Confessor Guntram

Guntram (also spelled Gontran, Gunthram, or Gunthchramn), commemorated in later calendars as Confessor Guntram, was a Merovingian king who ruled Burgundy in the second half of the sixth century. He was a son of the Frankish king Chlothar I and of Queen Ingunda. When Chlothar died in 561, the Frankish territories were divided among his sons. Guntram received the kingdom of Burgundy, a large share that included Orléans, Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, and Chalon-sur-Saône, the last of which served as a principal royal seat. Almost all detailed knowledge of his life and reign comes from the Histories of Gregory of Tours, a contemporary bishop who had personal dealings with the king and who, while not uncritical, generally depicted Guntram as the most conscientious of Chlothar’s surviving sons.

Guntram’s reign was dominated by the internecine wars of the Merovingian family. He was drawn into the long feud between his brothers Sigebert I of Austrasia and Chilperic I of Neustria and, after their murders, into the continuing struggle between the courts of Brunhild and Fredegund. He campaigned in the south of Gaul, opposed Visigothic interests, and in 585 suppressed the pretender Gundovald, who had claimed to be a son of Chlothar I. After the death of his own sons he adopted his nephew Childebert II, son of Sigebert and Brunhild, as his heir, a decision that shaped the later political map of the Frankish kingdoms. Gregory portrays him as a ruler who tried to restrain rapacious officials, to protect churches and the poor, and to act as a mediator, while also recording royal orders for executions and confiscations that belonged to the harsh practice of sixth-century kingship.

His family life followed Merovingian patterns of concubinage and successive marriages. By a concubine named Veneranda he had a son Gundobad. He then married Marcatrude, daughter of the magnate Magnachar; Gregory reports that Marcatrude brought about Gundobad’s death, after which Guntram repudiated her. He next married Austregilde (also called Bobilla), who bore him two sons, Chlodomer and Chlothar. Both princes died of dysentery in 577, leaving the king without a surviving legitimate male heir. Tradition also records at least one daughter. Later hagiography stressed Guntram’s repentance for deeds of blood, his almsgiving, and his foundation of the monastery and church of Saint Marcellus near Chalon-sur-Saône, where he intended to be buried.

Guntram died in 592, in the later years of a reign that had lasted more than three decades, and was interred at the church of Saint Marcellus. Childebert II succeeded him in Burgundy. From an early date he was venerated as a saint and confessor rather than as a martyr; his feast day is 28 March. Medieval writers remembered him as a just and God-fearing king who, amid the violence of his dynasty, sought to govern in accordance with Christian teaching. Beyond Gregory of Tours and a small number of later Frankish chronicles, contemporary documentation is sparse, and many subsequent legends about miracles at his tomb should be treated with caution.