He won and was baptized by the Bishop of Rheims in 496. In 2014, Simcha Jacobovici and fringe religious studies historian Barrie Wilson suggested in The Lost Gospel that the eponymous characters in a 6th-century tale called "Joseph and Aseneth" were in actuality representations of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The mean elevation in the central area is about 4500 meters. Greece Historians generally regard these legends as "pious fraud" produced during the Middle Ages.[19][20][21]. Trained as a historian and researcher, and previously a professor of history, James is also a freelance writer who is keenly interested in cross-cultural exchange. [63], Many fundamentalist Christians believe the Antichrist, prophesied in the Book of Revelation, plans to present himself as descended from the Davidic line to bolster his false claim that he is the Jewish Messiah. Their language was Iranian. As you can imagine, the same argument resurfaced to the east of the Rhine during the First and Second World Wars. This find extended the range of the territory further east of the Scythians than had been previously thought. Historic Mysteries is an Amazon Associate and earns from qualifying purchases. Despite recent claims that the Merovingian Franks were sired by Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and are therefore divine, the legend of King Merovee conceals the true origins of the Merovingian race in remote antiquity. In one of these, translator Moses of Ingila explained the story "as an allegory of Christ's marriage to the soul". [3] Several sources from the 13th-century claim that an aspect of Catharist theology was the belief that the earthly Jesus had a familial relationship with Mary Magdalene. JW: Dr. Bonnie Effros, it is a pleasure and privilege to welcome you to the Ancient History Encyclopedia! An indication of the degree to which the work captured the public imagination is seen in the cottage industry of works that it inspired, replicating his style and theses or attempting to refute it. Nobody in my past was hugely famous, at least that I know of. Chris Lovegrove, who reviewed The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail when first published in 1982, dismissed the significance of a Jesus bloodline, even if it were proven to exist despite all evidence to the contrary: If there really is a Jesus dynasty so what? [56] Accepting as valid the testimony of an amateur archaeologist codenamed "Ben Hammott" relating to his discoveries made in the vicinity of Rennes-le-Chteau since 1999; Burgess claimed Ben had found the treasure of Brenger Saunire: a mummified corpse, which they believe is Mary Magdalene, in an underground tomb they claim is connected to both the Knights Templar and the Priory of Sion. Dr. Bonnie Effros is a Professor of History and the Rothman Chair and Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida, where she has taught since 2009. Retrieved on 2008-04-23. A Grave of Jesus (Kristo no Hakka) there attracts tourists. The Merovinginans traced their Sicambrian origins from Marcomir I-died 412 BC and ultimately to the Kings of Troy. For me at least in the case of my most recent book I think they have great relevance to understanding Franco-German relations in the past century and a half. This, The basilica and former monastic church ofSaint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains in Metz, France. Royalty for Commoners by Roderick W. Stuart Childeric returned to power and married the wife of the King of Thurigia. Historians, especially in modern Germany, have thus traditionally understood the Merovingian kings long hair as physical symbol of what they believed was sacral power; a status that marked them as having special or even magical powers that predated and survived long past King Clovis early sixth century CE conversion to Christianity. The Merovingian kings were called as long-haired kings as they never used to cut their hair, believing that there was power in long hair. As indicated the line of Frankish Kings began with Frankus On deposit from the National Museum of Antiquities in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Ultimately, the notion that a person living millennia ago has a small number of descendants living today is statistically improbable. Gregory of Tours writes that Clovis defeated Syagrius; he then married Clothilda, daughter of a Burgundian King, who attempted to convert him to Christianity but failed. Such works served to justify the Carolingian takeover of the throne in the second half of the 8th century CE. Merovee was proclaimed King of the Franks in 448 and reigned for 10 years. [18] The claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene fled to France parallel other legends about the flight of disciples to distant lands, such as the one depicting Joseph of Arimathea traveling to England after the death of Jesus, taking with him a piece of thorn from the Crown of Thorns, which he later planted in Glastonbury. [70] The intention of such propaganda would be to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of Jews and philo-Semites to achieve his Satanic objectives. There are indications in Gnosticism of the belief that Jesus and Mary Magdalene shared an amorous, and not just a religious relationship. . Women dressed like men. Catholic Encyclopedia, Copyright 2014 Order of the Merovingian Dynasty. Romulus killed Remus and became the first of the seven kings of Rome. Scholars regard the Scythians as an Iranian nomadic people speaking several languages but mostly Iranian (or Parsi which later became Farsi). Clovis I, Clovis II, Childeric II, and Dagobert II were very strong rulers. Priory that demonstrated its long history and his own descent from the lineage they had protected that traced to the Merovingian kings, and earlier, the biblical Tribe of Benjamin. During his reign, the Mycenaean Greeks invaded and captured Troy in the Trojan War 1193-1183 BC. In 740 he married Bertrada of Laon. As noted by the historian Walter Goffart, this means that what many of us know as The History of the Franks was not called that by its author; Gregory instead intended his Histories as a work of Christian universal history. [2][69], No mainstream Christian denomination has adhered to a Jesus bloodline hypothesis as a dogma or an object of religious devotion since they maintain that Jesus, believed to be God the Son, was perpetually celibate, continent and chaste, and metaphysically married to the Church; he died, was resurrected, ascended to heaven, and will eventually return to earth, thereby making all Jesus bloodline hypotheses and related messianic expectations impossible. [63] Prominent among the latter are those who expect a direct descendant of Jesus will eventually emerge as a great man and become a messiah, a Great Monarch who rules a Holy European Empire, during an event which they will interpret as a mystical second coming of Christ. Clovis reigned from 481-511 and was the major Merovingian King as was Charlemagne the major Carolingian King. Access to the original document is restricted and microfilm copies only may be consulted. I would like to begin by asking you a question that has long interested me: Why did Merovingian kings wear their hair long as a ritual custom? Other than these chronicles, there are capitularies, letters, and more that reveal the history of the Merovingians. Some such claims have suggested that Jesus survived the crucifixion and went to another location such as France, India or Japan. Similarly, classical remains helped future generations of French settlers identify with something familiar in their adopted land. They were involved with the Romans as military recruits in the 5th century. JW: Much of your research involving the Merovingians has pertained to mortuary archaeology. If one controls the bees, they control the ability to give life on Earth, which is a powerful tool for those seeking to exert control over the planet. However, it is without proof. He was the illegitimate son of Pippin the Middle and his concubine Alpaida. An analogous legend claims that the place of Jesus at the crucifixion was taken by a brother, while Jesus fled through what would become Russia and Siberia to Japan, where he became a rice farmer at Aomori, at the north of the island of Honshu. Though absent from the Gospels or historical records, the concept of Jesus having blood descendants has gained a presence in the public imagination, as seen with Dan Brown's best-selling novel and film The Da Vinci Code that used the premise for its plot. They built lavish Roman styled amphitheaters in Paris and Soissons. Charlemagnes DNA and Our Universal Royalty. who died 11 BC. For more than a century thereafter, the Merovingian Dynasty presided over a number of disparate and warring kingdoms. Initially, the Merovingians used the occasion of death to display personal wealth and power by placing objets dart, jewels, and weapons into graves and upon erected monuments. Clovis had married a Burgundian woman, Clotilda. Charlemagne (2 April 742 28 January 814), also known as Charles the The Liber Historiae Francorum went further, connecting them with the Trojan migration. In 16 BC they defeated the Roman army under Marcus Lollius. Deposited to, Pair of fibulae from the finery set of Queen Aregund (c. 515573 CE), wife of Clotaire I (511561 CE). Mercia: Lost Great Kingdom of the Britons. Cimmerians . (European royal families) is harder to track because it weaves in and out of the other 12 According to Flinders Petrie, a British Egyptologist, the Marvingi who lived near the Rhine were actually the ancestors of the Merovingians. WebThe Merovingians (also Merovings) were a Salian Frankish dynasty that came to rule the Franks in a region (known as Francia in Latin) largely corresponding to ancient Gaul from Is the Black Sea Flood Noahs Great Flood? BE: Burial rites are intrinsically conservative customs; just as today, they tend not to change drastically from generation to generation unless catastrophic circumstances like disease or war force burials to be performed in a hurried manner or break the chain of the transmission of rituals between generations. "[32], Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln developed and popularized the idea of a bloodline descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene in their 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (published as Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States),[33] in which they asserted: ". [30][54], Swanson presents a Jesus who was the son of an English- or Irish-born Mary, and who visited England to study Druidism before wedding Mary Magdalene. Their early paganism shows that, even if they did descend from Jesus, they had forgotten whatever he taught them. One generation before the Trojan War, Heracles captured Troy and killed Leomedon, but spared his son Priam who became King of Troy. Troy was a legendary city established about 3000 BC and was the center of the Trojan Wars, which occurred about 1200 BC. Ancient Greece ended with the end of the reign of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. But the likely truth is more prosaic. For the most part, however, families continued to bury their dead much as they had before conversion. As per the legendary tale, a man named Chlodio, along with his wife, stayed by the sea one summer. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip tells that Jesus "kissed her often" and refers to Mary as his "companion". Barbarian Kings The Roman Empire was replaced with a number of states ruled by barbarian kings. The notion of a direct bloodline from Jesus and Mary Magdalene and its supposed relationship to the Merovingians, as well as to their alleged modern descendants, is strongly dismissed as pseudohistorical by a qualified majority of Christian and secular historians such as Darrell Bock[72] and Bart D. Ehrman,[2][73] along with journalists and investigators such as Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has an extensive archive on this subject matter. [25] The Church of England compared The Lost Gospel to a Monty Python sketch, the director of communications for the Archbishop's Council citing the book as an example of religious illiteracy and that ever since the publication of The Da Vinci Code in 2003, "an industry had been constructed in which 'conspiracy theorists, satellite channel documentaries and opportunistic publishers had identified a lucrative income stream'. JW: I thank you so much for speaking with us. As French industrialists laid railroad lines and commenced expansive quarrying operations, Frankish artifacts were routinely discovered, casting doubts upon the Gaulish origins of the French nation. Scythians have left important ethnological markers such as tamgas (brand marks) and kurgans (permanent cemeteries). JW: Before concluding our interview, I wanted to make a point of asking you what is the legacy of the Merovingians and why should we continue to study them? Childeric I The son of Merovee was Childeric I, who fought Odoacer at Angiers. They were described as long haired warriors who were ferocious. He made Tournai the capital of all Salian Franks. They even appointed laymen as bishops, in order to sell church offices for money. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify. The Merovingian kingdom boasted no counterpart to Gregory the Great, Isidore, Bede, or Boniface; nevertheless no other state equaled the overall achievement of the Franks in the sixth, seventh, and eight centuries. While some simply entertain it as a novel intellectual proposition, others hold it as an established belief thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed. The actual parentage of Merovee is subject to conjecture, but he was clearly a Frank. The Sicambri were located along the right bank of the Rhine and appear about 55 BC. [52] Though one judge questioned whether the supposedly-factual Holy Blood truly represented fact, or instead bordered on fiction due to its highly conjectural nature,[53] courts ruled in favor of Random House and Brown. James Blake Wiener is the Communications Director of the Ancient History Encyclopedia, providing a continuous listing of must-read articles, exciting museum exhibitions, and interviews with experts in the field. Top Image: Source: warmtail / Adobe Stock. Dr. Effros earned her Ph.D. in history at UCLA (1994), where she specialized in the European Middle Ages. These tales claim that each generation of Merovingians is descended from a different ancestor who lived many years ago. The Mayors of the Palaces developed more and more power. Second, we should keep in mind that the most frequent tendency on the part of archaeologists, especially in the 19th century CE, an epoch of modern nation building, was to think foremost about the ethnicity of the dead. Some authors such as Fredegar and the author of In Shakespeare's King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1, he writes of the barbarous Scythian. A favored target for such pillaging attacks was the Roman Catholic Church. I enjoyed it a lot! The Merovingian Bloodline is the article most often read by viewers. In their reconstruction, Mary Magdalene goes to France after the crucifixion, carrying a child by Jesus who would give rise to a lineage that centuries later would unite with the Merovingian rulers of the early Frankish kingdom, from whom they trace the descent into medieval dynasties that were almost exterminated by the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, leaving a small remnant protected by a secret society, the Priory of Sion. However, the harsh practices of the Merovingians were often quite detrimental to the Church. [30][54], The 2008 documentary Bloodline[55] by Bruce Burgess, a filmmaker with an interest in paranormal claims, expands on the Jesus bloodline hypothesis and other elements of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. They were described by Homer and Herodotus. WebFritz Springmeier Merovingian Bloodline & The Black Nobility Date: 06/28/00 07:45:45 PM Name: Chalcedon Part I - The Merovingian Bloodline This page has been prepared to provide some type of table of contents to the various items which will be included in this chapter "The Thirteenth Satanic Bloodline". Merovee, the first Merovingian King, fought along side Flavius Aetius the Roman ruler when Attila the Hun was defeated in 451. Joyce identified the writer with Jesus of Nazareth, who, he claimed, had survived his own crucifixion to marry and settle at Masada, and suggested a conspiracy to hide the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls in order to suppress this counter-narrative to Christian orthodoxy. The Merovingians often viewed the Church as an income source for their profit. The work so captured the public imagination that the Catholic Church felt compelled to warn its congregates against accepting its pseudo-historical background as fact, which did not stop it from becoming the highest-selling novel in American history, with tens of millions of copies sold worldwide. The Merovingian royalty and European royal bloodlines may be part of this hive or bloodline, with the bee symbol being used as a sign of their control over the genetic stream. [31] This appears to have been a summary of a garbled or second-hand reference to a quote from Celsus the Platonist preserved in the apologetics work Contra Celsum ("Against Celsus") by the Church Father Origen: "such was the charm of Jesus' words, that not only were men willing to follow Him to the wilderness, but women also, forgetting the weakness of their sex and a regard for outward propriety in thus following their Teacher into desert places. (In the seventh century, according to Browns book, the Vatican attempted to eradicate the dynasty by murdering Dagobert II, but his son Sigisbert II survived, as did Merovingians The Merovingians claimed their descent from the Sicambri, who they believed were originally a Scythian or Cimmerian tribe once inhabiting the river Danube that changed their name to the Franks in 11 BC under the leadership of a chieftain called "Frankus". Israeli Biblical scholar, Rivka Nir called their work "serious-minded, thought-provoking and interesting", but described the thesis as objectionable, [24] and the book has been dismissed by mainstream Biblical scholarship, for example by Anglican theologian, Richard Bauckham. There was now a powerful religion, and a powerful Church being administered by a Merovingian bloodline. [23] Jacobovici and Wilson instead interpret it as an allegorical reference to actual marriage of Jesus, produced by a community holding that he was married and had children. The Otomi: Mesoamericas Forgotten Civilization? WebOne of these bloodlines was the Ishmaeli bloodline from which a special elite line developed alchemy, assassination techniques, and other occult practices. The Merovingian dynasty drew its name from Merovech, a semilegendary chieftain of the Salian Franks during the period in the mid-5th century that witnessed the rise of that branch of the larger Frankish people to prominence in northern Gaul between the lower Rhine and the Somme rivers. Haplotype R1a and R1b is found in eastern and western Asia as well as Europe and the United States. The author attested both in the text and public interviews to the veracity of the bloodline details that served as the novel's historical context. Donovan Joyce's 1972 best-seller, The Jesus Scroll, presented an alternative timeline for Jesus that arose from a mysterious document. It was the kingdom of the Franks which was to exercise the most influence for the longest time. Ideas that Jesus Christ might have been married have a long history in Christian theology, though the historical record says nothing on the subject. [61], In South Asia, the founder of the reformist Ahmaddiyya religious movement, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), likewise claimed that Jesus survived the crucifixion and escaped the Levant, but instead placed his subsequent activities in Afghanistan and India. Before his death he divided his properties among his sons. The royal dynasty was thus given a supernatural origin. . 1600-1100 BC is described as Mycenaean Greece known for the Wars against Troy as narrated by Homer. A King who had his hair cut would be forced to step down. [30] The Mormons also used an apocryphal passage attributed to the 2nd-century Greek philosopher Celsus: "The grand reason why the gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ was because he had so many wives. After her husbands death in 511 CE, she retired to Tours, where she paid her respects to the relics of Saint Martin. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. They fought several wars with Rome, namely one led by Clovis We thus need to avoid the type of questioning that brings with it many implicit assumptions not just about early medieval graves but early medieval society more generally. On 23 December 679, while resting during a hunt in the forest, a servant under the direction of Pepin the Fat killed him. The mummy was preserved by ice and was found at 2600 meters. In the case of the Early Middle Ages (c. 476-1000 CE), it is clear that Christian conversion did not bring about a marked change in the way in which the dead were laid to rest. However, there was a recent exhibition in Frankfurt am Main, Germany that showcased exquisite burial objects, which included drinking cups, horns, and glasses belonging to several Merovingian queens. WebThe Jesus bloodline refers to the proposition that a lineal sequence of descendants of the historical Jesus has persisted to the present time. Historian Ken Mondschein ridiculed the notion that the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene could have been preserved: Infant mortality in pre-modern times was ridiculously high, and you'd only need one childhood accident or disease in 2,000 years to wipe out the bloodline keep the children of Christ marrying each other, on the other hand, and eventually they'd be so inbred that the sons of God would have flippers for feet.[78]. Mary Ann Beavis would point out that unlike others in the genre, Starbird actively courted scholarly engagement over her ideas, and that "[a]lthough her methods, arguments and conclusions do not always stand up to scholarly scrutiny, some of her exegetical insights merit attention . Edmund Spenser wrote that the primary nation that settled Ireland were the Scythians , and that they also settled Scotland. In books like Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code, or Holy Grail, and Holy Blood by Michael Baignet and Richard Leigh, the Merovingian kings are considered to be What about the Rex Deus dynasty's influence on Freemasonry? During a battle against the Alamans, he vowed to become a Christian if he was victorious. [48] The evidence on which the informant based his claim to be a Rex Deus scion, descended from Hugues de Payens, was said to be lost and therefore cannot be independently verified, because 'Michael' claimed that it was kept in his late father's bureau, which was sold by his brother unaware of its contents. Baigent and Leigh argued that Brown had done more, "appropriat[ing] the architecture" of their work, and thus had "hijacked" and "exploited" it. Arriving in southern France, he established a dynasty there and his children went on to become the Merovingian kings, perhaps unaware of their own divine ancestry. Thus, when talking about the early Merovingian monarchs, Gregory of Tours catered his narrative to fit a larger objective of showing Gods punishment of those who transgressed Christian law. Clovis I. After Clovis died, his kingdom was divided into 4 parts-one for each of his 4 sons. It seems that the Merovingians, while happy to claim descent from fantastical mythological beasts, did not believe they weredivine in a Christian sense. Master of Tours by Sigibert I, King of Austrasia (561-576). [45] His 2000 sequel Genesis of the Grail Kings: The Explosive Story of Genetic Cloning and the Ancient Bloodline of Jesus is unique in claiming that not only can the Jesus bloodline truly be traced back to Adam and Eve but that the first man and woman were primate-alien hybrids created by the Anunnaki of his ancient astronaut theory. He died 447-449. Merovingian Gaul; gold and garnets, c. 570 CE. Such legends were utilized by King Dagobert II and his descendants to ensure the continuation of their royal dynasty. McClymond. All rights reserved. The Salian Franks (sea dwelling) lived North and East of Limes in the Dutch coastal area and in the 5th century migrated throughout Belgium and into northern France. [42], The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, a 1993 book by Margaret Starbird, built on Cathar beliefs and Provencal traditions of Saint Sarah, the black servant of Mary Magdalene, to develop the hypothesis that Sarah was the daughter of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The Frankish kings gave permission to their army to loot and plunder after any battle, bringing all the plunder to a designated spot. As you noted above, the problematic nature of historical works dated from the Carolingian period is even more pronounced, since historians like the author of the Chronicle of Fredegar were eager to demonstrate how the Merovingian kings characterized as the do-nothing kings had lost their right to rule. The Merovingian Dynasty was a family of Frankish Kings who ruled during the 5th century AD, a key dynasty of rulers in Dark Age continental Europe. Such stories were often associated with ruling houses, seeking to aggrandize the rulers and cement their position of power. [68] Almost all these claims are at odds with scholarly Christian apologetics, and have been dismissed as being New Age Gnostic heresies. [54] After Jesus' death, Swanson portrays his widow as taking her children by Jesus, whom he refers to as the 'Shiloh Dynasty', to England, and that one of these became a direct male-line ancestor of Joseph Smith, to whom the author also attributes a matrilineal derivation from the same Shiloh Dynasty. In these, Dan Brown incorporated many of the earlier bloodline themes as the background underlying his work of conspiracy fiction. [76] Steve Olson, author of Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, published an article in Nature demonstrating that, as a matter of statistical probability: If anyone living today is descended from Jesus, so are most of us on the planet.[77]. The Hadrianic Tondi on the Arch of Constantine, Map of Merovingian territories. Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson. It fell to him to redistribute the conquered wealth among his first followers as he saw fit, ensuring loyalty amongst his warriors. JW: Dr. Effros, you have also conducted extensive research into the social significance of Merovingian burial rites. For the biblical genealogy of Jesus, see, Jesus bloodline claims in South and East Asia, For a discussion between Barbara Thiering and. Eventually she fled her royal spouse, who apparently kept several wives or concubines simultaneously, to found a monastery in Poitiers, France. When Clovis died in 511, the Frankish kingdom was the most powerful in Gaul. This set them apart, and may have contributed to later theories regarding their divine heritage. It was not the crude barbaric culture often imagined. Rome However, we must not forget that aristocratic marriages were often the product of temporary political alliances, and women (and their children) often became the victims of these arrangements when they were no longer desirable or profitable. They were also criticized by several historians for their oversimplified views, where a lack of support for their peasant class undermined their domestic economy. 2009-2021 Historic Mysteries. Authors like Margaret Starbird and Jeffrey Btz often seek to challenge modern beliefs and institutions through a re-interpretation of Christian history and mythology. A Net Inceptions project. Charles Martel The most important Mayor of the Palace and an extremely important historical figure was Charles Martel, or Charles the Hammer who was born 686 and died 741. At his baptism, Saint Remy said, "Sicambrian revere what thou hast burned and burn what thou hast revered.". It is likely here that lay lites saw the attractiveness of being buried with Christian items. As a result of her monastic vows and lifestyle recorded in a saints Life she was considered a saint both by the Merovingians and Carolingians (751-987 CE). "[30][54] He nonetheless drew heavily from the same pseudohistorical grail framework as Holy Blood, combining it with concepts related to British Israelism, beliefs of the early Mormon fathers, and modern genetic genealogy. Finally, to come back to your question, I would argue that mortuary archaeology does not offer evidence particularly well suited to understanding the nature of entities as large and as amorphous as early medieval kingdoms. My work on the history of Merovingian archaeology has in fact led me away, at least briefly, from the Merovingians; my current project is looking at French excavations in Algeria following the invasion of North Africa in 1830 CE. These sources therefore seriously cloud our ability to sort out what caused the weakening of royal power at the end of the Merovingian dynasty. There were many off shoots of the Cimmerians. [43] Starbird also viewed Mary Magdalene as identical with Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus. According to Joyce, the 'Jesus Scroll' was a personal letter by 80-year-old Yeshua ben Yaakob ben Gennesareth, heir of the Hasmonean dynasty and hence rightful King of Israel, written on the eve of the fall of the city to the Romans after a suicide pact ended Masada's resistance. For them, the cutting of the hair of the king was considered a symbolic loss of power. Consequently, we must be wary of assuming that it is an accurate and objective work of historical writing.
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merovingian bloodline