Notes
Pippin the Younger or Pepin[1]
(714 –
September 24,
768), often known under the mistranslation Pippin the Short
or the ordinal Pippin III, was the
king of the Franks from
751 to
768 and is
best known for being the father of
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great.
He was born in
714 in
Jupille,
close to the city of
Liège, in what is today
Belgium,
where the
Carolingian dynasty originated. That territory was then a part of
the kingdom of
Austrasia. His father was
Charles Martel,
mayor of the palace and duke of the Franks, and his mother was
Chrotrud (a.k.a.
Rotrude of Treves) (690-724).
Assumption of power
On the death of Pippin's father, Charles Martel, in
741, power
was passed down to Charles' legitimate sons,
Carloman and Pippin as
mayors of the palaces of Neustria and Austrasia respectively. Power
may also have been intended for Charles' illegitimate son,
Grifo,
but he was imprisoned in a
monastery by his two half-brothers. Carloman, who by all evidence
was a deeply pious man, retired to a monastery in
747. This
left Francia in the hands of Pippin as sole
mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum, a title
originated by his grandfather and namesake
Pippin of Heristal.
Under the reorganization of Francia by Charles Martel the dux et
princeps Francorum were the commanders of the armies of the Kingdom,
in addition to their administrative duties as mayor of the palace, and
specifically commander of the standing guard which Martel had begun
maintaining year-around since Toulouse in 721.
Upon their assumption, Pippin and Carloman, who had not proved
themselves in battle in defense of the realm as their father had,
installed the
Merovingian
Childeric III as king, even though Martel had left the throne vacant
since the death of
Theuderic IV. Childeric had the title of king, but he was a puppet.
As time passed, and his brother bowed out of the picture, Pippin became
discontent with the presence of any royal power but himself.
At the time of Carloman's retirement, Grifo escaped his imprisonment
and fled to Duke
Odilo of Bavaria, who was married to Hiltrude, Pippin's sister.
Odilo was forced by Pippin to acknowledge Frankish overlordship, but
died soon after (January
18, 748).
Pippin invaded Bavaria and installed
Tassilo III as duke under Frankish overlordship.
First Carolingian king
Since Pippin had control over the magnates and actually had the power
of the king, he decided it was time to do what his father had never
bothered to do, make the Carolingian name royal in law as well as fact.
Pippin asked
Pope Zachary who should be the royal ruler: the person with the
title of King, or the person who makes the decisions as King. Since the
Pope
depended on the Frankish armies for his independence, and had depended
on them for protection from the
Lombards since the days of Charles Martel, and Pippin, as his father
had, controlled those armies, the Pope's answer was determined well in
advance. The Pope agreed that the de facto power was more
important than the de jure power. Thus, Pippin, having obtained
the support of the
papacy,
discouraged opposition to his house. He was elected King of the Franks
by an assembly of Frankish leading-men (it must be noted he had a large
portion of his army on hand, in the event that the nobility inclined not
to honor the Papal Bull) and anointed at
Soissons, perhaps by
Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz, who, along with his niece,
Saint Leoba,
was a court advisor. Meanwhile, Grifo continued his rebellion, but was
eventually killed in the battle of
Saint-Jean de Maurienne in
753.
Childeric III was deposed, his hair was shaved off and he was
confined to a monastery. He was the last of the
Merovingians.
Expansion of the Frankish realm
He added to that power after
Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to
Paris to
anoint Pippin in a lavish ceremony at
Saint Denis Basilica, bestowing upon him the additional title of
patricius Romanorum (Patrician
of the Romans). As life expectancies were short in those days, and
Pippin wanted family continuity, the Pope also anointed Pippin's sons,
Charles (eventually known as Charlemagne) and
Carloman.
Pippin's first major act was to go to war against the Lombard king
Aistulf,
who had a policy of expansion into the ducatus Romanum, as a
partial repayment for papal support in his quest for the crown.
Victorious, he forced the Lombard king to return property seized from
the Church and confirmed the papacy in possession of
Ravenna
and the
Pentapolis, the so-called
Donation of Pepin whereby the
Papal States was founded. In
759, he drove
the
Saracens out of
Gaul with
the capture of
Narbonne and then consolidated his power further by integrating
Aquitaine into the kingdom. In taking Narbonne, and formally
annexing Aquitaine (whose status was always dependent on the strength of
her suzerains), he completed the work of his father save for one last
task: fully subduing the
Saxons.
He was preparing for war against them when his health began to fail, and
thus, this final task was left for his son, the great Charlemagne.
Legacy
Pippin died at Saint Denis in
768 and is
interred there in the basilica with his wife
Bertrada. Pippin was buried "outside that entrance (of St. Denis
basilica), face down, for the sins of his father Charles Martel".[1]
Historical opinion often seems to regard him as the lesser son and
lesser father of two greater men, though a great man in his own right.
He continued to build up the
heavy cavalry which his father had begun. He maintained the standing
army that his father had found necessary to protect the realm and form
the core of its full army in wartime. He not only maintained his
father's policy of containing the
Moors, he
drove them over and across the
Pyrenees with the capture of Narbonne. He continued his father's
expansion of the Frankish church (missionary
work in
Germany and
Scandinavia) and the infrastructure (feudalism)
that would prove the backbone of medieval Europe. His rule, while not as
great as either his father's or son's, was historically important and of
great benefit to the Franks as a people. It can certainly be argued that
Pippin's assumption of the crown, and the title of Patrician of
Rome, were
harbingers of his son's imperial coronation which is usually seen as the
founding of the
Holy Roman Empire. He certainly made the Carolingians de jure
what his father had made them de facto—the ruling dynasty of the
Franks and the foremost power of Europe. While not known as a great
general, he was undefeated during his lifetime.
Family
In 740,
Peppin married Bertrada of Laon, his second cousin. Her father,
Charibert, was the son of Pippin II's brother, Martin of Laon. Of their
children, two sons and a daughter survived to adulthood.
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