Pepin of Landen

Pepin of Landen, also known as Pepin the Elder or Pepin I, was a leading Frankish noble of the early seventh century and Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia under the later Merovingian kings. He is associated with extensive estates at Landen in the region of the later Low Countries, from which his usual byname is taken; the exact place and date of his birth are not recorded in contemporary sources, and later medieval genealogies that name a father Carloman cannot be independently verified. He belonged to the Austrasian aristocracy whose landed power and court office would, over the following generations, eclipse the Merovingian kings themselves. The principal near-contemporary witness to his career is the Chronicle of Fredegar, supplemented by later hagiographical material connected with his daughter Gertrude of Nivelles.

Pepin first comes into clear political view during the crisis that ended the long feud between the Neustrian and Austrasian branches of the Merovingian house. In 613 he joined Bishop Arnulf of Metz and other Austrasian magnates in inviting King Chlothar II of Neustria to take over Austrasia, a move that led to the overthrow and execution of Queen Brunhilda and to the reunion of the Frankish kingdoms under a single ruler. When Chlothar II established his son Dagobert I as king in Austrasia around 623, Pepin was appointed Mayor of the Palace, the chief officer of the royal household and the effective head of the Austrasian administration. In that capacity he shared influence with Arnulf of Metz; later tradition treated the two men as joint founders of the political lineage that produced the Carolingian dynasty.

When Dagobert succeeded to the kingship of all the Franks in 629, he drew Pepin with him into Neustria, interrupting Pepin’s direct control of Austrasian affairs. After Dagobert’s death in 639, Pepin returned to Austrasia as Mayor of the Palace for the child-king Sigebert III. He held the office only a short time before his own death in 640. He was buried at Landen. According to later tradition his relics were subsequently translated to the abbey of Nivelles, which his widow and daughter had founded and which became a principal centre of the family’s cult.

Pepin married Itta of Metz (also called Iduberga), a noblewoman later venerated as a saint, who after his death took the veil and helped establish the monastery of Nivelles. Their children included Grimoald, who succeeded his father as Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia; Begga, who married Ansegisel, son of Arnulf of Metz, and became the mother of Pepin of Herstal; and Gertrude, first abbess of Nivelles and a widely venerated saint. Through Begga’s marriage the Pippinid and Arnulfing lines were joined, forming the ancestry of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne. Pepin of Landen himself came to be honoured as a saint in parts of the Low Countries, with a feast on 21 February. He was a lay magnate rather than a cleric or monk, and his cult belongs to the early medieval pattern of local veneration rather than to a later papal process of canonization.