Brunhild

Brunhild (born c. 534—died 613, Renève, Burgundy [now in France]) was the queen of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia, daughter of the Visigothic king Athanagild, and one of the most forceful figures of the Merovingian age.

In 567 Brunhild married Sigebert I, king of Austrasia, changing her religion from Arianism to Roman Catholicism. In the same year, her sister Galswintha married Sigebert’s half brother Chilperic I, king of the western part of the Frankish territory, but in 567 or 568, at the instigation of his concubine Fredegund, Chilperic had Galswintha murdered. Prompted by Brunhild, Sigebert then exacted Galswintha’s marriage settlement (Bordeaux, Limoges, Quercy, Béarn, and Bigorre) as retribution from Chilperic. When Chilperic tried to recover this territory, war broke out between him and Sigebert (573). At first it ran in Sigebert’s favour, but in 575 he was assassinated and Brunhild was imprisoned at Rouen. There, however, Merovech, one of Chilperic’s sons, went through a form of marriage with her (576). Chilperic soon had this union dissolved, but Brunhild was allowed to go to Metz in Austrasia, where her young son Childebert II had been proclaimed king. There she was to assert herself against the Austrasian magnates for the next 30 years. She encouraged the Byzantine-backed pretender Gundoald against Guntram, king of Burgundy, but Guntram made Childebert his heir, placating Brunhild and securing his own position against Gundoald.

After Childebert’s death (595), Brunhild failed to set herself up as guardian over Childebert’s elder son, Theodebert II of Austrasia, and thus stirred up against him his brother Theodoric II, who had succeeded to Burgundy. Theodebert was overthrown in 612, but Theodoric died soon afterward (613), whereupon Brunhild tried to make the latter’s eldest son, the 12-year-old Sigebert II, king of Austrasia. The Austrasian magnates appealed to Chlotar II of Neustria against her. Brunhild tried in vain to enlist the help of the tribes east of the Rhine and then fled to Burgundy. Garnier, the mayor of the palace in Burgundy, was in league with Chlotar, however, and Brunhild’s army refused to fight when it met Chlotar’s on the Aisne River. Brunhild was handed over to Chlotar at Renève (northeast of Dijon). The nearly 80-year-old queen was tortured for three days, bound to a camel and exposed to the mockery of the army, and finally dragged to death at a horse’s tail (autumn 613).

Brunhild’s ashes were interred in a mausoleum erected near the abbey of St. Martin at Autun, which she had founded. Her memory was highly venerated there, but historians throughout the ages have had conflicting opinions about her. Gregory of Tours applauds her for her personal morality and for her political wisdom, whereas Fredegarius treats her with undisguised vitriol. The Franks over whom she sought to rule resented her Gothic origin, and the tragic course of her life has made her a figure of legend.