CHARIBERT I

'Charibert I' (c. 517–November or December 567) was the Merovingian King of Paris, the second-eldest son of Chlothar I and Ingund. His elder brother was Gunthar, who died sometime before their father's death.
In 556, Chlothar sent Charibert and his next youngest brother Guntram against their younger brother Chramn, who was in revolt against his father and was hiding out on Black Mountain in the Limousin. Negotiations failed and the two armies prepared for battle. A thunderstorm prevented any engagement and Chramn took the time to send forged letters regarding his father's "death" to his brothers, he quickly betook themselves to Burgundy to secure their positions.
On Chlothar's actual death in 561, the Frankish kingdom was divided between his sons in a new configuration. Each son ruled a distinct realm, which was not necessarily geographically coherent but could contain two unconnected regions, from a chief city after which his kingdom is called. Charibert received Neustria (the region between the Somme and the Loire), Aquitaine, and Novempopulana with Paris as his capital. His chief cities were Rouen, Tours, Poitiers, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Cahors, and Albi. Guntram received Burgundy, then Sigebert received Austrasia (including Rheims) with his capital at Metz, and the youngest brother Chilperic received a compact kingdom with Soissons as its capital.
Though the election of bishops in Merovingian territories was subject to manipulation and veto by the king, once consecrated, the bishops were in control within the cities, though perhaps not all as firmly as at Tours, where Bishop Gregory, invoking the wrath of Saint Martin, was able to extract a coronation promise on oath from Charibert:

that he would not burden the people with new laws and customs, but he would retain only those under which they had previously lived in the time of his father; and he promised that he would not impose upon them any new ordinance which would result in loss to them.[1]

Thus hampered in raising funds (largely as gifts in kind anyway) and under such obligations not to create innovative policy or law, the Charibert's sphere of operations was severely limited.
Besides his wife Ingoberga, with whom he had a daughter, Bertha (539–c. 612), he had unions with Merofleda, a wool-carder's daughter, and her sister Marcovefa -with he had daughters: Berteflede (a nun in Tours) and Clothilde (a nun in St. Croix, Poitiers)-, precipitating his ban of excommunication, the first ever levelled at a Merovingian king. He also had a liaison with Theodogilda (also known as Theudechild), the daughter of a neatherd (cowherd); with her, Charibert had his only son, but the baby died shortly after his birth. Charibert was scarcely more than king ''at'' Paris when he married his daughter Bertha to Ethelbert, the pagan King of Kent. She took with her Bishop Liudhard as her private confessor. Her influence at the Kentish court was instrumental in the decent reception of Augustine's mission in 597.
Charibert did not take many military actions during his brief reign, but he did try to dispossess the church of Tours of an illegally acquired royal estate where horses were bred. In this he failed, much to the joy of Gregory.
Though Charibert was eloquent and learned in the law, he was one of the most dissolute of the early Merovingians, his early death in 567 under a ban of excommunication being brought on by his excesses. He was buried in ''Blavia castellum'', a military fort in the Tractatus Armoricani. At his death his brothers divided up his realm between them, agreeing at first to hold Paris in common. His surviving queen (out of four), Theudechild, proposed a marriage with Guntram, though a council held at Paris in 557 had outlawed such tradition as incestuous. Guntram decided to house her more safely, though unwillingly, in a nunnery at Arles.
The main source for Charibert's life is Gregory of Tours' ''History of the Franks'' (Book IV, 3,16,22,26 and IX, 26), and from the English perspective Bede's ''Ecclesiastic History of the English People''.

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Sources

Sources

★ Bachrach, Bernard S. ''Merovingian Military Organization, 481–751''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971.

★ Historia Francorum Books I-IX at Medieval Sourcebook.