Carloman

Carloman was a Frankish aristocrat of the Pippinid house, later called Carolingian, and the eldest son of Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and of Chrotrud (Rotrude). Contemporary narrative sources do not record his year or place of birth; modern estimates that place him in the early eighth century remain conjectural. He was raised in the household of a father who, without taking the Merovingian royal title, governed the Frankish kingdoms and led armies against Frisians, Saxons, Bavarians, Aquitanians, and the Muslim forces that had crossed the Pyrenees. Carloman's full brother was Pepin, often called Pepin the Short. After Chrotrud's death Charles Martel married the Bavarian Swanachild, who bore a son, Grifo. Charles Martel died in October 741. His power was partitioned between Carloman and Pepin: Carloman obtained Austrasia, Alemannia, and Thuringia; Pepin obtained Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence. Grifo was shut out of the succession and imprisoned. Because Charles had left the throne vacant, the brothers in 743 restored a Merovingian, Childeric III, whose kingship remained ceremonial.

During the years of his mayoralty Carloman campaigned to restore Frankish authority on the eastern and southern frontiers. He and Pepin made war in Bavaria, opposed Duke Hunald of Aquitaine, and repeatedly entered Alemannia. In 746, following an Alemannic revolt, Carloman held an assembly at Cannstatt, near the river Neckar. Frankish annals report that he had a large number of Alemannic leaders put to death there. The Cannstatt bloodshed became a defining, and for some later writers a troubling, episode of his career. In church affairs Carloman was the leading princely patron of the West Saxon missionary Boniface. With Carloman's support Boniface erected bishoprics in Hessian and Thuringian territory, sought pallia and metropolitan structures from Rome, and convened reforming synods, beginning with the Concilium Germanicum in 742 and continuing in 743 and 744. Capitularies issued in Carloman's name attacked uncanonical clerical life, pagan survivals, and the alienation of church property, while also serving the mayor's need to discipline the Austrasian elite. He favored Benedictine monasticism and was associated with the early history of Fulda and with other houses in the eastern Frankish lands.

In 747 Carloman abdicated. The decision is recorded by the continuator of Fredegar, by Boniface's correspondence, and by later Frankish annals. He received the tonsure, made provision for his son Drogo—who for a short time held or claimed the Austrasian mayoralty—and left for Italy. Pope Zachary welcomed him in Rome. Carloman then took the monastic habit at Monte Cassino, the abbey that followed the Rule of Saint Benedict in the Lombard south. His departure left Pepin as the sole effective mayor over the Frankish kingdoms and removed a possible rival on the eve of Pepin's negotiation with the papacy for a royal title. In 751 Childeric III was deposed and sent to a monastery; Pepin was anointed king of the Franks. Explanations of Carloman's retirement have included a genuine monastic vocation, penitence after Cannstatt, illness, and a prior political bargain with Pepin. The eighth-century texts do not allow a firm choice among these interpretations.

The Lombard advance on Rome in the early 750s brought Pope Stephen II to Francia in 753–754 to seek Frankish military aid. Carloman left Monte Cassino and crossed the Alps. Papal and Frankish sources disagree on his purpose. Some present him as an emissary or instrument of the Lombard king Aistulf, sent to talk Pepin out of an Italian war; others allow a more personal or penitential reading. He failed to reverse Pepin's commitment. Stephen II anointed Pepin and his sons at Saint-Denis, and the Frankish king undertook the campaigns that produced the Donation of Pepin in favor of the Roman church. Carloman was held in custody in Francia and died at Vienne, in Burgundian territory, on 17 August 754. His son Drogo and other children were excluded from power; several of the boys were tonsured to bar them from secular office. No contemporary source preserves the name of Carloman's wife.

Because Carloman died as a monk of Monte Cassino and because monastic writers emphasized his renunciation of power, he acquired a reputation for holiness in some medieval traditions, particularly at Monte Cassino and in certain liturgical calendars that noted 17 August. He was not a bishop of Rome, nor a patriarch of any Eastern see, and no reliable record survives of a formal papal canonization or beatification in the later juridical sense. His historical significance is that of a Pippinid mayor who combined frontier warfare, harsh repression at Cannstatt, and close cooperation with Boniface, and whose monastic withdrawal concentrated authority in Pepin's hands and so contributed directly to the replacement of the Merovingian dynasty by the Carolingian kingship in the middle of the eighth century.