Marcovefa

Frankish wife of Caribert I

Marcovefa (6th-century – fl. 561) was a Frankish queen consort by marriage to King Charibert I.^[1]^[2]

Biography

Marcovefa was the daughter of a wool carder from the royal palace, according to Gregory of Tours. She and her sister Merofleda both became married to the King of Paris. This marriage aroused the indignation of Queen Ingoberga who was already married to the King. This situation created scandal. However, the issue of greatest concern to the Church was that Marcovefa had been a nun prior to their marriage.^[3]^[4] Initially, he refused to divorce Marcovefa, and was therefore excommunicated by the Church.^[5]^[6] Marcovefa was excommunicated, as well.^[7]^[8] Soon thereafter, Marcovefa died, with some seeing her death as punishment from God.^[5]^[6] This forced him to eventually divorce the sisters and take Ingoberga back.

Still, according to Gregory, Marcowefa died shortly afterward, followed in the tomb by Charibert himself at the end of the year 567.

References

^ Christian Bouyer, Dictionnaire des Reines de France, Librairie Académique Perrin, 1992 (ISBN 2-262-00789-6)
^ Halfond, Gregory I. (2015). The medieval way of war: studies in medieval military history in honor of Bernard S. Bachrach. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4724-1958-3.
^ Effros, Bonnie; Moreira, Isabel (2020-05-01). The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-023419-5.
^ Cudorge, Justine (June 2022). "Women's Quarters, an Influential and Political Pole: A Study of the Frankish Inner-Court (Sixth-Seventh Century)". Royal Studies Journal. 9 (1): 18–32. doi:10.21039/rsj.345.
^ ^a ^b George, Judith (1998-01-01), "Venantius Fortunatus: Panegyric in Merovingian Gaul", The Propaganda of Power, Brill, pp. 225–246, ISBN 978-90-04-35147-9, retrieved 2024-09-04
^ ^a ^b Evans, Robert A. H. (June 2020). "God's Judgement in Carolingian Law and History Writing". Studies in Church History. 56: 60–77. doi:10.1017/stc.2019.4. ISSN 0424-2084.
^ Macfarlane, Fiona Margaret (1982). Early Germanic queenship (MLitt(R) thesis). Ann Arbor.
^ Dailey, E. T. (2015-01-01), "4 Brides and Social Status", Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, Brill, pp. 80–100, ISBN 978-90-04-29466-0, retrieved 2024-09-04