Thiudelind (550 AD)
My name is Thiudelind, named after my father Thiudpert, not after my mother Fridi. This is due to my father being of noble Frankish heritage, whereas my mother was but an Alamannic peasant commoner he took as a wife when he came to the Alamannia (1) in the following of Count Gunthart. I was also born here, and my father was very proud though my mother died shortly after my birth in a childbed fever. Hence my father bought Chunsina, a young Thuringian, to be my nurse. She had been carried off in a war campaign of our duke against the Thuringians (2).
I had to travel a lot in my childhood since my father followed his lord with the entire household from site to site, for Gunthart had become an important Cancellarius for King Chlothar (3). I have been to many places in Suebia and also in Austrasia, even in the lands of the Bavarians and in Burgundy (4). Chunsina stayed with us- she was very kind to me, no less when I got older, and soon became the bedfellow of my father. When she bore my father a son, my father married her. The boy died shortly after and the two other children she had given birth to in the following years also died of jaundice (5). Thus I remained my father’s only child. I enjoyed our journeys a lot, most of all the foreign people we met everywhere and sometimes the strange things that they ate. Chunsina was ever full of good spirits, though the Mother of God had obviously not blessed her with her own children. She had an outstanding pleasure in applying herbs and spices, brought by merchants from faraway lands, to create extraordinary dishes. I felt no different, and if my father’s friends should not envy him for his numerous children, then at least for his dinner table!
When I became an adult I was given many gifts, from Chunsina I even received her fibulae- the only possession she still had from her homeland. I still have those fibulae, though I do not wear them very often for they’re old-fashioned nowadays.
My father searched for a long time to find a good husband for me, because it had to be someone of rank and influence. But my father also wanted me to feel happy with my husband-to-be. Many suitors came to us and I’m sure many of them were good men, yet I was fearful and reclusive to leave my home and start a new one, and thus I found something to object to all of them. Besides, many men in the eastern regions still adhered to the heathen gods, yet King Childebert had forbidden it twenty years ago (6). Finally we stayed as guests with episcope (7) Sidonius of Vindonisse (8) who held court at Constantia. Among his following was Framminus, his secretarius and medicus, who was barely older than myself and everyone thought he would become a priest and episcope soon, too. He as well had been abroad for many times and we got along very well. This did not remain unnoticed by my father, and so the three men negotiated for some days. They agreed that Framm and I could be married and that we should receive an allodium (9) from my father in the Neckar valley. Yet as soon as my son, heir to our family, came of age, Framm should receive his ordination and a part of our possessions should be assigned to the Church. We all agreed with this, though it already seems strange to me that we will have to live in celibacy (10), then. But this seems far away, and who knows what plans the lord God has with us?
1 After the battles at Zülpich 496 and Strasbourg 506 AD the formerly autonomous Alamannia was under Frankish dominance. Already in the time of Clovis Frankish noblemen were sent as administrators to the newly founded province of Suebia to secure the Frankish claim to power. This is also the beginning of a discernable Frankish influence in the material culture of South Western Germany and of the Christianization of the people.
2 In 531 AD the Thuringian realm was subdued by the Franks and made part of their territory.
3 500-561 AD, Frankish king.
4 Suebia: formerly Alamannia; Austrasia: Frankish central region around Rhine, Main and Maas; Bavaria: present-day province including the territories reaching until the east of Salzburg; Burgundy: western Switzerland and south-eastern France.
5 Infant Icterus due to Rhesus blood type mismatch.
6 In 532 AD king Childebert I. issued an edict to prohibit heathen chants, dances and feasts and to displace pagan idols.
7 Bishop, deriving from gr. Episkopos, meaning “supervisor” or “principal”
8 Windisch (Ct. Aargau, CH). Roman legionary fort in 15-401 AD, Windisch became an important urban settlement in the early middle-ages with an own bishopric who was relocated to Constance in 585 AD.
9 A rural estate which is sole property of a person or family, unlike a fiefdom or shared possession.
10 The Catholic Church already demand celibacy of their priests in the early middle-ages, yet not necessarily to stay solitary (synod of Elvira in 306), in tradition of early Christian monastic communities. Obviously the practice of this did cause certain difficulties, hence the 2nd Lateran council in 1139 also made the solitary life of the priest part of the code of celibacy.
