Religion_Christianity

The Frankish kingdoms were ruled by two main dynasties, the Merovingians (who established the realm) and later the Carolingians. A timeline of Frankish rulers is difficult since the realm was, according to old Germanic practice, frequently divided among the sons of a leader upon his death and then eventually reunited. For more detailed explanations, see the Franks article.

The Merovingians were a dynasty of Frankish kings who ruled a frequently fluctuating area in parts of present-day France and Germany from the fifth to the eighth century. They were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" (Latin reges criniti) by contemporaries, for their symbolically unshorn hair (traditionally the tribal leader of the Franks wore his hair long, while the warriors trimmed it short).

The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to Merovech (sometimes Latinised as Meroveus or Merovius), leader of the Salian Franks from c.447 to 457, and emerges into wider history with the victories of his son Childeric I (reigned c.457 481) against the Visigoths, Saxons, and Alemanni. Childeric's son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts. He won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, on which occasion he adopted his wife's Roman Catholic faith, and decisively defeated the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. On his death, Clovis partitioned his kingdom among his four sons, according to Frankish custom. Over the next two centuries, this tradition of partition would continue. Even when multiple Merovingian kings ruled, the kingdom not unlike the late Roman Empire was conceived of as a single nation ruled collectively by several kings (in their own realms) and the turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole nation under a single king. Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success.

The Merovingian king was the master of the booty of war, both movable and in lands and their folk, and he was in charge of the redistribution of conquered wealth among the first of his followers. "When he died his property was divided equally among his heirs as though it were private property: the kingdom was a form of patrimony" (Rouche 1987 p 420). The kings appointed magnates to be comites, charging them with defence, administration, and the judgement of disputes. This happened against the backdrop of a newly isolated Europe without its Roman systems of taxation and bureaucracy, the Franks having taken over administration as they gradually penetrated into the thoroughly Romanised west and south of Gaul. The counts had to provide armies, enlisting their milites and endowing them with land in return. These armies were subject to the king's call for military support. There were annual national assemblies of the nobles of the realm and their armed retainers which decides major policies of warmaking. The army also acclaimed new kings by raising them on its shields in a continuance of ancient practice which made the king the leader of the warrior-band, not a head of state. Furthermore, the king was expected to support himself with the products of his private domain (royal demesne), which was called the fisc. Some scholars have attributed this to the Merovingians lacking a sense of res publica, but other historians have criticized this view as an oversimplification. This system developed in time into feudalism, and expectations of royal self-sufficiency lasted until the Hundred Years' War.

Merovingian law was not universal law based on rational equity, generally applicable to all, as Roman law; it was applied to each man according to his origin: Ripuarian Franks were subject to their own Lex Ribuaria, codified at a late date (Beyerle and Buchner 1954), while the so-called Lex Salica (Salic Law) of the Salian clans, first tentatively codified in 511 (Rouche 1987 p 423) was invoked under medieval exigencies as late as the Valois era. In this the Franks lagged behind the Burgundians and the Visigoths, that they had no universal Roman-based law. In Merovingian times, law remained in the rote memorisation of rachimburgs, who memorised all the precedents on which it was based, for Merovingian law did not admit of the concept of creating new law, only of maintaining tradition. Nor did its Germanic traditions offer any code of civil law required of urbanised society, such as Justinian caused to be assembled and promulgated in the Byzantine Empire. The few surviving Merovingian edicts are almost entirely concerned with settling divisions of estates among heirs.

The Merovingian kingdom, which included, from at latest 509, all the Franks and all of Gaul but Burgundy, from its first division in 511 was in an almost constant state of war, usually civil. The sons of Clovis maintained their fraternal bonds in wars with the Burgundians, but showed that dangerous vice of personal aggrandisement when their brothers died. Heirs were seized and executed and kingdoms annexed. Eventually, fresh from his latest familial homicide, Clotaire I reunited, in 558, the entire Frankish realm under one ruler. He survived only three years and in turn was his realm divided into quarters for his four living sons.

The second division of the realm was not marked by the confraternal ventures of the first, for the eldest son was debauched and short-lived and the youngest an exemplar of all that was not admirable in the dynasty. Civil wars between the Neustrian and Austrasian factions which were developing did not cease until all the realms had fallen into Clotaire II's hands. Thus reunited, the kingdom was necessarily weaker. The nobles had made great gains and procured enormous concessions from the kings who were purchasing their support. Though the dynasty would continue for over a century and though it would produced strong, effective scions in the future, its first century, which established the Frankish state as the most stable and important in Western Europe, also dilapidated it beyond recovery. Its effective rule notably diminished, the increasingly token presence of the kings was required to legitimise any action by the mayors of the palaces who had risen during the final decades of war to a prominence which would become regal in the next century. During the remainder of the seventh century, the kings ceased to wield effective political power and became more and more symbolic figures; they began to allot more and more day-to-day administration to that powerful official in their household, the mayor.

After the reign of the powerful Dagobert I (died 639), who had spent much of his career invading foreign lands, such as Spain and the pagan Slavic territories to the east, the kings are known as rois fainéants ("do-nothing kings"). Though, in truth, no kings but the last two did nothing, their own will counted for little in the decision-making process. The dynasty had sapped itself of its vital energy and the kings mounted the throne at a young age and died in the prime of life, while the mayors warred with one another for the supremacy of their realm. The Austrasians under the Arnulfing Pepin the Middle eventually triumphed in 687 at the Battle of Tertry and the chroniclers state unapologetically that, in that year, began the rule of Pepin.

Among the strong-willed kings who ruled during these desolate times, Dagobert II and Chilperic II deserve mention, but the mayors continued to exert their authority in both Neustria and Austrasia. Pepin's son Charles Martel even for a few years ruled without a king, though he himself did not assume the royal dignity. Later, his son Pepin the Younger or Pepin the Short, gathered support among Frankish nobles for a change in dynasty. When Pope Zacharias appealed to him for assistance against the Lombards, Pepin insisted that the church sanction his coronation in exchange. In 751, Childeric III, the last Merovingian royal, was deposed. He was allowed to live, but his long hair was cut and he was sent to a monastery.

There exists a limited number of contemporary sources for the history of the Merovingian Franks, but those which have survived cover the entire period from Clovis' succession to Childeric's deposition. First and foremost among chroniclers of the age is the canonised bishop of Tours, Gregory of Tours. His Decem Libri Historiarum is a primary source for the reigns of the sons of Clotaire II and their descendants until Gregory's own death.

The next major source, far less organised than Gregory's work, is the Chronicle of Fredegar, written by unknown authors. It covers the period from 584 to 641, though its continuators, under Carolingian patronage, extended it to 768, after the close of the Merovingian era. It is the only primary narrative source for much of its period.

Aside from these chronicles, the only surviving reservoires of historiography are letters, capitularies, and the like. Clerical men such as Gregory and Sulpitius the Pious were letter-writers, though relatively few letters survive. Edicts, grants, and judicial decisions survive, as well as the famous Lex Salica, mentioned above. From the reign of Clotaire II and Dagobert I survive many examples of the royal position as the supreme justice and final arbiter.

Finally, archaeological evidence cannot be ignored as a source for information, at the very least, on the modus vivendi of the Franks of the time. Among the greatest discoveries of lost objects was the 1653 accidental uncovering of Childeric I's tomb in the church of Saint Brice in Tournai. The grave objects included a golden bull's head and the famous golden insects (perhaps bees, cicadas, aphids, or flies) on which Napoleon modelled his coronation cloak. In 1957, the sepulchre of Clotaire I's second wife, Aregund, was discovered in Saint Denis Basilica in Paris. The funerary clothing and jewellery were reasonably well-preserved, giving us a look into the costume of the time.

· Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln use the Merovingians in their book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982, reprinted 2004; Delacorte Press, ISBN 0385338597, as Holy Blood, Holy Grail), which later influenced the novel The Da Vinci Code. Relying on conjecture and methodological fallacies to re-interpret historical sources, the theory says that the Merovingians were the descendants of Jesus Christ; it is seen as popular pseudohistory by academic historians.

France in the Middle Ages roughly corresponds to modern day France from the death of Charlemagne in 814 to the middle of the 15th century. The Middle Ages in France were marked by (1) the Viking invasions and the piecemeal dismantling of the Carolingian Empire by local powers, (2) the elaboration of the seigneurial economic system and the feudal system of rights and obligations between lords and vassals, (3) the growth of the Capetian dynasty and their struggles with the expanding Norman and Angevin regions, (4) a period of artistic and literary outpouring from the 12th to the early 14th centuries, (5) the rise of the Valois dynasty, the protracted dynastic crisis of the Hundred Years' War with Britain and the catastrophic Black Death epidemic, and (6) the expansion of the French nation in the 15th century and the creation of a sense of French identity.

Discussion of the size of France in the Middle Ages is complicated by distinctions between lands personally held by the king (the "domaine royal") and lands held in homage by another lord. The notion of res publica inherited from the Roman province of Gaul was not fully maintained by the Frankish kingdom and the Carolingian Empire, and by the early years of the Capetians, the French kingdom was more or less a fiction. The "domaine royal" of the Capetians was limited to the regions around Paris, Bourges and Sens. The great majority of French territory was part of Aquitaine, the Duchy of Normandy, the Duchy of Brittany, the Comté of Champagne, the Duchy of Burgundy, and other territories (for a map, see Provinces of France). In principle, the lords of these lands owed homage to the French king for their possession, but in reality the Capetian king in Paris had little control over these lands, and this was to be confounded by the uniting of Normandy, Aquitaine and England under the Plantagenet dynasty in the 12th century.

Philippe II of France undertook a massive French expansion in the 13th century, but most of these acquisitions were lost both by the royal system of "apanage" (the giving of regions to members of the royal family to be administered) and through losses in the Hundred Years' War. Only in the 15th century would Charles VII of France and Louis XI of France gain control of most of modern day France (except for Brittany, Navarre and areas to the east and north).

The weather in France and Europe in the Middle Ages was signifiantly milder than during the periods preceding or following it. Historians refer to this as the "Medieval Warm Period", lasting from about the 10th century to about the 14th century. Part of the French population growth in this period (see below) is directly linked to this temperate weather and its effect on crops and livestock.

France in the Middle Ages was the most populated region in Europe (and the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India), although there were great differences in density between the populated north and the relatively unpopulated south. In the 14th century, before the arrival of the Black Death, the total population of the area covered by modern day France has been estimated by some at around 20 million (this would again be the population of France in the 1600s). Paris, the largest city in Europe, may have had upwards of 200,000 inhabitants. The Black Death killed an estimated one-third of the population from its appearance in 1348. The concurrent Hundred Years' War slowed recovery. It would be the early sixteenth century before the population recovered to mid-fourteenth century levels (see Demographics of France).

Up to roughly 1340, the Romance languages spoken in the Middle Ages in the Northern half of what is today's France are collectively known as "ancien français" ("Old French") or "langues d'oïl" (languages where one says "oïl" to mean "yes"): following the Germanic invasions of France in the fifth century, these Northern dialects had developed distinctly different phonetic and syntactical structures from the languages spoken in Southern France (collectively known as "langues d'oc" or the Occitan language family, of which the largest group is the Provençal language). The Western peninsula of Brittany spoke Breton, a Celtic language. Catalan was spoken in the South, and Germanic languages and Francoprovençal were spoken in the East.

The various "Langues d'oïl" and "Langue d'oc" dialects developed into what are recognised as regional languages today. Languages which developed from dialects of Old French include: Bourguignon, Champenois, Franc-Comtois, Francien (theoretical), Gallo, Lorrain, Norman, Anglo-Norman (spoken in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066), Picard, Poitevin-Saintongeais, and Walloon. Languages which developed from dialects of the Occitan family include: Auvergnat, Gascon, Languedocien, Limousin, Provençal.

From 1340 to the beginning of the seventeenth century, a generalized French language became clearly distinguished from the other competing Oïl languages. This is referred to as Middle French ("moyen français") and would be the basis of Modern French. Although French gradually became an important cultural and diplomatic language, it made few inroads into Occitan and other linguistic regions other than in areas where the French monarchy had established significant control.

During the latter years of the elderly Charlemagne's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of his kingdom. After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining any kind of political unity and the once great Empire began to crumble. Viking advances were allowed to escalate, their dreaded longboats were sailing up the Loire and Seine Rivers and other inland waterways, wreaking havoc and spreading terror. In 843 the Viking invaders murdered the Bishop of Nantes and a few years after that, they burned the Church of Saint-Martin at Tours. Emboldened by their successes, in 845 the Vikings sacked Paris.

The Carolingians were subsequently to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two families, the accession (987) of Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, established on the throne the Capetian dynasty which with its Valois and Bourbon offshoots was to rule France for more than 800 years.

The Carolingian era had seen the gradual emergence of institutions which were to condition France's development for centuries to come: the acknowledgement by the crown of the administrative authority of the realm's nobles within their territories in return for their (sometimes tenuous) loyalty and military support, a phenomenon readily visible in the rise of the Capetians and foreshadowed to some extent by the Carolingians' own rise to power.

The old order left the new dynasty in immediate control of little beyond the middle Seine and adjacent territories, while powerful territorial lords such as the 10th and 11th-century counts of Blois accumulated large domains of their own through marriage and through private arrangements with lesser nobles for protection and support.

The area around the lower Seine, ceded to Scandinavian invaders as the Duchy of Normandy in 911, became a source of particular concern when Duke William took possession of the kingdom of England in the Norman Conquest of 1066, making himself and his heirs the King's equal outside France (where he was still nominally subject to the Crown).

Worse was to follow. A protracted succession dispute among William's descendants ended in 1154 with the coronation of Henry II. Henry had inherited the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou from his father, Geoffrey of Anjou, and in 1152, he had married France's newly-divorced ex-queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who ruled much of southwest France. After defeating a revolt led by Eleanor and three of their four adult sons, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned, made the Duke of Brittany his vassal, and in effect ruled the western half of France as a greater power than the French throne. However, disputes between Henry's descendants over the division of his French territories, coupled with Richard I's lengthy absence during, and imprisonment while returning from, the Third Crusade, allowed Philip II to recover influence over most of this territory. After the French victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the English monarchs maintained power only in southwestern Duchy of Guyenne.

The 13th century was to bring the crown important gains also in the south, where a papal-royal crusade against the region's Albigensian or Cathar heretics (1209) led to the incorporation into the royal domain of Lower (1229) and Upper (1271) Languedoc. Philip IV's seizure of Flanders (1300) was less successful, ending two years later in the rout of her knights by the forces of the Flemish cities at the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk (Courtrai).

The extinction of the main Capetian line (1328) brought to the throne the related house of Valois, but as Philip IV's grandson, Edward III of England claimed the French crown for himself, this helped inaugurate the succession of conflicts known collectively as the Hundred Years' War. Under Salic law the crown couldn't pass through a woman (Philip IV's daughter was Isabella, whose son was Edward III). So instead the Valois dynasty came to power - Philip VI, son of Charles of Valois, was king from 1328-1350. This, in addition to a long-standing dispute over the rights to Gascony in the south of France, and the relationship between England and the Flemish cloth towns, led to the Hundred Years' War of 1337-1453. The following century was to see devastating warfare, peasant revolts in both England (Wat Tyler's revolt of 1381) and France (the Jacquerie of 1358) and the growth of nationhood in both countries.

French losses in the first phase of the conflict (1337-1360) were partly reversed in the second (1369-1396); but Henry V's shattering victory at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 against a France now bitterly divided between rival Armagnac and Burgundian factions of the royal house was to lead to his son Henry VI's recognition as king in Paris seven years later under the 1420 Treaty of Troyes, reducing Valois rule to the lands south of the Loire River.

France's humiliation was abruptly reversed in 1429 by the appearance of a restorationist movement symbolised by the Lorraine peasant maid Joan of Arc, who claimed the guidance of divine voices for the campaign which rapidly ended the English siege of Orléans and ended in Charles VII's coronation in the historic city of Reims. Subsequently captured by the Burgundians and sold to their English allies, her execution for heresy in 1431 redoubled her value as the embodiment of France's cause.

Reconciliation between the king and Philippe of Burgundy (1435) removed the greatest obstacle to French recovery, leading to the recapture of Paris (1436), Normandy (1450) and Guienne (1453), reducing England's foothold to a small area around Calais (lost also in 1558). After victory over England, France's emergence as a powerful national monarchy was crowned by the "incorporation" of the Duchy of Burgundy (1477) and Brittany (1532), which had previously been independent European states.

The losses of the century of war were enormous, particularly owing to the plague (the Black Death, usually considered an outbreak of bubonic plague), which arrived from Italy in 1348, spreading rapidly up the Rhone valley and thence across most of the country: it is estimated that a population of some 18-20 million in modern-day France at the time of the 1328 hearth-tax returns had been reduced 150 years later by 50% or more.

The Prieuré de Sion, usually rendered in English translation as Priory of Sion or Priory of Zion, has, since the 1970s, been an elusive protagonist in many conspiratorial works of pseudohistory. It has been characterized as anything from the most influential secret society in Western history to a modern Rosicrucian-esque ludibrium, but, ultimately, has been proven to be a hoax created by Pierre Plantard. Most of the evidence presented in support of claims pertaining to its historical existence, let alone significance, has not been considered authentic or persuasive by established historians, academics, and universities. There was a very small medieval monastic order known as the Abbey of Sion, but it and all its assets were absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617. The mistake is often made that this Abbey of Sion was a "Priory of Sion", but there is a difference between an Abbey and a Priory. The French scholar Emmanuel Rey discovered the historical references to the L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame du Mont-Sion and published his findings in 1888 (Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, tome XLVIII) - the File Reference Number to this article in the French National Library in Paris is 8-O2F-762.

The Priory of Sion is an association that was founded in 1956, in the French town of Annemasse. As with all associations, French law required the association to be registered with the government. This took place at the Sous-Prefecture of Saint Julien-en-Genevois, in May 1956, and its registration was noted on 20 July 1956 in the Journal Officiel de la République.