Dagobert II of Austrasia
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Saint Dagobert II |
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|---|---|
| King of Austrasia | |
A tremissis of Dagobert II
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| Reign | 676 – 23 December 679 |
| Predecessor | Clovis III |
| Successor | Theoderic III |
| Born | c. 650 Austrasia, Francia |
| Died |
23 December 679 Stenay-sur-Meuse, Ardennes, Francia |
| Father | Sigibert III of Austrasia |
| Mother | Chimnechild of Burgundy |
Dagobert II (Latin: Dagobertus; c. 650 – December 23, 679 AD) was the king of Austrasia (676–79), the son of Sigebert III and Chimnechild of Burgundy. He is also accounted a saint by the Roman Catholic Church; his feast day is 23 December.
Dagobert II was born in Metz, the son of Sigibert III, an Austrasian king of the Merovingian line, and his wife, Chimnechild of Burgundy.
The Arnulfing mayor of the Austrasian palace, Grimoald the Elder, the son of Pippin of Landen, and Dagobert's guardian, had had his own son Childebert adopted by Sigebert III, when Sigebert was still childless. Then when Sigebert died in 656, Grimoald seized the throne for his own son and had Dagobert tonsured, thus marking him unfit for kingship, and exiled.
The tale that Dagobert was ordered to be killed and his death published about, but that he was spirited out of the country, seems to be an embellishment, perhaps developed to explain the silence of Dagobert's mother Chimnechild. She may have cooperated with Grimoald to set up Childebert the Adopted; later she hoped by marrying her daughter Bilichild to Childeric II to keep the eventual Austrasian heir in her bloodline. It has been hypothesised that Chimnechild was not Dagobert's mother, thus her reason for abandoning him. It has also been speculated that Childebert was really Sigebert's illegitimate son whom Grimoald adopted to exclude the widow Chimnechild as a rival in the government.
Dagobert was given to the care of Desiderius, Bishop of Poitiers, where there was a cathedral school. The boy was sent on to a monastery in Ireland, sometimes identified as Slane, and later entrusted to Wilfrid of York, who saw to it that he was trained as a page at an Anglo-Saxon court. An old tradition relates that he married Mechthilde, an Anglo-Saxon princess, during his exile, but the tradition that among his daughters was Saint Hermine, abbess of Oëren, and Saint Adula, abbess of Pfalzel, are fabrications, perhaps designed to link the saintly foundresses of these abbeys with the revered Merovingian line.
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