Pepin the Hunchback

Charlemagne's first known child was Pepin the Hunchback by his concubine Himiltrude. Born about 768, he was raised at his father's court. Charlemagne had strong feelings about his children, insisting that they all be raised well, educated, and given advantageous positions and marriages.

The chronicler Paul the Deacon refers to Pepin being born ante legale connubium ("before legal marriage"), but does he mean Charlemagne and Himiltrude were eventually married? Or that perhaps they had a Germanic form of marriage bond (called Friedelehe, "lover marriage") that was less formal than what we now think of as marriage? Pope Stephen III in a letter to Charlemagne refers to him being married at a time when Himiltrude was the only female in his orbit. Himiltrude disappears from records in 770 when Charlemagne marries Desiderata of the Lombards, and then Hildegarde a year later.

Whatever the case, questions of legitimacy were raised about Pepin. About 781, on a visit to Italy, Charlemagne has another son, Carloman, by his wife Hildegarde, baptized by the Pope and rechristened "Pepin of Italy." This seems to signal that he was "replacing" the older Pepin.

Perhaps anger about being replaced built in the older Pepin, and in 792 he and a group of Frankish nobles rebelled against Charlemagne. 792 saw a famine after a poor harvest, and Charlemagne had been making some legal changes to consolidate his authority and prevent abuse in local courts. He also created a new loyalty oath and insisted that it be taken by all nobles. The Royal Frankish Annals (mentioned here) also cite the cruel Queen Fastrada as a reason to make changes at the top.

Pepin and the nobles planned a coup while Charlemagne was away in Bavaria. A Lombard learned of the plot and informed the king. (The informant was named Abbot at St. Denis for his loyalty.) The plotters had their lands confiscated, and some were executed. Pepin's life was spared, but he was tonsured and forced into a monastery. The Lorsch Annals state in 793 that, post-rebellion, Charlemagne lavishly rewarded all those nobles who were still loyal to him.

Pepin's monastery was Prūm, far from court. When Charlemagne decreed that, upon his death, his kingdom would be divided into three for his three "remaining" sons, it was clear that the still-living Pepin was being completely ignored.

The Royal Frankish Annals list his death as 8 July 810.

The musical Pippin is a highly fictionalized account of his life.

Those three "remaining" sons who would each inherit one-third of the kingdom were Charles the Younger, Pepin of Italy, and Louis. I'll tell you about them next time, and whether they managed to be satisfied with only one-third of the father's realm.

Charlemagne's Wives & Concubines, Part 3

Just because Charlemagne was married doesn't mean he didn't also have concubines. Charlemagne's biographer Einhard describes four concubines whom he says the king took after the death of his last wife, but Einhard was determined to praise his subject. Wetti of Reichenau, on the other hand, refers to Charlemagne's "undiminished and extramarital sexual energy." There seems to be evidence of births, however, that suggests he maintained concubines during his marriage to Hildegarde.

Gersuinda, described by Einhard as a Saxon, gave him a daughter, Adaltrude, born in 774, and then largely disappeared from history.

Madelgard produced a daughter in 775, Ruodhaid, who became abbess of Faremoutiers from 840 to 852, a Merovingian Benedictine nunnery that was a common destination for Carolingian royalty.

After Hildegarde's death in 783, Charlemagne married Fastrada in October of that same year. Fastrada's father was Count Rudolph of the East Franks, and the political advantage of this marriage was an alliance with lands east of the Rhine where Saxons were a problem for the Franks. Fastrada was considered cruel by Einhard (who, to be fair, did not come to Charlemagne's court until after Fastrada was out of the picture). When Charlemagne's oldest son, Pepin the Hunchback (by his first concubine, Himiltrude), tried to rebel unsuccessfully against his father, supposedly it was Fastrada who ordered him to be humiliated by being publicly tonsured.

Fastrada bore two daughters, Hiltrude and Theodrada, who became the abbess of the monastery at Argenteuil. Argenteuil had been connected to St. Denis, but a record in 828 states that Argenteuil became independent when Charlemagne gave her the position, but that Theodrada wanted it to go back under St. Denis, so long as Theodrada were allowed to live there for life.

Fastrada died on 10 August 794 in Frankfurt, where she had traveled with her husband for the Synod of Frankfurt. She was buried in St. Alban's Abbey in a tomb of white marble, but her tomb today can be seen in Mainz Cathedral where it had been transferred after the destruction of St. Albans in 1552.

Fastrada appears in the musical Pippin, a fictional version of the life of Pepin the Hunchback, about whom I have lots more to tell you, but that will have to come after one more wife and a couple more concubines. Stay tuned.