Quae Meritis Propriis Effulget: The Ecclesiastical Patronage of Queen Fredegund

Fredegund of Neustria's dubious modern reputation as a scheming murderess is based upon only a small number of highly-biased contemporary and near-contemporary accounts, especially the noxious account of her contemporary, Bishop Gregory of Tours, a merciless critic of both the queen (d.597) and her husband Chilperic I. Gregory’s judgment would be echoed by subsequent Frankish chroniclers, and remains the foundation of most modern assessments of Fredegund’s character, even those less moralistic than Gregory’s account. Modern historians have tended to follow Gregory's lead, calling Fredegund “ruthless and manipulative” or “savage but resolute” even as they acknowledge her political skills. Such evaluations of Fredegund’s temperament and career reflect the challenge of separating the real Fredegund from Gregory’s caricature. This paper argues that Gregory’s narrative is especially misleading in its portrayal of Fredegund’s relations with the Gallo-Frankish Church. Drawing upon a prosopographical database of Gallic ecclesiastics with whom Fredegund interacted over the course of her reign, I demonstrate that this queen was no different from other Merovingian monarchs who sought to establish profitable ties to the church leadership, which possessed not only extensive moveable and immoveable wealth and enviable political influence, but also a spiritual power respected (if not always feared) by secular elites. At the same time, Fredegund did not hesitate to attack those ecclesiastics who allied themselves with her political rivals. Rather than an indiscriminate abuser of the righteous, Fredegund was, in fact, a generous patron of ecclesiastical persons and institutions. But her selective choice of beneficiaries reveals the difficult choices she was forced to make in order to forge alliances beneficial to herself, choices which ultimately would prove nearly fatal to her posthumous reputation.