It is odd but true that storytelling provides contradictory commands. Going through Ax again, with eyes perhaps better open than they have been in the past, I recognize some of those legends I've spaced out in years.
The tales of Clovis are like most half-fabled histories; there is much that is apocryphal, plenty of fancy, and an intriguing lot of possible-facts which present in suspiciously tidy little anecdotes. Clovis is humiliated before his army at his first conquest: having to ask for a treasure back from one of the soldiers (to return it to the church) he sees the treasure smashed before his eyes, to the soundtrack of a few choice words about what a bad king he is for doing takebacks.
No finer a moment for a king than any kid on a playground - and significantly more expensive in prestige, if you measure things by crowns.
The immediate next breath of this legend illustrates Clovis' revenge upon this soldier.
Thing is, the immediate next breath is generally retold with some allusion to time having passed. Sometimes it's a year, sometimes it's not recounted - and, often of course, it's not really said at all.
I put YEARS between the destruction of the Vase at Soissons (please note the title of my novel; it comes from this famous propaganda). It worked with my rhythms - I'm a capricious creature - the times when they were named seemed too neatly story-teller-ish - choose your reason, the revenge is served seriously cold The Ax and the Vase.
Similarly, Clovis' conversion to Catholicism (I'm not spoilering the action too badly for you, am I ... ?) occurs, and tends *usually* to be followed with the assertion he immediately also was baptized.
Based on real research, in this instance, I'm skeptical this was the case. The tale is told, again, with the cadence and breathlessness of legend, most often. Not as a recital civic record.
In this matter, I separated the baptism from the conversion both because it makes no sense to me the whole hog got et in a moment - but also because, based on certain parallels to Constantine, and based on Clovis himself, these two steps were quite distinct for him - and the one in no way demanded the other.
Baptism is an anointing, and Clovis was the anointed king. He was also, according to family legend from a god of the sea. His royal coronation anointed him and enshrined the mystical charisma of his blood - which he believed was the blood of a god. (No. Not of Jesus of Nazareth. Don't even start with me, y'all.)
To go from accepting the Catholic religion to actually submitting to an anointing - the very rite which provided him his THRONE - must have been prodigious. Extraordinary.
Humbling.
The crux of the baptism of Clovis I - for him, for all of Europe and its history for the past fifteen hundred YEARS - is that it was a shift from the tenet of *divine right* to that of *divine descent*.
Let me tell you this. For a king like Clovis: THIS. Was a step down.
He went from believing he had the blood of a sea god in his veins, the bistea neptunis of legend ... to meekly accepting permission to rule, from a god whom for most of his life he had no use at all. Even when he did convert, there is reason to wonder how deeply sincere the moment - and the years after - were, in terms of Clovis' faith. Let it not be said his reign suffered from his endorsement of his Church.
As for the novel, I posited some political canniness working in concert with spiritual conviction. As any human who's ever had it or sought it knows, spiritual conviction isn't the bedrock we want it to be. We abandon it often, and find it both invincible and fallible, all in the same lifetime.
Sometimes, in the same day.
I have to believe that, for Clovis to commit as he did to the Church, faith was *necessary*.
But I also know, he's most famed for killing off his own kinsmen and then whining about being alone (and here we have another writer's tale, about how we dealt with *that* legend - but that's another post and, frankly, doesn't hew to the theme of today's musing on the chronology and compression-in-time of legendary events).
Human hearts contain multitudes, and it's no contradiction, to me as an author, to consider that Clovis both believed and held some part of himself back from his new religion. That he thought he could have his divine descent, and his faith in Christ. Most of us know people with greater contradictions still - almost all of us house them in ourselves, whether we can recognize and/or admit it or not.
It has more logic, for me, than "he did everything all at once, the happy happy end."
Plus, it means my novel is not a short story. All to the good, that.
And now, back to polishing the thing. So it can get out and be sold.
Showing posts with label legend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legend. Show all posts
Friday, May 16, 2014
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
The First Queen
Clovis’ mother was the Thuringian Queen, Basina. Famed for the scandal she caused in leaving her first husband, Bisinus, to marry Clovis’ father Childeric, she was clearly a woman of remarkable power in a society not poor in the exploits and strength of women. It was Basina who gave Clovis his name, a rare fact preserved in a history full of men. Of course, a very great deal of what composes “history” in this period is stitched from legend and half-truths, propaganda and hagiography.
Clovis, I would say, was highly interested in propaganda, and I make it an explicit point in The Ax and the Vase that he depended heavily upon it in his quest to increase his kingdom from the Roman province of Belgica Secunda into a vast Frankish power standing in its own right. The legend of his vengeance concerning the Vase at Soissons was only one of many tales which have a distinctive flavor about them, of making a public point for the sake of display. His conversion, and fairly worthwhile evidence that he modeled himself on Constantine, follow a pattern of propaganda it was impossible not to manipulate intentionally, as I believe the king himself must have done, in the writing of his story. He wrote it himself first, after all.
It’s not impossible he could have had an example in legend-making from the mother who gave him life, gave him his name, and gave him, even, the legend of a Merovingian dynasty (unnamed at that time, of course) itself.
Basina is said to have used King Childeric, Clovis’ father, to make a point upon their wedding night. Before she will consummate their marriage, she sends Childeric outside thrice to look about him and tell her what he sees each time. The first time he steps out, he sees a lion. The second, he sees bears, wolves, or leopards. The third, he reports seeing marmots or dogs, “lesser animals.”
Each iteration of Childeric’s investigations illustrates a deterioration, first shown in Gregory, which must have been perceived by contemporaries, of the dynasty Clovis founded. The Merovingians started out strong, to be sure – Clovis’ conquests, his wealth, his production of princes, his career and his rule were in many ways the paragon of monarchical success. He was the biggest thing the Franks had ever seen, and there was pride, fear, and resentment both within his life and beyond it. The epochal developments of his reign – Clovis became the first Catholic king in Western Europe; he set forth the famous (infamous) Salic Law – were themselves the stuff of legend, and could have been no accident as such. Yet when his kingdom passed on to his four sons, divided as patrimony between them, the power held by one lion was compromised by the division, and the Merovingian legacy (far from being Christ’s bloodline) became a famous litany of family squabbles.
Of course, the likelihood that the tale of the lion and the lesser beasts, told a generation or so after Clovis’ own death, was really told before even his birth, is slender at best. This doesn’t stop me from using the story in any case. In telling certain stories, those who are familiar with the attendant legends expect to see how this piece or that part may be handled; and the story reflects and fits so well with Basina’s character it would have been unthinkable to leave out this story.
Then, as tends to happen – I cut so much of her out that the tale was lost. Indeed, Basina herself lasts only a few pages now, and is sacrificed very early in the going indeed; victim of an arbitrary but nagging need I had to be rid of her. She ends by suffering much the same fate of Morgause at the hands of her son Agravain, but without the bloodshed. Basina, instead, is shut out of society – the worst punishment a Frank could suffer, in a culture utterly bound by family ties.
In some ways, the loss of this powerful feminine presence may be a great loss for the novel, but as a woman writing first-person from the POV of a decidedly male character, I could not abide her presence. Perhaps instinctively, perhaps even jealously, as the feminine author of this legendary king, I could not brook the presence of any other feminine force which brought him into being. Indeed, until the advent of Queen Clotilde, the novel is notably unbalanced by female characters; even Clovis’ friedelehe, Evochilde, dies with little more accomplished than bearing his first son, Theuderic.
The French remember the end of the Merovingian dynasty, in particular, with the epithet they gave those kings known as do-nothing kings: the roi fainéant. The story of the dynasty goes much as the story of Basina’s animals goes, and by the end little boys and ineffectual heirs have most people all but rooting for the advent of the Carolingians, who had ruled from behind the Merovingian throne for generations, as Mayors of the Palace. Yet the individual stories of Merovingians, and certainly their women, do not suffer from the same tarnish, the same flagging vigor as the tale of the dynasty as a whole.
Radegund, whose uncle betrayed Clovis’ eldest son Theuderic (this story is alluded to toward the closing chapters of Ax), and who herself was apparently close with Gregory of Tours. She was a poetess and another saint, and one of those women along the line who was closest to Clovis’ sons.
Aregund, one of six wives of the notorious Clotaire I (son of Clovis), whose tomb’s discovery in 1959 shed much light on Frankish craft, society, and burial – and, not incidentally, whose state of preservation was good enough that her DNA was able to provide proof, in 2006, that her line carried no characteristics of Middle-Eastern extraction. This has been put forth to put paid to the Merovingian Heresy, though of course there is no real way to destroy the allure of conspiracy theories for those who love them.
Waltrude, one of the many sainted wives of Frankish nobility of the Merovingian period, exemplifies the flux in which marriage and monastic vows still existed as late as the seventh century: after a fruitful marriage, both she and her husband, Count of Hainault chose to retire into the church. Like so many Frankish/Merovingian saints, she founded a convent. The city of Mons arose around this holy site.
Waltrude’s possible sister, Aldegonde, is remembered both for her founding of a hospital, which became Maubeuge abbey. Her fortitude in the face of terminal breast cancer is remembered 1300 years later.
A favorite Merovingian queen, Balthild, started her life as an Anglo-Saxon child of nobility, sold into servitude, and finally married to a king who loved her. She is alternately described as ruthless or as humble and modest, but what remains clear and true of this sainted queen is that she held, and used, real power. She endowed many religious institutions. Her seal matrix (a fascinating two-sided design for use in official and personal documentation) survives to this day, and it is she who is credited with the abolition of (at least) Christian slavery, as well as guiding the minority rule of her son Clotaire. Three of her sons eventually became kings in their own right, and she too retired to an abbey, where she is said to have spent the rest of her life in service to those in poverty and suffering illness.
Of Frankish women, the matrimonial tales can rank among the most fascinating glimpses both of their character and the society itself, in which they lived. There are raging legends of women who stood up against betrothals they did not desire, the scandalous remembrance of Basina, of course, who left one king and wed another, becoming mother of a dynasty herself – and the stories like Balthild’s (not unique in the annals), of women who suffered servitude either by birth or by misfortune, and who then rose to become queens with influence and indelible places in the history of this maddening, fascinating line of rulers. With the place family held in Frankish life, the mothers’ and wives’ prominence is undeniable and noticeable. Basina may have been a scandal, but she was not, I think, regarded with actual surprise; women in this society were not reduced to ciphers in their own time nor down through the generations. A certain Itta, called Merovingian herself by some sources, indeed came to Basina’s own role for the Carolingians, as mother of the new dynasty – once Basina’s marmots had run their deteriorated course.
There is so much drama in these characters – in these players of our world’s history – you can’t help but see that they must have been on the stage. Any one of them – or their sisters, their mothers, their daughters – might make a hundred novels’ worth of inspiration. I have my list set, for at least three novels of my own. Still, it would be fascinating to see someone take these stories and tell them, restore them, weave them anew for the rest of us. Let me know if you are inspired!
Clovis, I would say, was highly interested in propaganda, and I make it an explicit point in The Ax and the Vase that he depended heavily upon it in his quest to increase his kingdom from the Roman province of Belgica Secunda into a vast Frankish power standing in its own right. The legend of his vengeance concerning the Vase at Soissons was only one of many tales which have a distinctive flavor about them, of making a public point for the sake of display. His conversion, and fairly worthwhile evidence that he modeled himself on Constantine, follow a pattern of propaganda it was impossible not to manipulate intentionally, as I believe the king himself must have done, in the writing of his story. He wrote it himself first, after all.
It’s not impossible he could have had an example in legend-making from the mother who gave him life, gave him his name, and gave him, even, the legend of a Merovingian dynasty (unnamed at that time, of course) itself.
Basina is said to have used King Childeric, Clovis’ father, to make a point upon their wedding night. Before she will consummate their marriage, she sends Childeric outside thrice to look about him and tell her what he sees each time. The first time he steps out, he sees a lion. The second, he sees bears, wolves, or leopards. The third, he reports seeing marmots or dogs, “lesser animals.”
Each iteration of Childeric’s investigations illustrates a deterioration, first shown in Gregory, which must have been perceived by contemporaries, of the dynasty Clovis founded. The Merovingians started out strong, to be sure – Clovis’ conquests, his wealth, his production of princes, his career and his rule were in many ways the paragon of monarchical success. He was the biggest thing the Franks had ever seen, and there was pride, fear, and resentment both within his life and beyond it. The epochal developments of his reign – Clovis became the first Catholic king in Western Europe; he set forth the famous (infamous) Salic Law – were themselves the stuff of legend, and could have been no accident as such. Yet when his kingdom passed on to his four sons, divided as patrimony between them, the power held by one lion was compromised by the division, and the Merovingian legacy (far from being Christ’s bloodline) became a famous litany of family squabbles.
Of course, the likelihood that the tale of the lion and the lesser beasts, told a generation or so after Clovis’ own death, was really told before even his birth, is slender at best. This doesn’t stop me from using the story in any case. In telling certain stories, those who are familiar with the attendant legends expect to see how this piece or that part may be handled; and the story reflects and fits so well with Basina’s character it would have been unthinkable to leave out this story.
Then, as tends to happen – I cut so much of her out that the tale was lost. Indeed, Basina herself lasts only a few pages now, and is sacrificed very early in the going indeed; victim of an arbitrary but nagging need I had to be rid of her. She ends by suffering much the same fate of Morgause at the hands of her son Agravain, but without the bloodshed. Basina, instead, is shut out of society – the worst punishment a Frank could suffer, in a culture utterly bound by family ties.
In some ways, the loss of this powerful feminine presence may be a great loss for the novel, but as a woman writing first-person from the POV of a decidedly male character, I could not abide her presence. Perhaps instinctively, perhaps even jealously, as the feminine author of this legendary king, I could not brook the presence of any other feminine force which brought him into being. Indeed, until the advent of Queen Clotilde, the novel is notably unbalanced by female characters; even Clovis’ friedelehe, Evochilde, dies with little more accomplished than bearing his first son, Theuderic.
The French remember the end of the Merovingian dynasty, in particular, with the epithet they gave those kings known as do-nothing kings: the roi fainéant. The story of the dynasty goes much as the story of Basina’s animals goes, and by the end little boys and ineffectual heirs have most people all but rooting for the advent of the Carolingians, who had ruled from behind the Merovingian throne for generations, as Mayors of the Palace. Yet the individual stories of Merovingians, and certainly their women, do not suffer from the same tarnish, the same flagging vigor as the tale of the dynasty as a whole.
Radegund, whose uncle betrayed Clovis’ eldest son Theuderic (this story is alluded to toward the closing chapters of Ax), and who herself was apparently close with Gregory of Tours. She was a poetess and another saint, and one of those women along the line who was closest to Clovis’ sons.
Aregund, one of six wives of the notorious Clotaire I (son of Clovis), whose tomb’s discovery in 1959 shed much light on Frankish craft, society, and burial – and, not incidentally, whose state of preservation was good enough that her DNA was able to provide proof, in 2006, that her line carried no characteristics of Middle-Eastern extraction. This has been put forth to put paid to the Merovingian Heresy, though of course there is no real way to destroy the allure of conspiracy theories for those who love them.
Waltrude, one of the many sainted wives of Frankish nobility of the Merovingian period, exemplifies the flux in which marriage and monastic vows still existed as late as the seventh century: after a fruitful marriage, both she and her husband, Count of Hainault chose to retire into the church. Like so many Frankish/Merovingian saints, she founded a convent. The city of Mons arose around this holy site.
Waltrude’s possible sister, Aldegonde, is remembered both for her founding of a hospital, which became Maubeuge abbey. Her fortitude in the face of terminal breast cancer is remembered 1300 years later.
A favorite Merovingian queen, Balthild, started her life as an Anglo-Saxon child of nobility, sold into servitude, and finally married to a king who loved her. She is alternately described as ruthless or as humble and modest, but what remains clear and true of this sainted queen is that she held, and used, real power. She endowed many religious institutions. Her seal matrix (a fascinating two-sided design for use in official and personal documentation) survives to this day, and it is she who is credited with the abolition of (at least) Christian slavery, as well as guiding the minority rule of her son Clotaire. Three of her sons eventually became kings in their own right, and she too retired to an abbey, where she is said to have spent the rest of her life in service to those in poverty and suffering illness.
Of Frankish women, the matrimonial tales can rank among the most fascinating glimpses both of their character and the society itself, in which they lived. There are raging legends of women who stood up against betrothals they did not desire, the scandalous remembrance of Basina, of course, who left one king and wed another, becoming mother of a dynasty herself – and the stories like Balthild’s (not unique in the annals), of women who suffered servitude either by birth or by misfortune, and who then rose to become queens with influence and indelible places in the history of this maddening, fascinating line of rulers. With the place family held in Frankish life, the mothers’ and wives’ prominence is undeniable and noticeable. Basina may have been a scandal, but she was not, I think, regarded with actual surprise; women in this society were not reduced to ciphers in their own time nor down through the generations. A certain Itta, called Merovingian herself by some sources, indeed came to Basina’s own role for the Carolingians, as mother of the new dynasty – once Basina’s marmots had run their deteriorated course.
There is so much drama in these characters – in these players of our world’s history – you can’t help but see that they must have been on the stage. Any one of them – or their sisters, their mothers, their daughters – might make a hundred novels’ worth of inspiration. I have my list set, for at least three novels of my own. Still, it would be fascinating to see someone take these stories and tell them, restore them, weave them anew for the rest of us. Let me know if you are inspired!
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