CHAPTER EIGHT

FEMALE STATUS AND POWER IN EARLY MEROVINGIAN CENTRAL AUSTRASIA: THE BURIAL EVIDENCE*1

A grave-robbing in

In September 585 a woman was buried in a church in Metz. Dying childless, she was interred with ‘much gold and a profusion of orna- ments’.2 Such circumstantial written evidence about a burial, grave- goods and the deceased’s status is rare indeed in early Merovingian northern . recorded this story because the woman in question was an affi nal relative of Duke Guntramn Boso, who then dispatched his retainers to open the grave and retrieve the grave-goods whilst the civitas’ population went on the annual proces- sion to St-Remy-de-Scy (1 October). Th e episode ended in disgrace. His men were caught red-handed; Guntramn was brought before Chil- debert II of Austrasia and charged, presumably with grave-robbing (one of the few crimes punishable with outlawry in early Merovingian Gaul);3 defenceless, he fl ed in secret, and his property was recovered by the fi sc. Two years later, never having regained favour, he was tried again and killed on Childebert’s orders.4 Th e tale suited Gregory’s

* Originally published in Early Medieval Europe 5.1 (1996), pp. 1–24. Reprinted with kind permission of Blackwells publishers and the editors of Early Medieval Europe. Footnotes have been standardised and occasionally corrected, and the dia- grams redrawn. Otherwise the article remains the same. I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the then general editor of EME, Professor Rosamond McKit- terick, for bibliographical assistance. 1 I should like to thank Edward James, Tania Dickinson and Steve Roskams (Univ. of York), Prof. Dr. Frauke Stein (Universität des Saarlandes), Mme M. Clermont- Joly (Musée de l’Histoire du Fer, Jarville), Mme C. Aptel (Musée Historique , Nancy), Mme M. Sary (Musées de Metz), M.P. Th ion (Direction des Antiquités de la Lorraine) and M.C. Lefebvre (Metz), for their help in gathering the data for the ini- tial doctoral thesis and later book upon which this paper is based. I should also like to thank Edward James, together with Janet Nelson, Ross Balzaretti, Paul Fouracre, Pauline Staff ord and Joanna Bourke for valuable comments upon previous incarna- tions of this paper. 2 LH 8.21. 3 PLS 55.4. 4 LH 9.10. 290 chapter eight purpose admirably. [2] Guntramn Boso was no friend of Gregory’s, though, like anyone else, he merited miraculous reprieves when he showed true piety.5 Boso’s chief fault, says Gregory,6 was greed, and this, ultimately, was his downfall. Once again Gregory could demon- strate the overall lesson of his oeuvre: the futility of worldly life, as compared with the godly.7 Th us, whilst the story is unusual, the reasons for its telling are clear. On the way, Gregory coupled the phrase sine fi liis (‘without children’), irrelevant to the thrust of his account, with the description of the grave’s lavishness. Burial archaeology in the region of Metz sheds further light upon his statement, and permits an insight into the nature and roots of female status and power in sixth-century northern Gaul.8

The region and period under study

Th is paper deliberately examines only one region, modern Lorraine, focusing on the diocese of Metz (fi g. 8.1). Th is, the north-eastern corner of the Parisian basin, forms a geographical unity, and the archaeologi- cal cemetery data reveal general similarities across the sites examined, although there are diff erences in detail. Cursory examination of cem- eteries in other parts of Austrasia (the Triererland, the - land, and ) reveals clear diff erences in custom, which might be explained by reference to physical geography: the Triererland is far hillier than the Plateau Lorrain; the cut off Alsace from the region under discussion. Alternatively, this region’s particularities may result from its centrality within Austrasia. Th us the conclusions sug- gested here are not necessarily applicable to other regions. Th e paper deals primarily with the period c. 525–c. 625, drawing attention to observable changes within this time-span. It is a rigidly contextualised sketch of female status and power in one region during one century. Occasionally, for comparative purposes, data have been adduced from other periods and places; no one-to-one correlation is

5 VSM 2.17. 6 LH 9.10. 7 W. Goff art, Th e Narrators of Barbarian History, AD 550–800. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul the Deacon (Princeton 1988), ch. 3. 8 Th e indispensable bibliography is W. Aff eldt et al. (ed.), Frauen im Frühmittelal- ter. Eine ausgewählte kommentierte Bibliographie (Frankfurt-am- 1990).