Gone Medieval - Brunhild and Fredegund: The Queens Who Fought for 40 Years

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

We've all heard epic tales of early medieval kings, but what about the queens? It doesn't get much more spectacularly brutal than Brunhild and Fredegund, two sixth century queens who fought a bloody civil war against one another that lasted no less than four decades.The rival matriarchs commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes... yet their story has been largely forgotten, until now. In this episode for International Women's Day, host, Dr Cat Jarman is joined by award-winning poet and writer Shelley Puhak, whose new book The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World tells this gripping tale of power, ambition and murderous rivalry in early medieval France.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Gone Medieval newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. Stories we hear about early medieval Europe are often filled with battles and the rulership of kings. But what about the queens? We certainly don't hear quite as much about those and certainly not in the earliest part of the medieval period. Now if you're listening to this today on the Tuesday, the 8th of March 2022, you'll probably know that today is International Women's Day, a day when the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women are being celebrated. So what would be more fitting than to talk about two remarkable

7th century queens who cried out some very impressive political achievements? These two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes, and at the same time, they fought a grueling 40-year civil war with each other. You may not have heard of them. They're called Brunhild and Fredegund, but in a brand-new book, that story is finally told. The book is called The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak, who's here with me today. Shelley is originally a writer and an award-winning poet who has now turned her hand to non-fiction.

Shelley, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you. And congratulations on the book. So this is now out in the UK and in the US, so taking both sides of the Atlantic by storm at the same time, which is very exciting. And this is your first nonfiction book, isn't it? You've done a lot of other writing, and you've done poetry, and this is the first time you got into nonfiction. It is, so it's very exciting.

And I do have to say, so you've come up with a really brilliant, story about these two women. And it's a story that sometimes feels a bit like it must surely be legend or fiction rather than actually rooted in real stories, that it's sort of too wild to be true. So you've got these women who go from just being a wife and in the case being a slave to being really very powerful rulers commanding armies, forming big coalitions and reigning over actually really vast territories. And then they become embroiled in this pretty much a sort of civil war, I suppose, rivalry against each other. And I think for most of our listeners, this will be a pretty unknown story. They might not even have heard of Brunhild and Fredegund. So I need to

really ask, how did you come across them? And why did you get interested in telling this particular story? I came across their story completely by accident. So I was researching something completely different. And I was looking at this particular grudge match between Queen Estrid of Denmark. and the King of Norway, and I came across a notation in one of the sources that said something to the essence of, if you think their rivalry is pretty bloody, wait until you hear the story of Brunhildon Fredigan. And I had never heard of either of these women, so right away, I looked them up. And about the same time, it was the Halloween holiday over here, and I had purchased from my

local costume shop, one of those giant biking helmets that we know aren't very historically accurate, but one of those big plastic affairs with the horns and the glued on blonde braids. And at the same time, I thought, I know that this helmet is based loosely on this operatic character named Brunhild. Are they the same person? And I realized that that character was an amalgam of these real-life queens. And I was absolutely fascinated. And the more I learned about them, I pretty much dropped everything else and dedicated myself to getting the story out to a larger audience, because it was just so fantastic. And that's just a brilliant sorting point, isn't it? to go from there into a book, which I'm very excited about. But just to sort of give our listeners

a bit of an idea, I was hoping we could talk a little bit about these two women and explain a bit of who they were and some of these extraordinary tales that they come embroiled with. So can you just sort of introduce them? Who were they? If we sort of started with Brunhild, for example, what can you tell us about her? So Brunhild is born a Visigoth princess in what is now Spain. and she's been groomed. She's the younger daughter of a king who has no son, so she's been groomed throughout her life to make a good marriage alliance.

And she marries a Frankish king. And then the woman who will become her political rival, Fredigan, is a palace slave who becomes her sister-in-law when she marries another one of the Frankish brothers. And at this time, this is in the latter half of the sixth century, and this is in Francia. And for those who aren't familiar with

that there are several kingdoms, but the territory altogether encompasses most of modern-day France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, got Western and Southern Germany and bits of Switzerland. So it's a pretty vast territory. And they are both marrying into the Merovingian dynasty, which is not nearly as well known as the dynasty that's going to supplant it, the Carolingians. And they both become influential queen consorts, and after the assassinations of their husbands, they both become long-term regents. and as you mentioned, they fight a civil war against one another.

So I just have to pick up on Fredigan, actually. So you said that she was originally a slave, and then she becomes essentially a queen. Was that something that was quite common or possible? I mean, it sounds unlikely, possibly, demotionalism. It seems incredible, but this part of the 6th century is incredible in so many ways because there's so much social mobility. So both of these women are born on the tail end of massive climate change

and a worldwide pandemic. So there are unprecedented opportunities. We have enslaved people who are running away. They are marrying out of slavery. And at that point in time, that was something that you could do. So if you married somebody highborn, to be enslaved was unfortunate,

but it wasn't necessarily a lifetime commitment. So it was something that a position that you can move in and out of. But she seems to have been very clever. And we don't know much about her background. Throughout her life, she pretty much suppressed any mention of where she came from.

But what we can piece together is she was somehow brought in as a young girl to the household of the reigning queen who took a liking to her. She ends up supplanting that queen, you know, for the king's affections. He sets her aside to marry Brunhild's sister because he wants to make a prestigious match. And then she has a hand in the murder of that new queen. And three days later, the king marries her. And we know that she was incredibly well educated, which is no one can quite figure it out, but that she could read Latin and she could read Frankish.

So there's a lot of questions about her background. There's some mystery there, but she was certainly an ironwilled figure who was able to take advantage of the circumstances. And this was a time that really favored the bold, and she certainly was bold. And so how much do we really know about these characters then? I mean, this is a period where really we don't have that many reliable sources. Was that something that you struggled with when you're researching this? You know, what sort of material did you really have to work with?

You know, it is a real difficulty because scholars estimate that less than 1% of the sources that were produced in this time period survived, and some of that's purposeful suppression, and some of that's just bad luck. But luckily, there are some sources that survive from both the Queen's contemporaries. So we have Gregory, who's the Bishop of Tour, and he's one of Brunhild's allies. He's terribly embarrassed that she helped him get his job as bishop. So he really goes to Great Lentz to sort of hide that fact. And he really goes after Freda Gunn.

So he has to be very careful what he says about his patron, Brunheld. But Fredigan clearly enrages him, and he has an incentive to sort of portray her in the worst possible light. But through him, we do get actual dialogue and these sort of snippets of actual councils and meetings and things of that nature. And there's another contemporary, this is the poet Fortunatus. He's a friend of Gregory's, but he makes his living writing poems for all of the rich people in the Frankish kingdoms. And he ends up writing poems about both queens. And through this, we get a glimpse of how they wanted to be seen, how they wanted to be portrayed. We also have some surviving letters that were written by Brunheld, surprisingly,

and also letters that others wrote to her even if we don't have her response. So we can get a sense of what they were negotiating, what they were discussing. And then I had to sort of rely on other historical chronicles, church records, church councils, even some stories of saints' lives and they happen to interact with the queens, so you get a little bit here and there. But as you mentioned, it is difficult and it's really kind of like looking through a kaleidoscope where everything's distorted and you have to sort of pick through it and try to piece it together. Do you feel then that the story, the narrative that you've ended up with in your book, Do you feel that it's quite likely true to what happened in their lives?

Or are there sort of quite alternative views in this particular case as well? I think there are a few instances where there might be some disagreement. And I try to be kind of forthright with that and indicate that in the end notes. So, for example, there are some arguments about birth dates or death dates and try to lay out my rationale for why I think, for example, a marriage happened in a certain year because the king was off fighting a war. he couldn't have gotten married, you know, earlier or later. But I think I'm quite pleased with how it came together. And I think there is enough that there are little gaps. And I try to be fair and indicate we're not quite sure what happened here, but this is what seems most likely. But then there are a lot of other things we can be quite certain of, or at least reasonably

certain of the order or the motivations for certain things happening. Now, I'm quite interested some of this rivalry and some of these quite, shocking events that take place in their lifetime between the two queens. And especially Fredegund has quite often, if you Google her and look for information, she has given a very bad reputation and she's been depicted as a very ruthlessly murderous and sadistically cruel as I want quote online for her. Can you tell me a little bit of some of those stories? What did she do to sort of deserve a reputation like that? She definitely had a talent for assassination. So, she is well known for putting together some very bold assassination attempts and oftentimes succeeding

where others had failed. She's relentless in that if she doesn't get somebody the first time, she will keep going. And a lot of times it seems like these plots were designed, we almost call them domestic terrorism, in order to basically cow other people into submission more than they're even meant to get rid of their intended target. But we also have her, she's a really brilliant military leader. And she does something that's really rare for this time period where she sort of flips the script because this is a, the Franks really revere the warrior king, this idea of this strong virile man who goes out to fight. And in fact, they have this draft every spring where they're picking out the best men and then they all go on campaign in the summer. And this is something that

women are excluded from. And she's able not only to sort of wheedle her way in, but then to command their respect and to lead men, particularly in cases where she's outnumbered, and it looks like basically riding to certain death, and she's somehow able to sort of snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat, as they say. So it both sense her sense of strategy and of timing is quite impeccable, as well as her nerve. And just to give you one example, one of the ways that she's able to seize the regency is there's a time where she's completely out of power. She's been sent off to the countryside with her young infant son and essentially living far from the locus of power in disgrace. And the bishop of the town really hates her and has been basically insinuating that,

you know, your time is almost up, that I will keep my title, but you won't. And she organizes the spectacular assassination on Easter during Easter Mass in the cathedral where that bishop is stabbed in front of everyone in the church. He happens not to die. He's bleeding out. They take this bishop to his quarters and she has the nerve to go and sit with him and say, oh, I'm so sorry that this happened. Would you like for me to get my doctor? And, you know, the bishop says, I know who did this and no, I don't want your doctor and essentially thinks to the effect of, you know, please get out. And she watches and waits until he has bled out and he is dead. So these sorts of things are just for most people, they're just sort of shocking. And then when people come and accuse her of this,

you know, they say, I can't believe you did this. This is ridiculous. She ends up poisoning some of the people who come to protest her actions. And essentially, though, rather than being a pariah, people rally to her side because there's something in her, this sort of fierce warrior king that they see in her that really attracts them, really draws them in. kind of fair then, I suppose, this reputation, but in the circumstances, something that was respected. Hi, everyone, I'm Jimmy Doherty, TV presenter, farmer and conservationist. I've got a brand new podcast where we discuss all things green, from nature to recycling,

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and Fredigan a little bit more so they are both contemporaries they are both queens. How did that work them? Did they have different territories? Can you explain a little bit about what they were fighting about, essentially? Sure. So one of the big problems with the Meravengian dynasty is they don't practice primogeniture.

So any son of the king inherits a bit of the king upon his death, and that is legitimate and illegitimate sons. So frequently there are quite a few sons because kings want to make sure with mortality, rates being as high as they are, that they have plenty of. of heirs, but this means when they come on the scene that the Frankish Empire has been split into four kingdoms. And essentially, we see as King dies off, the remaining brothers will essentially absorb that territory. And with Brunheld and Fredigan, we get to a situation where the Frankish Empire has been divided into two, and they're each controlling a bit of it. Brunheld has a

significantly larger portion of that land, and they're battling to see who is going to out. the other one and become the sole ruler and then put their own male relative, whether that's a son or grandson, on the throne. Okay. So, and was there anything in particular that sort of surprised you about this rivalry between them? Well, one thing that really surprised me is that it's been portrayed as essentially a catfight between two women. And a lot of people make a lot of the fact that Freda Gun had a hand in the murder of Brunheld sister. And this plays out as some sort of a love triangle, you know, that she's avenging her sister. Brunhild's avenging her sister and that, you know, Fredegon is sort of fighting back. But I think one thing that really surprised me is that they at times, there's a degree

of cooperation between the women. They're more similar than they are different. And they're both building their own support networks, but they're also, you know, moments of cooperation between Brunhild and Fredigan. There's like a short-lived alliance between their kingdoms when they work together. And I think this suggests that they're pragmatic and the rivalry between the two is nothing personal. And we see the sort of politics as a blood sport with all of the men in the Meravengean dynasty. And so in some ways, rather than it being, oh my gosh, look at these women pulling one another's hair out, it's essentially women having a seat at the table and doing exactly what the men around them are doing, just doing it a little better in this particular instance.

I like that. So this then, of course, is very much a story about women and parents. power. And so as you're saying just right now, the fact that they are empowered and how they are using that power. So I want to talk a little bit about that. I mean, how unusual was it for women to have that amount of power in the sixth century in Western Europe? So I had initially assumed that Brunhild and Fredigan were exceptions to the role. And I was really surprised to discover that there were quite a few female political leaders in the sixth century. So earlier, we have an Austro-Gothic queen named Queen of Malacantha. But at the same time as these queens are ruling, we also have

a queen ruling in Lombard, Italy, we have a female region in the Byzantine Empire, we have an empress in Japan, and we have a queen ruling in one of the Mayan states. So that's pretty incredible to me that there are so many kingdoms so far apart that are all headed up by a woman. And at this time period, we also have women exerting power as abysses, as business owners, Salick Law did forbid women from inheriting royal property, from inheriting the crown, but it didn't prevent them from inheriting an estate from, you know, a father or a brother and being able to run that business. Widows in particular had an immense amount of power. Once their husbands died, they had complete control of the children and of all of the estates. So if you were lucky enough

to be a young, wealthy widow, you had quite a bit of power. And we have all of the these instances in this period of women who are entangled in political plots. We have nuns who participate in an armed rebellion. And given how many sources were lost, I think it's safe to say that we don't even know the half of it. There are probably a lot more instances of powerful women in the sixth century. It's more a sort of our modern day perception and then based on the last few hundred years of historiography, I suppose, that has given us this idea that it was unusual. So yes, you mentioned widows and the fact that they might have children or grandchildren. And in the case of these two then, Brunhild and Fredegund, was that the case for them?

Were they ruling in the place of their children? That was the one way that women, because they were forbidden from actually having the crown could rule, was as regents. In their cases, though, they are such long-term regents. And then we even have this instance, for example, when Brunheld's son comes of age and has a wife and has a kid that she's still ruling as his partner and is acknowledged as such in all of the treaties. So she's an equal party. And then he unfortunately dies. And then she takes over again as regent for grandsons and then for great-grandsons. So these are long-term regencies. And we even see jokes in some of the literature, the chronicles of the era, where essentially saying, like, we know who's really in power. And something I found fascinating,

too, was when there were people who were either counterfeiting or forging things that they learned to forge the queen seal or the queen's signature and not the kings. So it kind of tells you who really held power and held power for such a long time. I think we're used to regencies being a short period of time for a handful of years while we're waiting for a teenage son to grow up instead of what we see here, which is spanning more than a decade in all cases. And I guess that also shows that within those society, this was really quite accepted. It wasn't unusual. I'd presumably none of this in the text that you work with, discuss it as unusual or, you know, say this was extraordinary, do they? Well, there's a lot of men, and particularly in the church who are quite upset

about it. So I would say that that's something that's still being worked out. I mean, even with the church itself. So in the early part of the sixth century, we still have women who are serving as deacons. So they're actually participating in the mass as well as at the same time. They're trying to outlaw on counsel after council, priests having wives and producing children. So there's a sense where the situation is very fluid for a period of time and one's not quite certain what faction is going to win out. So there certainly are people who are very, or what we would consider more progressive when it came to women's rights. For example, Brunhill collaborates with Pope Gregory the Great, and he works with women from all walks of life and is well known for it. And he also has this great pronouncement that it's okay for women to be in church when they're menstruating because that's natural.

that's okay. But that also tells you that there are clearly factions in the church that are much more fundamentalist and in keeping what we might think of for the early middle ages in terms of being very misogynistic. So it's a difficult question to answer as to whether or not it's unusual because I think it really varies depending on what institution and what particular man you're talking to. So there certainly are some that find this just abhorrent and there are others you find this completely acceptable. As long as the ruler is competent, which both women seem to be, they're okay with it. And so you mentioned out there these were really quite long, lasting rulers.

Talk us through how it ends. How does it end for these two? Is it were there deaths or what happens at the end? So, yes, there are deaths and they couldn't be more different. So just like both Brunhild and Fredigan come from really different backgrounds, they have very different deaths. And Fredigan dies in her bed quietly, very conveniently. So there have been some questions about that. But for all intents and purposes, she dies peacefully and she's buried with great honor. And, you know, currently her tomb, one can still go and see it in St. Deney. And on the

other hand, Brunhild, so Fredegun dies first and her son, Clothar II, is able to take command of her kingdoms. And he's the one who actually deposes Brunheld. And he puts Brunheld to death in just a spectacularly gruesome execution. I don't know how many of the details I should get into, but I can tell you it involves horses and rope and basically being ripped apart. And, you know, it is so spectacularly gruesome that there's even rumors and kind of resistance for years after where people are still quite shocked by the manner of her death. It's also sort of unheard of for a woman to be publicly executed in such a brutal fashion. I suppose that also tells us a little bit about their place in society that people have these very strong emotions to go through to that extent to end her life.

I suppose that tells us something important as well. But I wanted to ask you then, what sort of influence do you think that these two women actually had on, on the, well, the development of Western Europe, really, particularly that part of it in the 6th century, and going on later than that. Yes, I think there's three main areas where they have a lot of influence. The first is, we might say, one provides the air and the other the land that's going to shape Europe

for the next few centuries. So Fredegun is the one whose blood flows through all subsequent kings in the Merivangian dynasty, and it's her son, as I mentioned, Clother, the second who will depose and execute Brunehild, But there are questions about Clothar's legitimacy, and some of them seem quite valid based on timing, et cetera. So Fredegun is the only parent we can really be certain of. And so everyone who follows, we just know is her descendant.

And as an aside, there are actually people alive today who trace their lineage back to Fredaigan, through a woman named Bertha Broadfoot, who was Charlemagne's mother, who may or may not have been part of the Maravigian royal family. but so in some ways we see her as the mother of the you know all of the subsequent merivindians and then possibly some of the carolingians and then brunhild her rival provides the land so she has gone ahead and united the bulk of western europe and when clother the second takes over he basically gets a ready-made empire he has this small little section of land she's united everything else and there we go we know that they have an outsized influence

on future queens. There are women who try to follow in their footsteps, take lessons from them, whether by trying to become regents themselves or by adopting some of their survival tactics. But I think most importantly, the backlash to their reins impacts Europe for centuries.

And one could argue that it really sets the world back in many ways. So we see both of them standing up to the church at a time when the church is consolidating power and it's growing more misogynistic. they sort of represent a more tolerant view, whether that's not necessarily because they were terribly tolerant people. It might have just been out of expediency of who was willing to work with them.

But unfortunately, their opponents, the more fundamentalist view wins. And we know how that votes for the next several hundred years. And essentially, though, Clotho the second Fredigan's son, in order to get certain key players to betray Brunhild so he can take over, he makes concessions to the nobles. So he limits his power and he splits Francia into three kingdoms. So basically he does a way with the dream of a unified empire like Rome, which so many people had been hoping to maybe one day be able to get back to. And we're stuck with a situation where we have fragmented nation states,

which is a situation that's going to continue and they're only going to fragment further as we get deeper into the medieval period. Okay, so what we talked about earlier on with the sources and things is all really the written records. And I'm an archaeologist, so I'm always going to have to sneak in some archaeological questions in there. But I know you said that actually, we do have some more ecological evidence relating to them, because in fact, we know of the grave or the burial team of Fredigan's mother-in-law, don't we? Which has actually given us some really quite crucial information about a woman like that. So can you tell us more about that grave? Yes, absolutely. So there are

were a lot of such graves that were unfortunately destroyed during the revolution. But in the 50s, one was uncovered. And this woman, they could tell by the grave goods, et cetera, was obviously somebody very important. And she had a signet ring on. And they were able to, by that, identifier as Aragon, who is the mother-in-law of Fredegund. And she was in really great conditions. So they were able to do, there was even some DNA testing done on her. But they were able to tell some things about her. Like, for example, we know that she had polio as a child and likely walked with a limp and she was quite short and diminutive in stature. And that also is interesting because there have been some questions about why she was potentially not more powerful. And it seems that she was

sort of a tiny woman who maybe stayed away from court and learned her place. But what's amazing is that so many of the textiles have survived. And that's something that, as you know, is very rare to have them in such great condition. And so she has on all of her garments. We've got linen and hemp and wool, silk, gold. They're all really high quality. There's some beaver, fur, and otter skin, and obviously a lot of embroidery.

And they're able to tell that some of these things were produced locally. And a lot of these, they can tell, are done to match sort of how the Romans would dye things or how Romans would dress in terms of the purple shellfish dye, for example. But we also know they have silk that's dyed with matter. We have woven bands that are decorated with diamonds, silk threads that are broider, a leather belt. And so that also, though, tells us something about how available silk was. And they were able to do

a lot of analysis on these textiles and tell that, for example, some of these come from as far as Some were woven in the Mediterranean region. Some come from as far as China. We know some of her jewelry, et cetera, was imported from the Persian region. So this paints a picture of, you know, Frankie as being at the center of these great trade routes, but also tells us the sort of clothing

that high status women were used to wearing. And the embroidery, if you can ever get a chance to have a look at it, is just exquisite. There's these like little rosettes all around, of cuffs and running down the edges and also tells us how they dressed. And I have to say, if I had to pick an outfit to wear, this one seems that when you hear about, for example, Fredigone riding into battle or there's some cases of, you know, Brunhild having to run out and jump in front of her men, you can actually see with their outfits how it's possible because

they're wearing basically like looser garments. There's no corsetting or anything of that nature. So essentially like a cafton with gowns. And they have a lot of fancy belts and jewelry. but also flat, you know, flat leather shoes that are that are laced up, much very similar to what a man would wear of the time period, just obviously a little longer, so it's hiding a little bit more of their legs. But you can see how a woman would be able to pull off some of these feats and move quite quickly. That's fantastic. I love the image of that. And I guess something like that just really brings it back to life, doesn't it? Because it make it feel that it is really a real genuine story. And I think that's really what you've done so well in this book. So these

clearly are women that need to come back out again from the shadows, I think. So anybody wants to know more about these two women. Do read The Dark Queens, a gripping tale of power, ambition, and murderous rivalry in early medieval France. Shelley, thank you so much for joining us today. It's really brilliant to hear more about it. Thank you so much for having me. I love and opportunity to talk about these queens and I really appreciate your enthusiasm. That was Shelley Puhak talking about her book The Dark Queens. That brings us to the end of this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already and also to our Medieval Monday's

newsletter. Just look in the episode notes wherever it is you've found this podcast and it'll tell you exactly how to do that. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman and I'll be back again next week. Thank you.