Ecclesiastical Politics in the Regnum Chramni: Contextualising Baudonivia's Vita Radegundis, ch. 15

Abstract

In her seventh-century vita of St Radegund, Baudonivia refers in passing to the attendance of a layman named Leo at an Aquitanian ecclesiastical council. This Leo may be identifiable with the ‘Leo of Poitiers’ named by Gregory of Tours as a partisan of Chramn, the rebellious son of King Chlothari(r. 511–61). If so, then Leo's attendance suggests that the council assembled during the brief period of alliance between Chramn and Childeberti, 555/8. This long-neglected council thus provides insight into one of the major events of a comparatively obscure decade in the history of the regnum Francorum.