Merovech (french: Mérovée, Merowig; la, Meroveus; 411 – 458) was the King of the Salian Franks, which later became the dominant Frankish tribe, and the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. Several legends and myths surround his person. He is proposed to be one of several barbarian warlords and kings that joined forces with the Roman general Aetius against the Huns under

Attila Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European traditio ...

at the

Battle of the Catalaunian Plains The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, Battle of Châlons, Battle of Troyes or the Battle of Maurica, took place on June 20, 451 AD, between a coalition – led by the Roman general ...

in Gaul in 451. His grandson

Clovis I Clovis ( la, Chlodovechus; reconstructed Frankish: ; – 27 November 511) was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the form of leadership from a group of petty kings to rule by a single kin ...

became the founder of the Frankish kingdom. The family of Childeric and Clovis, the first Frankish large-scale royal dynasty called themselves Merovingians ("descendants of Meroveus") after him, and this was known to historians in the following centuries, but no more contemporary evidence exists. The most important such written source, Gregory of Tours, recorded that Merovech was said to be descended from Chlodio, a roughly contemporary Frankish warlord who pushed from the Silva Carbonaria in modern central Belgium as far south as the

Somme __NOTOC__ Somme or The Somme may refer to: Places *Somme (department), a department of France *Somme, Queensland, Australia *Canal de la Somme, a canal in France *Somme (river), a river in France Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Somme'' (book), a ...

, north of Paris in modern-day France.

Name

The name ''Merovech'' is related to ''Marwig'', (compare modern Dutch "news, rumour", "famous" as well as "fight" with -''vech'').

Historical accounts

There is little information about him in the later histories of the Franks.

Gregory of Tours Gregory of Tours (30 November 538 – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of the area that had been previously referred to as Gaul by the Romans. He was born Georgius Florenti ...

only names him once as the father of Childeric I but remained vague about his relationship to Chlodio. The Chronicle of Fredegar recounts that Merovech was born after Chlodio's wife encountered a

sea creature Marine life, sea life, or ocean life is the plants, animals and other organisms that live in the salt water of seas or oceans, or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. At a fundamental level, marine life affects the nature of the pl ...

while bathing in the sea; according to Fredegar it remained unclear whether Merovech's father was the creature or Chlodio. Another theory considers this legend to be the creation of a mythological past needed to back up the fast-rising Frankish rule in Western Europe. Chlodio is said to have been defeated by Flavius Aëtius at Vicus Helena in Artois in 448.

Ian S. Wood Ian N. Wood, (born 1950) is an English scholar of early medieval history, and a professor at the University of Leeds who specializes in the history of the Merovingian dynasty and the missionary efforts on the European continent. Patrick J. Gea ...

would therefore place his son somewhere in the second half of the fifth century.Wood, Ian. ''The Merovingian Kingdoms 450 - 751'', Pearson Education Ltd., 1994
A contemporary Roman historian, Priscus writes of having witnessed in Rome a “lad without down on his cheeks as yet and with fair hair so long that it poured down his shoulders, Aetius had made him his adopted son”. Priscus writes that the excuse

used for waging war on the Franks was the death of their king and the disagreement of his children over the succession, the elder being allied with Attila and the younger with Aetius. As Chlodio died just before Attila's invasion, this seems to suggest that Merovech was in fact Chlodio's son.

References in popular culture

The legend about Merovech's conception was adapted in 1982 by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in their book '' The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail'', as the seed of a new idea. 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. This theory, with no other basis than the authors' hypothesis, was further popularized in 2003 via Dan Brown's bestselling novel, '' The Da Vinci Code''. However, there was no evidence for this claim that Merovech is descended from Jesus. The identity and historicity of Merovech is one of the driving mysteries in ''The Widow’s Son'', second book of Robert Anton Wilson’s ''

The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles ''The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles'' is a series of three novels by Robert Anton Wilson written after his highly successful ''The Illuminatus! Trilogy'' and his 1981 '' Masks of the Illuminati''. His co-author from the first trilogy, Robert S ...

'', first introducing the fish legend to the reader by having the early Merovingians appear in a vision as a hideous fish creature resembling H. P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, before settling on a variation on ''Holy Blood, Holy Grail'' which goes a step further by identifying Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the bridegroom and bride in '' The Alchemical Marriage of Christian Rosycross'' and Merovech as the titular Widow's Son from Masonic lore and positing that the entire bloodline is descended from

alien-human hybrid Alien abduction (also called abduction phenomenon, alien abduction syndrome, or UFO abduction) refers to the phenomenon of people reporting their experience of being Kidnapping, kidnapped by Extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial beings and subj ...

s.''The Widow's Son'', Robert Anton Wilson, 1985

Notes

References

* ''Behind the Da Vinci Code'', 2006, History (U.S. TV channel), History Channel documentary about Henry Lincoln * Todd, M. ''The Early Germans'' * Wood, Ian. ''The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751''. London: Longman Group, 1994.

External links