arnulf who, at the head of the other bishops and nobles, succeeded in reconciling father and son.
It seems that Arnulf had for years cherished a desire to withdraw from the world, but when he mentioned this project to Dagobert, the young king, who greatly valued his counsels, was so incensed that he swore that he would cut off the heads of his two sons if he dared to leave the court. “My sons’ lives,” said the intrepid prelate, “are in the hands of God. Your own life will not last long if you slay the innocent.” On this the passionate young Merovingian drew his sword, and was about to attack Arnulf, who, not heeding the wrath of the king, said, “What are you doing, most miserable of men? Would you repay evil for good? Here am I ready for death in obedience to His commands who gave me life, and who died for me.” The nobles besought the king not to give the bishop the crown of martyrdom. The queen appeared upon the scene, and in a few moments she and Dagobert were grovelling at Arnulf’s feet, beseeching forgiveness for the king’s offence, and declaring that he should go when and whither he would.
So after an episcopate of fifteen years, in 629 Arnulf retired into the recesses of the Vosges mountains, accompanied by one friend, Romaric, once a courtier like himself, who had gone before him into the hermit life, and who, like him, attained to the honors of saintship. The death of Arnulf is generally placed in 640, but we have, in truth, no exact information as to the date. We only know that Romaric survived him, and that the body of the now canonized prelate was brought with great pomp to the city of Metz by order of his successor in the see, and was there interred in the church of the Holy Apostles, which has ever since borne his name.
The Vita Arnulfi, from which these facts have been taken, appears to have been the work of a contemporary (doubtless a much-admiring contemporary), and we need not therefore here suspect that tendency to flatter Charlemagne by magnifying the greatness of his ancestors which has undoubtedly colored the histories of some of the members of his family. It is certainly an interesting fact that a saint should have been the paternal ancestor, even in the fifth degree, of so great a statesman as Charlemagne. The standard of mediæval saintship in the centuries with which we are dealing was not a high one, but Arnulf’s character seems to have been pure and lofty; his retirement from the world was due to a real longing after holiness, and on the whole we may recognize in him a man not unworthy to be the sainted progenitor of the Emperors of the West, even as Archbishop Philaret stands at the head of the proud pedigree of the Russian Romanoffs.
Compared with the life of St. Arnulf, that of his friend and kinsman Pippin is worldly and commonplace. In 622, when Chlothair II. sent his son Dagobert to reign over Austrasia, Pippin received the dignity of mayor of the palace under the young king. By his counsels and those of Arnulf the Eastern realm was governed for seven years, and we are told that this was a sort of golden age for Austrasia, in which justice was impartially administered and prosperity prevailed. Possibly these results were not obtained without some sacrifice of Pippin’s popularity with his brother nobles. When Dagobert, on his father’s death (in 629), removed to Paris, his character we are told, underwent a change. He fell into vice and dissipation, and lost the respect of his retainers. Pippin apparently tried to mediate between him and them, and shared the usual fate of mediators, earning the hatred of both parties. “The zeal of the Austrasians surged
