Odilo | |
---|---|
Duke of Bavaria | |
Reign | 737–748 |
Predecessor | Hugbert |
Successor | Tassilo III |
Died | 18 January 748 |
Spouse | Hiltrud |
Issue | Tassilo III |
House | Agilolfing |
Father | Gotfrid |
Odilo, also Oatilo or Uatilo (died 18 January 748) of the Agilolfing dynasty was Duke of Bavaria from 737 until his death in 748. [1] He had the Lex Baiuvariorum compilation edited, the first ancient Germanic law collection of the Bavarians.
Odilo by his Agilolfing descent was an Alemannic nobleman, a son of Duke Gotfrid (d. 709) whom he succeeded in Thurgau until 737, when with the death of Hugbert of Bavaria the older line of the dynasty became extinct and he inherited the rulership of the Duchy of Bavaria.
Odilo presided over the establishment of bishoprics in Bavaria in 739, when the four dioceses of Regensburg, Freising, Passau, and Salzburg were established by St. Boniface, who in 741 also founded the Diocese of Würzburg in adjacent Franconia. His measures sparked a revolt by Bavarian nobles and the duke temporarily had to seek refuge at the court of the Frankish Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel. In 741, Odilo married Charles Martel's daughter Hiltrud, [2] but upon the death of her father found himself at war with her brothers Carloman and Pepin the Short.
He rebelled to support the Alamans with the support of Hunald I of Aquitaine in 742/43 against Frankish rule after persuading him to attack Neustria to burn down Chartres. [3] He was finally defeated in 743 after a battle at the river Lech, and had to accept Frankish overlordship over Bavaria, but remained duke. [3] He further consolidated his rule, when he came to the aid of Prince Boruth of Carantania against repeated Avar incursions and was able to vassalize the Slavic principality in the southeast.
After his death in 748, Grifo, a younger son of Charles Martel and half-brother of Odilo's widow Hiltrud, sought to establish his own rule in Bavaria and abducted Odilo's son Tassilo III. However, the next year he was defeated by Pepin the Short who installed seven-year-old Tassilo III as Duke of Bavaria. [4]
Odilo is accepted as the founder of the abbeys of Benediktbeuern (in 739), Niederaltaich (741), [5] and Mondsee (748), [6] as well as a number of others. He was buried at Gengenbach Abbey in Alamannia.
Charles Martel, Martel being a sobriquet in Old French for "The Hammer", was a Frankish political and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of the Franks from 718 until his death. He was a son of the Frankish statesman Pepin of Herstal and a noblewoman named Alpaida. Charles successfully asserted his claims to power as successor to his father as the power behind the throne in Frankish politics. Continuing and building on his father's work, he restored centralized government in Francia and began the series of military campaigns that re-established the Franks as the undisputed masters of all Gaul. According to a near-contemporary source, the Liber Historiae Francorum, Charles was "a warrior who was uncommonly ... effective in battle".
Year 741 (DCCXLI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 741 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Austrasia was the northeastern kingdom within the core of the Frankish Empire during the Early Middle Ages, centring on the Meuse, Middle Rhine and the Moselle rivers. It included the original Frankish-ruled territories within what had been the northernmost part of Roman Gaul, and cities such as Cologne, Trier and Metz. It also stretched beyond the old Roman borders on the Rhine into Frankish areas which had never been formally under Roman rule. It came into being as a part of the Frankish Empire founded by Clovis I (481–511). At the same time, the initial powerbase of Clovis himself was the more Romanized part of northern Gaul, lying southwest of Austrasia, which came to be known as Neustria.
Carloman was the eldest son of Charles Martel, mayor of the palace and duke of the Franks, and his wife Chrotrud of Treves. On Charles's death (741), Carloman and his brother Pepin the Short succeeded to their father's legal positions, Carloman in Austrasia, and Pepin in Neustria. He was a member of the family later called the Carolingians and it can be argued that he was instrumental in consolidating their power at the expense of the ruling Merovingian kings of the Franks. He withdrew from public life in 747 to take up the monastic habit, "the first of a new type of saintly king", according to Norman Cantor, "more interested in religious devotion than royal power, who frequently appeared in the following three centuries and who was an indication of the growing impact of Christian piety on Germanic society".
Childeric III was King of the Franks from 743 until he was deposed in 751 by Pepin the Short. He was the last Frankish king from the Merovingian dynasty. Once Childeric was deposed, Pepin became king, initiating the Carolingian dynasty.
Under the Merovingian dynasty, the mayor of the palace or majordomo. (Latin: maior palatii or maior domus) was the manager of the household of the Frankish king. He was the head of the Merovingian administrative ladder and orchestrated the operation of the entire court. He was appointed by the king from among the magnates, the most powerful families. Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy had their own mayor of the palace. After Chlothar II, who ruled over the entire Frankish Kingdom, had ordered the execution of Warnachar, the mayor of Burgundy, the magnates of Burgundy declared in 626 not to want their own mayor anymore; see Fredegar IV.54. This declaration marks the effective end of the Burgundian court and the beginning of the Neustrian-Burgundian political alliance against Austrasian influence. The Austrasian magnates revolted and the Battle of Tertry of 687 became the Austrasian victory with Pepin of Herstal as their leader and the new mayor of the palace.
The Kingdom of the Franks, also known as the Frankish Kingdom, or just Francia, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Frankish Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties during the Early Middle Ages. Francia was among the last surviving Germanic kingdoms from the Migration Period era.
Grifo was the son of the Frankish major domo Charles Martel and his second wife Swanachild.
The Agilolfings were a noble family that ruled the Duchy of Bavaria on behalf of their Merovingian suzerains from about 550 until 788. A cadet branch of the Agilolfings also ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards intermittently from 616 to 712. They are mentioned as the leading dynasty in the Lex Baiuvariorum. Their Bavarian residence was at Regensburg.
Pepin the Short, Pippin III, Pepin the Younger, was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768. He was the first Carolingian to become king.
Tassilo III was the duke of Bavaria from 748 to 788, the last of the house of the Agilolfings. He was the son of Duke Odilo of Bavaria and Hitrud, daughter of Charles Martel.
Lanfredus was duke of Alamannia under Frankish sovereignty from 709 until his death. He was the son of duke Cotefredus. Lanfredus's brother was Theudebald.
Hugbert(also Hukbert) of the Agilolfings was duke of Bavaria from 725 to 736. He was son of the duke Theudebert and Regintrud, the probable daughter of the Seneschal Hugobert and Irmina of Oeren. Hugbert's sister, Guntrud, married Liutprand, later king of the Lombards.
The Lex Baiuvariorum was a collection of the tribal laws of the Bavarii of the sixth through eighth centuries. The first compilation was edited by Eberswind, first abbot of Niederaltaich, in 741 or 743. Duke Odilo, founder supplemented the code around 748. It is one of the most well documented bodies of Germanic tribal law.
Garibald I was Duke of Bavaria from 555 until 591. He was the head of the Agilolfings, and the ancestor of the Bavarian dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of the Lombards.
Hiltrud, was a daughter of Charles Martel and was a Duchess consort of Bavaria by marriage to Odilo, Duke of Bavaria. She was regent of Bavaria for her minor son Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria in 748-754.
Cotefredus was the Duke of Alamannia in the late 7th century and until his death. He was of the house of the Agilolfing, which was the dominant ruling family in the Frankish Duchy of Bavaria.
Boruth, also Borut or Borouth, was the first documented Slavic prince (Knyaz) of Carantania, ruling from about 740 until his death. He was one of the few pagan leaders of the Carantanians to convert to Christianity.
The Avar Wars were fought between Francia and the Avar Khaganate in Central Europe from 788 to 803, and ended with the Frankish conquest of the khaganate's western regions. The first conflicts between the Avars and the Franks occurred in the 560s, shortly before the Avar conquest of the Pannonian Basin. Armed conflicts between the two powers were not unusual during the following centuries.