Clothar I

The father of the four sons who were mentioned fighting each other's divided Frankish kingdoms yesterday was Clothar I (one of the four sons of Clovis I, the king who first united all the Frankish kingdoms), who also spent his adult life trying to conquer others.

The name Clothar (also Chlothar or Clotaire) means "glory." When Clovis died in 511, Clothar and his three brothers (Childebert, Chlodomer, and Theuderic) inherited parts of the kingdom. The brothers cooperated when it came to attacking surrounding territories, keeping an uneasy alliance so they did not fight each other.

The family was part of the Merovingian dynasty. Gregory of Tours is our source of much of this period of the Frankish kingdoms. He tells us that Clothar had children by more than one woman. He first married his brother Chlodomer's widow, Guntheuc. Chlodomer had been killed in a raid on Burgundy. Chlodomer and Gunther had three sons, who were taken in by Clothar and Childebert supposedly to be raised, but what the two really wanted was to eliminate the boys' chances of inheriting their dead father's kingdom. Two of the boys were killed; the third escaped, shaved his head, and became a monk.

Guntheuc did not have any children with Clothar, who (after her death in 532) married his concubine Ingund, daughter of King Baderic of Thuringia. Four of their six children would become kings or queens.

Ingund asked her husband to find a suitable husband for her sister, Aregund. The most suitable husband Clothat could find was himself, and he entered into a polygamous relationship. Perhaps he hoped that all of Thuringia's lines of succession would fall to him eventually (they didn't). With Aregund he had one son.

An interesting note about Aregund. A sarcophagus has been identified as Aregund's, and the remains examined. The details suggest she had a child at the age of 18 (not unusual; 15 was marriage age for Frankish women). Osteoarchaeology also determined that she had a limp and likely suffered from poliomyelitis. This would have made her seem less suitable for marriage, and may be why Ingund was so worried about Aregund getting a husband.

Ingund died by 546, and Clothar seems to have lost interest in Aregund, but he had another wife, their cousin Radegund. Tomorrow we will learn her story as his queen.