Dagobert II

Dagobert II "the Young" (ca 650 – December 23, 679) was a Frankish king, the son of Sigebert III, one of the rois-fainéants ("do-nothing kings") and the last Merovingian king of Austrasia.

Related Topics:
December 23 - 679 - Frankish king - Sigebert III - Austrasia

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The Arnulfing mayor of the Austrasian palace, Grimoald, the son of Pippin of Landen and Dagobert's guardian, had had his son Childebert "Adoptivus" adopted by Sigebert, who was at the time still childless. When Sigebert died in 656, Grimoald seized the throne in order to secure it for his own son, and cut Dagobert's hair, thus marking him unfit for kingship, and exiled the boy, tonsured, to the care of Desiderius, Bishop of Poitiers, where there was a cathedral school. The tale that Dagobert was ordered to be killed, that his death was published about, but that he was spirited out of the country and raised in the Irish monastery seems to be an embellishment, perhaps developed to explain the silence of Sigebert's queen Chimnechild, Dagobert's mother. She may have cooperated with Grimoald to set up Childebert the Adopted; later she hoped by marrying her daughter Bilichild to Childeric II to keep the eventual Austrasian heir in her bloodline http://www.j-paine.org/merovingian.html.

Related Topics:
Arnulfing - Palace - Grimoald - Pippin of Landen - Childebert "Adoptivus" - 656 - Tonsure - Poitiers - Childeric II

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The boy was sent on to a monastery in Ireland, sometimes identified as Slane, and to be further polished as a page in an Anglo-Saxon court in England. An old tradition relates that he had married Mechthilde, an Anglo-Saxon princess, during his exile, but the tradition that among his daughters was Saint Hermine, abbess of Oëren, and Saint Adula, abbess of Pfalzel, are fabrications, perhaps designed to link the saintly foundresses of these abbeys with the revered Merovingian line.

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In the meantime the great nobles of Austrasia appealed to Clovis II, king of Neustria, who expelled the usurpers, executing Grimoald (656/7), but added Austrasia to his own realm. The effective ruler however was the Neustrian major domo Ebroin, who was obliged in 660 to give the Austrasian realm a king of its own once more: the choice was the child king Childeric II, brother of Clotaire III, with a mayor of the palace, Wulfoald as regent. The young king was assassinated on a hunting party near Maastricht in 673, and in the chaotic power struggle that ensued, the Austrasian magnates, who wanted a king of Merovingian blood, pressed Wulfoald for the return of Dagobert, effected in 676 partly through the help of Wilfrid, Bishop of York. In spite of the bitter enmity of Ebroin and a party who attempted to press an alternate candidate, and another that briefly backed an imposter, he was restored to a portion of his rightful lands, a territory along the Rhine, which pious tradition relates that he governed with the mildness and piety his childhood experience had taught him, but which history suggests he left largely to the mayor of the Austrasian palace, while he concerned himself more with the founding of cloisters and abbeys, including Surburg and Wissembourg in Alsace, where the Duke was his cousin.

Related Topics:
Clovis II - Neustria - Ebroin - Childeric II - Maastricht - 676 - Wilfrid - Rhine - Surburg - Wissembourg

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The dynamics of Dagobert's career are largely a passive reflection of the competition between two sources of power, patronage and prestige, the palace institutions of Neustria on the one hand, and on the other, of Austrasia, firmly in the control of the Arnulfing dynasty that would become the Carolingians in the following century. In the chaos, the search for a consistent, rational pattern is hard to follow in the shifting loyalties.

Related Topics:
Palace - Carolingian

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During revived conflict between Neustria and Austrasia, Dagobert in his turn was murdered in another hunting incident, December 23, 679, near Stenay-sur-Meuse in the Ardennes, probably on orders from Ebroin, still mayor of the palace in Neustria. Wilfrid must have remained in Austrasia until this time, because, according to his biographer, Wilfrid left Austrasia after the death of Dagobert, in mortal danger from the supporters of Ebroin. At the cloister of Stenay afterwards there grew a cult of Dagobert, venerated as early as 1068 as "Saint Dagobert". The cult spread from there into Lotharingia and Alsace, and Saint Dagobert is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, like his father and many royal Merovingians.

Related Topics:
679 - Stenay-sur-Meuse - Ardennes - Neustria - Lotharingia - Alsace - Merovingian

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After Dagobert's brief reign, leaving his lands without a male heir, the lords of the Rhineland divided the territory among themselves, while Pippin II, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia (679-714) dominated Austrasia, and left the throne empty until after the battle of Tertry (687), when he accepted Theuderic III.

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The fanciful idea that he married a so-called "Giselle de Razes" and fathered a line of "secret Merovingians" at Rennes-le-Chateau appears to be a complete fabrication. There is no primary evidence for such a person or such a marriage.

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The Austrasian kinglists, Liber historiae Francorum (written in 737), chapter 43, and the Vita of Wilfrid are the primary sources.

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