Pépin, King of Italy

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 777
• Baptised: 15 Apr 781, Rome

Notes:

"Originally born with the name of Carloman (after his paternal uncle), he was renamed Pépin in 781 when he was named as king of Italy by pope Hadrian." [The Henry Project]

Family/Spouse: Chrothais. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Bernard, King of Italy was born about 797; died on 17 Apr 818 in Aachen, Westphalia, Germany.

Notes:

Also called Karolus Magnus; Charles the Great; Karl der Große.

Tradition says he was born in 742, but modern scholarship tends to regard 747 or 748 as more likely. Many authorities give the day of his birth as 2 April on one or the other of these years. Peter Stewart, writing on SGM on 5 Aug 2020, notes that no contemporary record gives us any certainty about either the year or the date. The first reference to his birthday being 2 Apr occurs in a calendar from the year 840. As 2 Apr was Easter Sunday in 747, it seems likely that this represented a latter-day burnishing of the late emperor's biography. As Stewart notes: "Obviously the silence of contemporaries about the emperor's birth occurring on the most joyful day of the religious calendar makes it somewhat implausible that he was really born on 2 April 747, yet that this propitious coincidence was somehow forgotten in his own family and at court only to be piously recalled later by a monk elsewhere."

Using Ahnentafel numbering, the ten proven ancestors of Charlemagne look like this:

1. Charlemagne
2. Pepin the Short, father
3. Bertrade of Laon, mother
4. Charles Martel, father's father
5. Rotrude, father's mother
6. Caribert of Laon, mother's father
7. ---
8. Pepin of Herstal, father's father's father
9. Alpaida, father's father's mother
10. ---
11. ---
12. ---
13. Bertrada of Prüm, mother's father's mother
14. ---
15. ---
16. Ansegisel, father's father's father's father
17. Begga, father's father's father's mother

Charlemagne married Hildegarde of Vinzgouw before 30 Apr 771. Hildegarde (daughter of Gerold of Swabia and Imma of Alemannia) was born between 2 May 757 and 30 Apr 761; died on 30 Apr 783. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 758

Notes:

Also called Hildegard of Swabia.

Pepin married Berthe "Broadfoot" of Laon. Berthe (daughter of Charibert) died on 8 Jun 783. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 12 Jul 783
• Alternate death: 13 Jul 783

Notes:

Bertrada of Laon; Regina pede aucae, i.e., the queen with the goose-foot.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 795

Notes:

Count in Vinzgau.

Gerold married Imma of Alemannia. Imma (daughter of Nebi) was born about 735; died about 788. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 740
• Alternate death: 798

Notes:

Remembered in Western history as the victor over the Umayyad Caliphate at Tours, October 732, long alleged to have been the decisive turning point in repelling the Muslim advance into Europe. Some modern historians question whether this single battle was quite so determinative. Some also question whether it happened in 732, or at Tours.

Charles married Rotrude of Trier. Rotrude died in 724. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Chrotrude, Chrothrudis; Rotrou of Treves.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef 762

Notes:

Also called Herbert. Count of Laon.

Or perhaps Hardrad. [Christian Settipani, Les Ancêtres de Charlemagne, Volume 2, second printing, 2015.]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 700
• Alternate death: Abt 775

Notes:

Count in Alemannia.

Also called Hnabi.

Pepin married Alpaida of Aupois. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Aupais; Chalpaida.

Notes:

"...[T]here is no proved descent from any member of the Merovingian dynasty to any later medieval or modern person. They were subjected to the triple historical indignities of usurpation by the Carolingian Pippin, damnatio memoriae in the Carolingian accounts of that usurpation (such as Einhard's Vita Karoli magni), and finally the broad early-medieval problem of the scarcity of written records. The result is that a large and many-branched family appears to peter out in the historical record. The most accessible careful prosopography of this family is Christian Settipani's book, La préhistoire des Capétiens, Nouvelle histoire généalogique de l'auguste maison de France, gen. ed. Patrick Van Kerrebrouck, vol. 1 part 1 (Villeneuve d'Asq: Patrick Van Kerrebrouck, 1993). With detailed and thorough citations to both primary sources and the interpretive secondary literature, Settipani summarizes each (if not all) of the commonly claimed gateways from the Merovingian dynasty. The assertion that Bertrada, founder of the abbey of Prüm, was of Merovingian royal blood, is not implausible but it was a suggestion, first made by Maurice Chaume, based essentially on onomastics (the fact that members of her family appear to have used names also found in the royal dynasty)." [Nathaniel Lane Taylor]

Notes:

Also called Ansgise; Ansigisel of Metz; Ansegis; Ansegisus, Duke d'Austrasie.

Murdered in consequence of his feud with Gundewin.

He has been long claimed as a son of Arnulf (~582-640), later-sainted bishop of Metz, but in recent decades scholarship has tipped strongly away from accepting this.

Ansegisel married St. Begga of Landen before 639. Begga died in 693. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Duke of the Alemannians, ca. 687-708/709.