Merovingians - mysterious kings

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

What do we know about the famous Merovingian dynasty - the kings of France, whom their contemporaries called "long-haired" and even "lazy"? The Merovingians were the first dynasty of Frankish kings, which ruled from the end of the 5th to the middle of the 8th century by the state located on the lands of modern France and Belgium.

Their family descended from the rulers of the Salic (sea) Franks. This people was known to the Romans from the middle of the 3rd century AD, its ethnonym in translation means "free".

In the 5th century, the Franks were divided into two ethnic groups: Salic (that is, sea), who lived closer to the sea, and Ripuan (that is, river), who lived along the banks of the Rhine. The name of the German region of Franconia, which has survived to our time, serves as a reminder of that era. The unity of the Franks was symbolized by the dynasty of their rulers - the Merovingians, who belonged to the ancient royal family. The offspring of this dynasty possessed sacred, mysterious power in the eyes of the Franks, bringing good to the entire people. This was also indicated by one characteristic feature in the external appearance of the Merovingians: they wore long hair, and their haircut meant the loss of the ability to carry a high mission. This distinguished the kings from their subjects, who wore short hairstyles.

According to legend, the supernatural powers of the Merovingians were associated with long hair. This is confirmed by one historical episode: in 754, when the last Merovingian king of the Franks, Childeric III, was imprisoned, by special order of the Pope, his hair was cut off. The kings of this dynasty were distinguished by their literacy, which was an outstanding phenomenon against the background of that era of the "dark ages". They could read books written not only in Latin, but also in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew. But let us turn to the external outline of events and for this we will return to the era of the accession of the Merovingian dynasty.

It was the 5th century, which became a watershed between two eras - the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. The Roman Empire was divided into two parts - Western and Eastern, or Byzantium. The Western Empire is on the decline. In 410, the "eternal city" Rome was conquered and plundered by the Visigoths under the leadership of King Alaric. At this time, the Salic Franks (one of the many Germanic peoples), led by King Chlodion, cross the border river Rhine and invade Roman Gaul.

The Franks (translated as free) were very restless neighbors of the Romans. King Chlodion was succeeded by Merovei. It was to this leader of the Salic Franks, who ruled from 448 to 457, that the Merovingian dynasty owes its generic name. Its origin is also covered with legends. It was believed that the ruler was born of a sea monster. Sometimes Merovey himself is called a monster emerging from the depths of the sea. The legend about his birth is as follows: being pregnant, Merovey's mother, the wife of King Clodio (Chlodion), went to swim in the sea, where she was kidnapped by a sea monster. It was believed that the blood of the Frankish king Chlodion and the sea monster flowed in the veins of Merovey. This legend, when considered rationally, points to an international dynastic marriage. The origin of the king is thus associated with something overseas. Fish, by the way, is also a symbol of Christ.

The ending of the name Merovei (Meroveus) is associated with the words "travel", "road" and is translated as "from overseas" or "born by the sea." Another version of the translation of his name is “living creature” or “demon”. Under Merovey's son, King Childeric, the territory of his state began to expand. But even more famous is his grandson, King Clovis. He became the founder of the powerful Frankish kingdom.

Clovis annexed the north of Gaul to his possessions and expanded the borders of the state to the upper Rhine. In about 498, the king was baptized. This was facilitated by unusual circumstances. During the battle with the Almandians, when the scales were already tipping in favor of the enemies, Clovis remembered the stories of his wife, Clotilde, about the Christian faith, that Jesus is the Savior, and prayed: “Oh, merciful Jesus! I asked my gods for help, but they turned away from me. Now I think that they simply cannot help me. Now I ask you: help me to cope with my enemies! I believe you! As soon as these words were uttered, the Franks went on the offensive and plunged the Almandians into a disorderly flight from the battlefield.

Clovis's baptism took place in Reims. Since then, all the kings of France were baptized in this city. During the reign of Clovis, the famous medieval code of laws "Salic truth" was also published. Paris became the capital of the Clovis state. It was with this ruler that the Merovingian period of French history began. The religious policy of the Merovingian kings is of interest. Their state largely preserved paganism. Christianization was not a public policy priority, and the spread of the Catholic faith was the concern of volunteer missionaries, often not even local ones, but from neighboring regions of Europe.

In the 5th-7th centuries, these preachers converted to Christ the pagans who lived in the center of the vast Merovingian domains, including in the vicinity of Paris and Orleans. The head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, had practically no influence in this state. However, the overthrow of this dynasty from the throne was not without his sanction. One of the most successful and influential kings of the dynasty was Dagobert, who ruled the state of the Franks from 629 to 639. His reign was accompanied by successful military campaigns and was crowned with the annexation of new lands to the kingdom. However, after the death of Dagobert, his heirs gradually began to lose power from their hands. The government began to pass more and more from them to myordoms.

This word comes from the Latin major domus - the manager of the palace economy. It was the mayordoms who disposed of the income and expenses of the royal court, commanded the guards and were the king's representatives to the Frankish nobility. Since then, the Merovingians have been dubbed "lazy kings." In the middle of the VIII century, Mayord Pepin Korotky decided to become not only actually, but also formally, the first person of the country. Pepin enlisted the support of Pope Zechariah, who anointed him as king and proclaimed him king of the Frankish kingdom. In November 751, the last king of the Merovingian dynasty, Childeric III, was shaved and imprisoned in a monastery.

This is a well-known, visible part of the Merovingian history. Let's turn to what is not so obvious.

According to legend, the kings of this dynasty knew a lot about the occult sciences and esotericism. In the grave of Childeric I, son of Meroveus, father of Clovis, found in 1653 in the Ardennes, in addition to weapons, various jewelry and badges traditional for royal burials, there were also objects related to the field of magic and witchcraft: a severed horse head, a bull's head made of gold as well as a crystal ball. About three hundred golden bees were also found there. The bee was one of the sacred symbols of the Merovingian dynasty.

These golden bees of Childerica were later used by Napoleon, wanting to emphasize the historical continuity of his power. In 1804, during his coronation, Napoleon ordered golden bees to be attached to his coronation robes. The kings wore some kind of magic necklace and knew a secret spell to protect them. The found skulls of some members of this dynasty had ritual incisions similar to those that were made on the skulls of Buddhist priests in Tibet.

In the distant Himalayas, they were made so that at the moment of death the soul could leave the body. Legends have come down to us about the ability of the Merovingians to heal by the laying on of hands. Even brushes hanging from their clothes were used for healing. By the way, making brushes of wisdom on clothes - tzitzit - is commanded by the Torah to the people of Israel. These kings were often called wonderworkers by their adherents, and sorcerers by ill-wishers. They also possessed the gift of clairvoyance and extrasensory communication, understood animals and the forces of nature. They knew the secret of longevity, and on the bodies of the representatives of the family of kings there was a special sign - a red birthmark in the form of a cross, located on the heart or between the shoulder blades.

The origin of the royal family is shrouded in mystery. Medieval legend says that the kings of the Franks trace their ancestry to the Trojans, the heroes of the Homeric Iliad, who arrived in the lands of Gaul in ancient times. Chronicles of the Middle Ages call the ancestors of the Merovingians the last king of Troy, Priam, or the hero of the Trojan War, the traveler king Aeneas. There is another opinion - not about the Greek, but about the Jewish roots of the Frankish kings. According to this version, the descendants of the Jewish kings, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, “found refuge in the lands of the Franks, where the dynasty of the Merovingian kings began.

The dynasty allegedly comes from the descendants of the tribe of Benjamin, from which the first Jewish king, Shaul, was once chosen. Indeed, in the Merovingian family there were Old Testament names, for example, the brother of King Chlothar II was called Samson. If we pay attention to the biblical Samson, an ancient Israelite judge, he also wore long hair because he was a Nazirite. And the collection of laws adopted by King Clovis, "Salicheskaya Pravda", has parallels with traditional Jewish law.

There is also an opinion that the mystery of the Grail is connected with the Merovingian dynasty: after all, the word “Grail” is consonant with the words “sang raal” or “sang royal”, which translated means “royal blood”. The legend calls the son of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene the "Grail", "royal blood". Supporters of this version provide evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were husband and wife. The disciples refer to Jesus as a "rabbi" - a teacher, and rabbis, teachers of the law, according to Jewish laws, were to be married.

The descendants of King David were to become the parents of at least two sons. For the inhabitant of the Holy Land of those times, the meaning of the actions of Mary Magdalene described in the Gospel of John (11: 2) was quite transparent: "Mary … was the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair." This could only be done by the bride of a descendant of the royal family of David. In the Old Testament, both David and Solomon their brides anointed their heads with ointment and wiped their feet with their hair. In the Gospel of Philip, which has the status of the apocrypha, the version that Jesus was married is stated even more clearly: “And the faithful friend of Jesus was Mary Magdalene. And Christ loved her more than the rest of His disciples, and kissed her more than once on her lips. The rest of the disciples, offended by this, condemned Him. They said to him: why do you greet her more than we? The Savior answered them, and said thus: why should I not love her more than you? Great is the sacrament of marriage, for without it there would be no world. " Further, according to this version, after the execution and resurrection of Jesus, Mary and her children fled to the then Roman province of Gaul, where she died in 63 AD. The tomb of Mary Magdalene is located in the south of modern France, in the vicinity of the town of Saint-Baume.

The later idea of Mary Magdalene as a harlot is attributed by supporters of this point of view to the machinations of ill-wishers: after the overthrow of the Merovingian dynasty, theologians of the Roman Church began to identify her with the harlot mentioned in the Gospels. In the 5th century, the descendants of Jesus became related to the Merovingians. And Merovei, according to these legends, was a descendant of Christ. A significant number of cathedrals erected under the Merovingians in their kingdom were named after Mary Magdalene. At the same time, in the lands where the positions of the Pope were strong, no temples were named after this saint. When the dynasty fell and power passed to the Carolingians, a new Frankish ruling dynasty brought to power by Pepin the Short, many of these cathedrals were renamed. It is also known that the Merovingians called themselves "desposins" ("from the Lord").

A direct descendant of Merovey was Gottfried of Bouillon, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, ruler of Jerusalem. Going on a campaign of conquest against Jerusalem, he thus regained the "legal inheritance" of a descendant of Jesus. Gottfried of Bouillon himself claimed that he comes from the tribe of Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, who, during the division of the land of Israel between the tribes (these events are described in the Bible), inherited Jerusalem. Also, some researchers call one of the descendants of Merovey Hugo of Champagne, Count of Champagne, who renounced his title in 1125 in order to go to Jerusalem and join the Templar Order there.

Naturally, the existence of the descendants of the Merovingians was carefully hidden by the ecclesiastical and secular authorities. In the early Middle Ages, the Merovingian dynasty ruled most of Western Europe. The descendants of the Merovingians, knowing about their origin from Jesus, kept it secret for the time being, because they were afraid of reprisals against themselves by the Catholic Church, whose dogmas in that case would be destroyed. Moreover, there was a sad experience of reprisals against members of the dynasty - the Frankish king from the Merovingian dynasty, Dagobert II, who ruled in the 7th century, was treacherously killed as a result of a conspiracy of churchmen and part of the nobility. This king opposed the expansion of the influence of the Roman throne.

The Merovingians were going to announce their true origins after establishing their power, and they sought to recreate an updated version of the Frankish kingdom in the form of a single Europe. The announcement that a united Europe is ruled by the descendants of Christ was supposed to instill in Europeans religious enthusiasm and lead to a religious renaissance, as happened in Iran when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979.

One of the many legends surrounding the Merovingian dynasty says that Saint Remigius, who baptized King Clovis into Christianity, predicted that the rule of his dynasty would last until the end of the world. As you know, the overthrow of the dynasty took place in 751, but this does not mean that the prediction did not come true. On one of the female lines, the descendants of the Merovingians are the Carolingians - the dynasty that succeeded them on the royal throne. The Carolingian dynasty was related to another dynasty - the Capetian. Thus, almost all the kings of France, including the Bourbons, were descendants of Clovis. As you know, the Bourbon dynasty currently rules the Spanish kingdom.

Dynastic ties of the Merovingians with the Scottish royal dynasty of the Stuarts are also traced. So in the history of the Merovingian dynasty past and present intertwined, the history of Ancient Israel and medieval Europe, legends and traditions, mysticism and reality.