Pepin's Godfather

Liutprand was King of the Lombards from 712 - 744. During his reign he conquered much of the Italian Peninsula, made an agreement with Pope Gregory (pictured) that donated lands that began the Papal States, established several sets of laws, and raised the first Carolingian king.

One of Liutprand's important law reforms was the Notitia de actoribus regis ("Notice concerning royal administrators"). It significantly prevented local administrators from illegally appropriating lands of the lower classes. It required the administrator to swear on the Gospels that any irregularity in ownership would be reported to the king, and that a royal charter 

Liutprand had been allied with Charles Martel, King of the Franks. They had enough respect for each other that, prior to Pope Gregory negotiating a peace with Liutprand, Gregory had sent to Martel for aid. Martel refused to fight his former ally, forcing Gregory to have the meeting at Sutri in which he allowed Liutprand to go through Italy at will, so long as the papacy in Rome was spared.

Martel's son Pepin the Short, when he achieved his majority, was sent to Lombardy to be presented with arms by Liutprand. I have mentioned before that a king might send his bastard children to be raised at some removed but noble household. It was also common to have legitimate royal children exposed to other courts. The ritual investing of a prince with his first arms and welcoming him into manhood made him symbolically Liutprand's adopted son. It also meant closer ties between the two kingdoms. Pepin did eventually turn on Lombardy, but that was after Liutprand's death when one of his successors, Aistulf, declared himself King of the Romans and reneged on Liutprand's promise to leave Rome alone. You can read the result here.

Aistulf's thirst for more power led to conflict with the Franks, and ultimately led to the end of an independent Lombardy when Pepin's son Charlemagne conquered them. Next time we'll see how that went.

Long Hair and Kingship

Gregory of Tours mentions, regarding an event in which the body of King Clovis I was exhumed, "Though I did not know who he was, I recognised from the length of the hair that it was Clovis." Elsewhere he refers to theFranks as reges criniti, the "long-haired kings." The post just prior to this tells of a choice offered to a queen to have princes shorn or killed; she chooses killed rather than the shame of princes who are shorn of their locks and therefore denied the chance to some day rule. Gregory tells another anecdote of King Clovis defeating a rival king who betrayed him, Chararic, cutting short the hair of him and his son and confining them in a monastery. When it was later reported to Clovis that the son had remarked to his father that they should grow their hair long again, Clovis had them killed.

Human cultures have developed many ways to indicate social cues, and hair length and style has certainly been one way to distinguish the upper from the lower echelons, but the Merovingians took it to an entirely new level.

We have every reason to believe that the Franks, like the Romans, kept their hair short, so the Merovingian line of royalty would have stood out from the common folk. It was not necessary that the hair had never been cut, just that it was long. Why this was so, we cannot say for certain. Some suggest it is simply a distinction between the Germanic military culture and the Roman religious culture of the various peoples that the Merovingians conquered, but that is too simplistic to be accurate.

When the Merovingian kings began to become lazy, their "Mayors of the Palace" managed their affairs, effectively running the kingdom. The last Merovingian king was Childeric III, whose Mayor of the Palace was Charles Martel, the "Hammer." According to Charlemagne's biographer Einhard, Charles allowed Childeric "to sit on his throne, content with the name of king only, with his long hair and flowing beard, and give the appearance of sovereignty." Eventually, Martel's son, Pepin the Short, took the throne with the backing of Pope Zachary. He had Childeric tonsured and sent with his also-shorn son Theuderic to separate monasteries.

You may recall in the post on Childebert how his brother Chlodomer was killed in battle against Burgundy. A Byzantine historian, Agathias, writes a contemporary account of the battle, giving us a little more on the attitude toward hairstyles in different cultures:

And when he fell, the Burgundians, seeing his hair flowing and abundant, loose down to his back, at once realised that they had killed the enemy leader. For it is the rule for Frankish kings never to be shorn; instead, their hair is never cut from childhood on, and hangs down in abundance on their shoulders. Their front hair, is parted on the forehead and falls down on either side. Their hair is not uncombed and dry and dirty and braided up in a messy knot like that of the Turks and Avars; instead, they anoint it with unguents of different sorts, and carefully comb it. Now this it is their custom to set apart as a distinguishing mark and special prerogative for the royal house. For their subjects have their hair cut all round, and are not permitted to grow it further.

The few seals of Merovingian kings that we have show the long hair, parted in the middle. Hair styles among the common folk might have been varied, but notably long hair was reserved for, and crucial to, the Merovingian royalty.

Now for another of those names I feel I have neglected: Einhard is significant because of his life of Charlemagne, and I'll tell you more next time.

The Donation of Pepin

The idea of actual Papal States giving the pope serious temporal power really took off in 756 when Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, gave to Pope Stephen II several territories and towns in the Italian peninsula.

To be fair, the territories were not Pepin's to give, not originally anyway. They were under control of Aistulf, king of the Lombards. A few years earlier, in 751, Aistulf conquered the exarchate of Ravenna. The exarchate of Ravenna was the last piece of Italy considered to be part of the Roman Empire, having been established by Byzantine Emperor Justinian as part of his plan to administer the western part of the fading empire.

Aistulf decided that his conquest of Ravenna and killing of the last ruler of it, the exarch Eutychius, meant he was now the nearest thing to a Roman Emperor. He therefore demanded that Rome itself submit to him and send him a tribute of one gold solidus per person.

Pope Stephen II could not negotiate with Aistulf to back down, so he sent a request to Pepin to come to his aid. The Franks and Lombards were on friendly terms, so Stephen thought Pepin would have better luck. Pepin promised the pope he would arrange the return of the Exarchate of Ravenna. The pope in return anointed Pepin and his sons Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman as kings of the Franks (they did not need this to be kings, but it was a nice piece of recognition from a figure who was seen as the head of the Christian faith). He also named them patricians of the Romans, an honorary title suggesting they were Roman elite. The pope also pronounced a blessing on Pepin's wife, Bertrada.

So Pepin took his army to Lombardy, surrounded Aistulf's forces, defeated any military opposition, and made Aistulf promise to return Ravenna. A treaty was signed, Pepin turned around to go home, and once he had left Lombardy, Aistulf ignored the treaty. Aistulf besieged Rome. Word went to Pepin. The Frankish army came and forced Aistulf to abandon the siege.

So more than Ravenna became part of the Papal states, because Pepin turned over Lombardy as well and several other cities. Emissaries of the Roman Empire entreated Pepin to give the land to the political empire, not the spiritual papacy, but Pepin would not. The pope would now be a temporal ruler for centuries to come.

You may have heard that there was an earlier gift of land to the pope, called the Donation of Constantine. We will talk about this hoax tomorrow.

Other French Currency

The franc was coined by King John the Good in 1360 to help stabilize the currency in France and try to generate the millions he needed to pay off Edward III of England for his ransom (he had been captured during the Battle of Poitiers). It was used for almost 300 years, then reintroduced post-Revolution (in 1795) in decimal form, remaining popular up to (and including) the introduction of the euro. In 1960, the unit of currency was re-named "new franc" and declared worth 100x the "old" franc. Eventually "new" was dropped and it was simply "franc" again.

Prior to the franc, there were many currencies used in France, many of them based on the livre tournois (the "Tours pound"). There was no livre tournois coin, because it was the equivalent of one pound of silver; it was used as a unit of measurement for accounting purposes. Pepin the Short, father of Charlemagne, created a long-standing system of currency for the French (and English) when he made the livre (pound) equivalent to 20 sous or sols (shillings), each of which was divided into 12 denier (pennies, seen in the illustration). The only coin minted in this system was the denier; the other two "coins" were simply used for convenience to describe larger numbers of denier.

Around 1000 CE the Capetians introduced the French Mark as a unit equivalent to 16 sols or 192 denier. Kings tried to establish a fixed standard for the livre and the Paris pound or livre Parisi was born, but the livre tournois became the standard for accounting during the reign of Louis IX in 1266.

The Hundred Years War saw the livre depreciating, and King John tried to correct this with the franc. It was called that as the short form of the inscription Johannes Dei Gratia Francorum Rex (Latin: "John by the grace of God king of the French"). The franc was now worth an entire livre tournois.

For most of the history of French currency, silver was used, while gold was more common in Byzantine currency. Did Western Europe have less accessibility to gold than other parts of the world? Let's talk about getting gold next time.

Charlemagne and the Popes

The Vatican is considered the "Smallest Country in the World." Its 0.17 square-mile size (110 acres) makes it the smallest recognized independent state in the world. There was a time, however, when the popes in Rome held much more territory in the same way any temporal lord would. Much of that territory started with a grant of land from Charlemagne's father, Pepin.

The Donation of Pepin, from the French National Archives

The Donation of Pepin gave lands adjacent to Rome to Pope Stephen II in two parts (one in 754, one in 756). In 774, Pope Adrian I named Pepin Patricius Romanus, urging on him the protection of Rome. Pepin took this role seriously, as did his son, Charlemagne.

When in 772 the papal lands were invaded by King Desiderius of the Lombards, Pope Adrian I called Charlemagne for help. Charlemagne attacked Desiderius, captured him, and banished him to the Abbey of Corbie. After this, Adrian got even more land, including Ravenna and five cities on the Adriatic Coast.

Adrian also made the historic decision to change the dating of his decrees. Although calendar years were established by now across Europe, it was customary to date documents according to the reign of kings or emperors. There being no emperor in Rome anymore, documents would be dated by the eastern emperor in Constantinople. A papal document in 772 would be dated "Constantine V 31" (Constantine's rule began in 741, although he had co-ruled with his father since 720). Pope Adrian showed great respect for Charlemagne by dating his documents from then on according to Charlemagne's regnal years.

Charlemagne was appealed to again by Pope Leo III, when the pope was accused of adultery and perjury. Charlemagne agreed to arbitrate. He went to Rome, and on 1 December 800, he met with both sides. There was no easy conclusion, and Leo was finally cleared by taking an Oath of Purgation on 23 December, essentially swearing that he was innocent. Charlemagne accepted this and prevented the pope's enemies from causing further trouble.

Everyone knows the story of Charlemagne being crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 by Pope Leo, but few realize how much led up to it. Charlemagne "earned" this recognition, in the pope's eyes, because of all that he and his family had done for the papacy.

Salt & Pepper: Two Ewalds

Statues of the two Ewalds, in the church at Cologne.

Although the Saxons were not converted to Christianity until Charlemagne did it by force in the 8th century, there were other attempts by missionaries to do so. One attempt was made by a pair of friends, both named Ewald.

Ewald the Fair and Ewald the Black were both born in Northumbria and educated in Ireland. Their nicknames were the result of their appearance and not an evaluation of their personalities. Struck with zeal for converting Germans, they traveled to Saxony c.690 where they made the acquaintance of the steward of one of the tribal chieftains in Aplerbeck. The steward said that he would (eventually) introduce them to the chieftain.

During the intervening days, the Ewalds conducted themselves as expected of pious missionaries: they prayed regularly, said Mass for themselves, and recited the canonical hours (prayers meant for different parts of the day). Other Saxons, observing these rituals, feared that the Ewalds were going to try to convert their chieftain to Christianity and eliminate all of their cherished local religious customs and temples. They decided to eliminate the Ewalds instead.

On 3 October 695 (or 692) Ewald the Fair was killed with a sword. Ewald the Black, the cleverer of the two, was seen as the leader and deserving of something more. They tortured him, ripping his limbs apart. The bodies were thrown into the Rhine. According to Bede, when the chieftain heard of what happened, he had the murderers killed.

But the last was not heard of the bodies of the Ewalds: they floated upstream for 40 miles, a heavenly light shining above them, until they reached a place where the Ewalds' companions were camped. The two were buried nearby, but disinterred by Pepin the Short and moved to the church of St. Cunibert in Cologne.

Carolingian Bystanders

To round out the Merovingian/Carolingian week we've been having, let's take a look at some of the other women and children whose lives were intertwined with political events. Bertrada of Laon is interesting because she was so involved in the events of her time.* Many folk, however, were more ... "incidental" to their era. History focuses on the principals, and yet everyone had family around them. What about those other people?

Charlemagne, his children, their tutors

For instance: yesterday I mentioned that Carloman's wife wanted his son to inherit the throne after Carloman's death. What happened to her and her son? Her name was Gerberga, and little about her is known except that she must have been Frankish. When her brother-in-law Charlemagne married Desiderata, a Lombard (from the folk who were traditionally enemies of the papacy), Pope Stephen III wrote a letter to both brothers, referring to their father's "explicit order" that they be "united in marriage to beautiful Frankish women." There was no criticism about Gerberga as there was about Desiderata, so we can assume Gerberga was a Frank. Gerberga fled to Lombardy when her eldest son, Pippin, was rejected as king; this action seems to have motivated Charlemagne to enter Italy and attack the Lombards, finally defeating them completely and enabling him to give his eldest son, Carloman, the Iron Crown of Lombardy (and renaming him "Pippin" at the same time).

But wasn't Charlemagne allied with the Lombards' King Desiderius through his marriage to Desiderius' daughter? Not anymore. I glossed over some facts in this post. Just as Pepin the Short put aside Leutberga to marry Bertrada, Charlemagne dumped Desiderata. His second wife was Hildegard of Vinzgouw, who bore several children; Carloman/Pippin was her child, as was Louis the Pious who inherited after Charlemagne. But what about Himiltrude? Probably not a wife, but a paramour whose son by Charlemagne, Pippin the Hunchback, was exiled to a monastery by his father years later after leading a rebellion. And then there was Fastrada, Charlemagne's third wife, whose daughter Theodrada (b.784) became an abbess. Charlemagne took a fourth wife, Luitgard, who died 4 June 800, months before he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. They had no children.

Ultimately, Charlemagne had 17 recorded children with between eight and ten wives and mistresses. He did his best by them, according to his biographers. Sons and daughters were all educated. When he was home, he took meals with his children. When he traveled, his sons rode with him.

And I want to give some attention to Gisela. Pepin the Short and Bertrada had eight children that we know of, only three of which lived to adulthood. Charles and Carloman you know. Gisela (757-810) was dedicated to religion from childhood (according to Charlemagne's most famous biographer, Einhard), and became a nun at Chelles Abbey. Abbeys and monasteries were often the place where people could be put "out of the way"—under house arrest, as it were, such as with Pippin the Hunchback mentioned above—but that was not the case with Gisela. For one thing, as a woman she posed no threat to her brothers' ambitions. Also, Chelles Abbey appears to have benefited from her presence. Charlemagne's interest in education and the arts is well-known, and Chelles became a tool of the Carolingian Renascence. Chelles became a prolific scriptorium in the 8th and 9th centuries, copying and preserving manuscripts from all over. Gisela would have had welcome company later, when Charlemagne's daughter Rotrude joined her aunt there. Gisela probably joined the abbey too late to meet her step-grandmother: Charles Martel had also had more than one wife, and his second, Swanachild, was put in Chelles after Charles' death, when she failed in her attempt to help her son Grifo claim some inheritance from his half-brothers, Pepin the Short and Carloman.

I am always curious about the bystanders, the people involved in fascinating times but whose personal stories we can never know. I'm glad for the chance to give some exposure, however brief and incomplete, to the unknown facets of stories we have all heard before and think we know.

*And, of course, few other women in the Middle Ages were played on Broadway by Irene Ryan. Nota bene: the musical "Pippin" is based on the life of Pippin the Hunchback, not Carloman/Pippin who became King of Lombardy.

Mothers and Sons

Bertrada of Laon, first introduced here, was the wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charles (later Charlemagne) and Carloman.* She was not a passive wife and queen. Her relationship with Pepin started while he was still married. She accompanied him on military campaigns. After his death, she stayed involved in the kingdom through her sons.

Her sons did not always see eye-to-eye. Each had half their father's kingdom, but they were supposed to share the part of Aquitaine that Pepin had conquered. When Pepin's death motivated the Aquitainians to rebel, Charlemagne led an army to subdue it. Carloman likewise marched in with an army; the two joined up at Moncontour, where the brothers quarreled and Carloman took his army and went home. Some historians think Carloman was hoping to see Charlemagne's power appear unequal to the task of ruling. Charlemagne succeeded in putting down the rebellion, however, and Carloman simply looked petty and unpatriotic.

Although Bertrada was living at Aachen with Charlemagne—and would for most of her widowhood—she is credited with trying to reconcile the two after their falling out. In light of later events, however, I wonder at her motivations. Her efforts in supporting Charlemagne often seemed to be to the detriment of her younger son.

For instance, she persuaded Charlemagne to marry Desiderata, daughter of King Desiderius of Lombardy. The Franks had fought the Lombards on the pope's behalf in the past, so this was an unusual move. The result, however, was an alliance between Charlemagne and an enemy who would no longer give him trouble. Apparently Carloman tried to warn the pope of the dangers of this alliance, but Bertrada had convinced Desiderius to give up some territories that were of interest to the papacy. The pope was persuaded to bless the union of his friend with his enemy.

Family Tree; "Carolus magnus" is in the lower left

In 770 Bertrada visited Carloman at his headquarters in Seltz (a little northwest of Baden-Baden). It was a unique visit for her, and we don't know what her purpose was: maybe to soothe his hurt feelings, maybe to explain to him her vision for the kingdom, which seemed to be centered on Charlemagne. She also traveled to Bavaria in 770, to speak to Duke Tassilo. Tassilo was a nephew of Pepin the Short, and Bertrada was probably relying on the alliance between the Bavarians and Lombards to ensure the support of the Lombards for Charlemagne.

Not only did this marriage create an alliance between Charlemagne and the enemies of the pope, but also meant Carloman's territory had Charlemagne on his western side and a traditional enemy in the Lombards on the eastern. Carloman was isolated now, but his discomfort would not last long. Carloman died suddenly in 771; very suddenly, but no chroniclers at the time hint at foul play (of course, the chroniclers at the time were fans of Charlemagne). His widow expected their son Pepin to inherit, but her husband's advisers all turned against this plan and asked Charlemagne to reunite the kingdoms. It was only after Carloman's death and Charlemagne's assumption of power over the whole kingdom that Bertrada left her son's side and retired to the Abbey of Choisy sur Aisne. She died in 783; Charlemagne buried her with honors in St.-Denis.

One final note. Bertrada had a nickname: Regina pede aucae (queen with a goose foot). In English, she was called Bertha Broadfoot. No doubt she had large feet, and perhaps walked a little oddly. Some (pseudo-)historians have decided to make a connection between her and the character of "Mother Goose." The earliest reference we have to such a figure is from 1650 and a reference in French to something "like a mother goose story." As I explained in the case of the rhyme "Ring around the rosy" however, such tenuous connections ought never to be made.

Okay, one more final note on the relationship between Charles and Carloman: Charles named his eldest son "Carloman" as, we would assume, a tribute to his brother. This boy was named King of Italy and took the Iron Crown of Lombardy in 781, but there is no King Carloman of Italy in the records. Why? Because in that same ceremony, Charlemagne re-named his son "Pippin," wiping out the tribute to his now-long-dead brother. Ouch.

*There was a third child who lived to adulthood, Gisela (757-810), who became a nun and then abbess at Chelles Abbey.

Sons and Mothers

Bertrada of Laon

Properly speaking, the Carolingian Era started with Carolus Martellus, Charles "the Hammer" Martel (c.688-741). After his death, his two sons maintained order in the Frankish kingdoms of Neustria and Austrasia, until Carloman stepped down in 747, leaving Pepin the Short to unite the two and be named Rex Francorum (King of the Franks) by the pope. Sadly, for the kingdom, it was divided again upon Pepin's death, between his two sons, Charles and Carloman.

There appears to have been bad blood between the brothers, but little agreement as to the cause. Consider, however, that the two were very young when their father—and both boys, to ensure the dynasty's legitimacy—was anointed by Pope Stephen II. They had both grown up believing it was their destiny to rule. Also, they had never known a divided kingdom. Their father had united the two parts, and then extended the borders into Aquitaine. In 768, after the kingdom of the Franks had been unified for 20 years, to have it made smaller again by dividing it might have tried the patience of the most peaceable of brothers. Perhaps a mother's influence might have softened the sibling rivalry, except that this mother had a favorite.

Bertrada of Laon married Pepin in 740—and here is another potential reason for the brothers' hostility. "Married" might not be considered a flexible term in this case. (Remember that it would take the church another 500 years to codify marriage a little more strictly.) Pepin was apparently married earlier to a Leutberga, of whom little is known—still married, technically. He put his first wife aside in order to choose Bertrada. Charles was born in 742 from this second union. Pepin and Bertrada's marriage was not confirmed by the church until years later. After the marriage was considered legitimate, Carloman was born. Carloman may have considered himself the legitimate heir, even though Charles was the elder.

Bertrada was an educated woman and spoke Latin. When Pepin went to Narbonne to fight Saracens, she accompanied him. This desire to be involved in politics meant she wasn't going to sit idly by while her sons ruled their respective parts of the kingdom. We'll see a little more of that tomorrow.

After the Hammer Fell

Nicknames: so easy to get, so hard to get rid of. When Mayor of the Palace and military genius  Charles Martel presented his 12-year-old son to the nobles of the Frankish court, he (jokingly) referred to him as "Pepin the Short." (Really, dad? You get to be called "the Hammer" and I have to be known as "the Short" in all the chronicles? How fair is that?)

Pepin (714-768) was not the only son of Charles Martel to take a leadership role; he's just the one we remember because of his son, Charlemagne. But the Carolingian Age started with Martel, and Pepin was an important part of it before Charlemagne stepped onto the scene. Pepin had two brothers. After the death of their father, Carloman (the eldest) was Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia (including Tournai, Aachen, Cologne and Metz) while Pepin was Mayor of the Palace for Neustria (the territory from Nantes and Tours on the south along the Loire to Soissons in the north). They picked Childeric III to be a puppet king starting in 743, not being willing to take over in their own right.* A third brother, Grifo (son of Charles' second wife), wanted to have some authority, but Pepin and Carloman locked him away in a monastery.

In 747, Carloman decided to retire to a monastery, leaving the running of Austrasia to Pepin. Pepin decided it was time to make a radical change, so he wrote to Pope Zachary with a question: who should be king, the one with the family title or the one who actually exercised the power? By this time, the pope had come to rely on Frankish military support, so he was certainly willing to take the necessary steps. He dethroned Childeric and tonsured him. (The cutting of his hair was a powerful symbol: the Merovingian line believed in not ever cutting their hair as a sign of the royal authority.) Childeric and his son, Theuderic, went to a monastery.

So Pepin the Short (infrequently called Pepin III because his grandfather and great-great-grandfather were both Pepins) became the new King of the Franks, being anointed by the archbishop of Mainz in 752, and then in 754 at St.-Denis in Paris by Pope Stephen II. In order to ensure a succession, the pope anointed Pepin's sons at the same time, establishing that the two boys, Charles and Carloman.

Pepin's first act was to attack the Lombards in Italy, returning control of Ravenna and more to the pope, establishing the Papal States and the pope's temporal authority. He also worked hard to assume control over as much the the Aquitaine as possible. He continued to expand the army and cavalry as his father had done. He fought more battles with Muslims encroaching from Spain and drove them out of Gaul. He was, in fact, never defeated in battle.

Which is not to say that he never died in battle. He died at the age of 54 in a military campaign. He was interred in the church of St.-Denis. Just as the kingdom was divided among Clovis' four sons, so was it divided again between Pepin's sons Charles and Carloman. The Carolingians had the potential to be just as divisive as the Merovingians who came before. Sibling rivalry can be even more bitter, however, when mother plays favorites.

*Childeric was truly plucked from obscurity; modern historians are not sure of his parentage.

Charles the Hammer

Kings cannot run every administrative detail of their household themselves, so they appoint people to do it for them. Chamberlain, seneschal, castellan, steward, concierge, major domo—these are all terms to describe the person fulfilling that role. The Frankish kings of the 7th and 8th centuries referred to their major domo (Latin for "superior of the house") as the "Mayor of the Palace."

In the case of the Franks, the Mayor of the Palace was a hereditary position, descended from an invaluable Merovingian advisor, Arnulf of Metz. His son married the daughter of Pepin of Landen, and from them came a line of Mayors of the Palace who would ultimately change the Frankish world.

In yesterday's post on le rois fainéants, I mentioned that, after Theuderic's death in 737, the throne remained vacant for seven years. Clearly, the country did not disintegrate, and so someone must have maintained its proper functioning. That someone was the Mayor of the Palace, Charles, called "Martel," "the Hammer." He was called "the Hammer" because of his brilliant military victories, especially at the Battle of Tours in 732. Details of the battle—its location, the numbers on both sides—cannot be determined with the scant records available to us, but what is known is that he halted the progress of Islam into Western Europe and in the process cemented Frankish authority over the southern part of Gaul/France.

He is also credited as a champion of Christianity. In 739, two years after Theuderic's death, Pope Gregory III offered Charles the office of Consul in Rome: one of the two highest elected offices. Charles declined. Of course, at that time he was the de facto ruler of most of what we now call France; why give that up? He had been calling himself princeps et dux Francorum (prince and duke of the Franks), and was apparently not interested in the title of "king." But let us be clear: this apparent modesty does not mean he was a "nice" man. Charles kept Theuderic in custody during the last years of his life, first at an abbey, and later at a castle in a town called Otmus.* Charles was not about to let Theuderic's incompetence threaten the stability of the nation.

We hardly hear about Charles Martel today, even though his name was given to an age: the Carolingian Age. When he died, his son, Pepin the Short, asked Pope Stephen II "Who should be king? He who has the title, or he who wields the power?" By that time, the pope depended on Frankish armies for many purposes; he crowned Pepin "King of the Franks." It was Pepin's son, however, the grandson of Charles the Hammer, who would truly unite that part of the world and take it to administrative, academic, and cultural heights not imagined since the glory of Rome: Charles the Great, known everywhere today as Charlemagne.

*During his captivity, the town took on the name Castrum Theodorici ("Camp/Castle of Theuderic"). The name stuck, and now en Français is called Château-Thierry.