At times it was applied to various priests, e. g. at the court of the Frankish monarchy the Abbas palatinus (' of the palace ') and Abbas castrensis (' of the camp ') were chaplains to the Merovingian and Carolingian sovereigns ’ court and army respectively.

It was not uncommon for the Merovingian, Carolingian, or later kings to make laymen abbots of monasteries ; the layman would often use the income of the monastery as his own and leave the monks a bare minimum for the necessary expenses of the foundation.

The characteristics they shared with many Merovingian female saints may be mentioned: Regenulfa of Incourt, a 7th-century virgin in French-speaking Brabant of the ancestral line of the dukes of Brabant fled from a proposal of marriage to live isolated in the forest, where a curative spring sprang forth at her touch ; Ermelindis of Meldert, a 6th-century virgin related to Pepin I, inhabited several isolated villas ; Begga of Andenne, the mother of Pepin II, founded seven churches in Andenne during her widowhood ; the purely legendary " Oda of Amay " was drawn into the Carolingian line by spurious genealogy in her 13th-century vita, which made her the mother of Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, but she has been identified with the historical Saint Chrodoara ; finally, the widely-venerated Gertrude of Nivelles, sister of Begga in the Carolingian ancestry, was abbess of a nunnery established by her mother.

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.

A Carolingian denarius replaced the Merovingian one, and the Frisian penning, in Gaul from 755 to the 11th century.

Hen believes that for Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitania, colloquial Latin remained the spoken language in Gaul throughout the Merovingian period and remained so even well in to the Carolingian period.

* Dr Deborah Vess: Merovingian and Carolingian bibliography, sources and web links.

* Pepin the Short is elected as king of the Franks by the Frankish nobility, marking the end of the Merovingian and beginning of the Carolingian dynasty.

The Frankish lands were divided and reunified several times under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, but eventually were firmly divided into France and the Holy Roman Empire.

During this chaotic period, Provence was ruled by Frankish kings of Merovingian dynasty, then Carolingian Kings, descended from Charles Martel ; and then was part of the empire of Charlemagne ( 742 – 814 ).

The Carolingian kings of the Franks traced Merovingian ancestry to the Germanic tribe of the Sicambri.

A Celtic oppidum, an important Gallo-Roman city, the Merovingian capital of the Austrasia kingdom, the birthplace of the Carolingian dynasty, a cradle of the Gregorian chant, and one of the oldest republics of the common era in Europe, Metz has a rich 3, 000-year-history.

Nevertheless, a number of Merovingian, Carolingian and Ottonian kings and emperors have avoided coronation and anointing.

The pattern of division and assassination which characterise even the strong king Dagobert's reign continued for the next century until Pepin the Short finally deposed the last Merovingian king in 751, establishing the Carolingian dynasty.

During the Merovingian and early Carolingian eras, the main focus of devotion for pilgrims was a well ( now located in the north side of Fulbert's crypt ), known as the Puits des Saints-Forts, or the ' Well of the Strong Saints ', into which it was believed the bodies of various local Early-Christian martyrs ( including saints Piat, Cheron, Modesta and Potentianus ) had been tossed.

By 751, the Merovingian dynasty which until then had ruled the Franks by right was deprived of this right with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy and a Carolingian, Pepin the Short, was crowned King of the Franks.

The traditional Frankish ( and Merovingian ) practice of dividing inheritances among heirs was not given up by the Carolingian emperors, though the concept of the indivisibility of the Empire was also accepted.

Later the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties had counts palatine, as did the Holy Roman Empire.

The most important of these was the comes palatinus, the count palatine, who in Merovingian and Carolingian times ( 5th through 10th century ) was an official of the sovereign's household, in particular of his court of law in the imperial palaces ( see kaiserpfalz ).

Tombs from the Merovingian ( 7th century ) and Carolingian ( 9th century ) periods have been found under the church.

The stream running through Dieppe was called Tella in Merovingian and Carolingian documents, before being called Dieppe in the 10th century.

The region, excepting Savoy, was part of the Merovingian and Carolingian Kingdoms before becoming a royal territory under the Capetians.

His graduation thesis, published in 1819, on the history of the Merovingian Mayors of the Palace, attracted the attention of the Prussian reformer Baron Stein, by whom he was engaged in 1820 to edit the Carolingian chroniclers for the newly-founded Historical Society of Germany.

The revolutionary character of the Carolingian reform cannot be over-emphasized ; efforts at taming the crabbed Merovingian and Germanic hands had been under way before Alcuin arrived at Aachen, where he was master from 782 to 796, with a two-year break.

In Merovingian France, ecclesiastical notaries, continuing Late Imperial practice, were attached to county courts as clerks of court who recorded proceedings and prepared and engrossed instruments and process which were later sealed before the count with the court's official seal to render them public and authentic.

Although in the 18th and 19th century these figures were mistakenly identified as the Merovingian monarchs of France ( thus attracting the opprobrium of Revolutionary iconoclasts ) they almost certainly represent the kings and queens of the Old Testament – another standard iconographical feature of gothic portals.

Gregory of Tours in his Libri Historiarum VII, 33, states that in 585 the Merovingian king Guntram designated his nephew Childebert II his heir by handing him his lance, it is possible that a royal lance was a symbol of kingship among the Merovingian kings and that a nail from Calvary was in the 7th century incorporated into this royal lance and thus eventually would have come into the German imperial regalia.

Lambert was related to Hugobert and Plectrude, Pepin of Heristal's lawful wife and thus an in-law of hereditary mayors of the palace who controlled the Merovingian kings of Austrasia.

In 715, the Neustrian noblesse proclaimed Ragenfrid mayor of their palace on behalf of, and apparently with the support of, Dagobert III, who in theory had the legal authority to select a mayor, though by this time the Merovingian dynasty had lost most such powers.

In 721, the emir of Córdoba had built up a strong army from Morocco, Yemen, and Syria to conquer Aquitaine, the large duchy in the southwest of Gaul, nominally under Frankish sovereignty, but in practice almost independent in the hands of the Odo the Great, the Duke of Aquitaine, since the Merovingian kings had lost power.

Clotaire's son Dagobert I ( died 639 ), who had sent troops to Spain and pagan Slavic territories in the east, is commonly seen as the last powerful Merovingian King.

The formerly Romanized north of Gaul, once it had been occupied by the Franks, would develop into Merovingian culture instead.

They hypothesized that this " descended from a fish " legend was actually referring to the concept that the Merovingian line had married into the bloodline of Jesus Christ, since the symbol for early Christians had also been a fish.

At the time of her exile she was put forward as a potential bride for the Merovingian Clovis, King of the Franks, who had just conquered northern Gaul.

By 632, Dagobert had Burgundy and Aquitaine firmly under his rule, becoming the most powerful Merovingian king in many years and the most respected ruler in the West.

With Grifo contained, the two mayors, who had not yet proved themselves in battle in defence of the realm as their father had, on the initiative of Carloman, installed the Merovingian Childeric III as king ( 743 ), even though Martel had left the throne vacant since the death of Theuderic IV in 737.

Anne Lombard-Jourdan traces the fleur-de-lis to a transformation of the Merovingian crista, a symbol evoking the rising sun ( word derived from crescere, " to grow ", alluding to the newborn Sun ) represented on their coinage, which had the form of a Greek cross with the horizontals curved upwards on either side.

Roland was evidently the first official appointed to direct Frankish policy in Breton affairs, as local Franks under the Merovingian dynasty had not previously pursued any specific relationship with the Bretons.

The marriage of Eadbald's Merovingian mother Bertha had resulted in the conversion of Kent, and Æthelburg's would do the same in Northumbria.

The Major Domo held and wielded the real and effective power to make decisions affecting the Kingdom, while in the mid to late Merovingian period, kings had been reduced to performing merely ceremonial functions, which made them little more than nominal kings or figureheads.

In the 7th century, Saint Waltrude, the daughter of an important Merovingian personality, gave some of her inherited land around Halle to the chapter of the abbey which she had just founded in Mons.

Around the end of the Roman era and at the beginning of the Merovingian period, the hamlet had become a fortified stronghold, then known as Héristal.

The Merovingian kings and dukes of Aquitaine had their capital at Toulouse.

Ethelbert of Kent's queen Bertha, daughter of Charibert, one of the Merovingian kings of the Franks, had brought a chaplain ( Liudhard ) with her.