THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES Merovingian women’s relationships of patronage and friendship. It focuses particularly on the poet’s writings to Radegund, former queen and founder of the convent of the Holy Cross, and Agnes, her adopted daughter and the first abbess of the community. Fortunatus’ poems for these two women evoke an intimacy and closeness indicative of ties of patronage and friendship. The poet’s fiftyfive surviving poems to Radegund and Agnes form one centre of gravity in the collection; the twenty-six to Gregory of Tours are another. Even though twenty-one of the poems for Radegund and Agnes are found in the so-called Appendix which saw limited circulation and preservation compared to the rest of the collection, the women are a substantial presence in the eleven books of poetry. Furthermore, they are mentioned as send-ing or receiving greetings alongside the poet in thirteen additional poems and letters. Radegund and Agnes’ incorporation of Fortunatus into their own networks, and the poet’s longstanding personal and professional ties to them and their interests evokes Barbara Rosenwein’s definition of an emotional community, “a group in which people have a common stake, interests, values, and goals.”

First, we must set the stage for the context in which this emotional community formed and endured by examining Fortunatus’ inheritance of classical and late antique thought about friendship with women. His poems for aristocratic women, Placidina, the wife of bishop Leontius of Bordeaux, and Palatina, show that Fortunatus kept within this tradition. The next sections of the chapter focus on the ways in which Fortunatus developed the Christian tradition of friendship. An analysis of the Rule of Caesarius, under which Radegund and Agnes lived, demonstrates that their liberal interpretation of the rule allowed them to seize chances for patronage and friendship. One of these chances came through Radegund’s passion for relic collecting, which required the commissioning of three major poems, De excidio Thuringiae (App.1), Ad Iustinum iuniorem imperatorem et Sophiam augustos (App.2), and Ad Artachin (App.3) in an effort to obtain a piece of the True Cross. Although the poems have been attributed to Radegund, analysis of their manuscript transmission demonstrates that they are in fact by Fortunatus and I argue that they are evidence of Radegund’s standing as a literary patron.

VENANTIUS HONORIUS CLEMENTIANUS FORTUNATUS has long occupied a liminal place in writing about the early Middle Ages. He has been described as a writer whose life and work overlapped the boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages, both the last classical and the first medieval poet. He is cited, although less frequently, as an innovative writer, blending adherence to the rules of classical metre with a Christian subject matter and worldview. His work provides a window onto the social and cultural changes brought about by the end of Roman imperial rule in the West. As one great scholar of his works put it, “only a half century separates Fortunatus and Sidonius, but they are an entire world apart.”

Throughout his decades of literary activity, Fortunatus sought and cultivated literary connections throughout the Merovingian world, with priests, bishops, kings, queens, abbesses, nuns, aristocrats, royal officials—anyone who might offer him support, friendship, and replies. Modern scholars call many of these relations by the name of friendship, and Fortunatus drew on the language and imagery of classical and Christian friendship in his work. He made particular use of the language and images of absent friendship, using it to suggest an intimacy which transcended the boundaries of space, time, and personal acquaintance. He also couched this rhetoric in the rich and long-standing language of patronage, to give distinction to his addressees and humility to himself. As this book seeks to show, looking at the poems of Venantius Fortunatus through the lens of patronage and friendship enables us to take a fresh look at the ordering and self-presentation of Merovingian society, shedding new light on the degree to which it was influenced by Roman culture.

Fortunatus has been dismissed as an opportunist who wrote flattery for undeserving kings and aristocrats. However, this book reframes him as a writer uniquely suited to his times, a professional poet who addressed the needs and wishes of his contemporaries for the prestige and sophistication of classical culture. Historians have seized on the poems as a source for Merovingian history, since they complement and contemporary with the writings of Gregory of Tours (538/539–594?). But scholars have also been stymied and frustrated by the perceived narrowness of Fortunatus’ vision, the partiality of his writings, and the seeming insincerity of his praise.

THIS BOOK HAS examined the transmission and adaptation of Roman ideas of friendship and patronage in Merovingian Gaul through the lens of the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus, demonstrating how the combination of Roman and Christian language and ideas about social relationships led to new ways of making and maintaining these relationships. In contrast to the fractured and violent world of sixth century Gaul, the poet weaves a narrative of connections which stretched across distances, overcame absences, and proved mutually beneficial for those involved. Fortunatus’ poems and letters to bishops, kings, queens, nuns, and aristocrats thus reveal the social world of his age and sharpen our picture of Merovingian society and its debt to classical culture.

The works of Fortunatus have often been cited as a footnote to the Histories of his friend and patron Bishop Gregory of Tours. Gregory and Fortunatus were closely connected by bonds of patronage and friendship. Gregory did not include Fortunatus as a character in his narrative, and made reference to him only as a hagiographer; whereas the bishop’s presence looms large in Fortunatus’ work. As explored in Chapter 1, Fortunatus wrote regularly for Gregory as a patron and a friend, sending him greetings and thanks; asking for his services as a patron, including seeking the bishop’s help for others besides himself; executing literary commissions for him; and writing on his behalf and in his interests.

From a historian’s perspective, they share a number of commonalities. Both men carried out complex literary projects unique in their location and century, and both men refer to letters, poems, and histories which no longer survive. In addition to the losses of sixth-century literature, it is worth noting the gap that comes after Fortunatus: not until Aldhelm and Eugenius of Toledo in the seventh century did another western Latin writer produce a substantial poetic corpus. The immense productivity of both men is a sign of how much we have lost.

In their surviving works, Fortunatus and Gregory provide an informative picture of Merovingian social and political history, although they do so with different emphases. Fortunatus emphasized the united nature of Merovingian society through his focus on the role of bishops within a chain of patronage which stretched between heaven and earth.

MAKING CONNECT IONS AND maintaining friendship networks were major rea-sons to write letters, as they enabled these links to be created and preserved even across distances. Merovingian writers drew on classical and Christian concepts of friend-ship, which began to merge in the fourth century. Literary networks were important not just for mutual solidarity and support but also for aristocratic identity. In the rapidly changing world of the fifth century, when ideas of literary decline first appear amongst Gallic writers, the ability to participate in shared intellectual culture was a sign of elite status, no matter what had happened to one’s wealth or lands. Sidonius Apollinaris maintained that literary culture would become the only sure sign of nobility. In its own way the sixth century was as turbulent as the fifth and the ability to write and understand poetry and letters of friendship continued to signify elite identity.

Fortunatus’ poetry provides important evidence for the role of literary skill in the ability of the Merovingian elite to make and maintain networks amongst themselves. In fifth-and sixth-century Gaul, messages travelled between friends via the networks of old Roman roads and along the major rivers. Although this communication came with hassles and frustrations, the importance of networks of friendship and patronage made them worthwhile. These concepts of friendship included a well-developed ideology of long-distance friendship, on which Fortunatus drew heavily. Many of the poet’s friendships were conducted over significant distances, a condition which shaped his use of imagery of absence and presence.

Ideas of absence and presence were commonplaces in late antique statements about friendship inherited from classical thought. Augustine and Paulinus of Nola’s ideas of friendship included thinking about the effect of distance on their relationships. Augus-tine had written that friendships conducted across distances were more stable than those conducted face-to-face. Fifth-century Gallic writers developed these ideas further. In one of Sidonius Apollinaris’ letters this argument about the effect of distance on friendship is connected to theo logical understanding of the soul. Because one loves the rational souls of one’s friends, which are not fixed in any one place, their physical absence is irrelevant. For Claudianus Mamertus, friends physically absent from each other were united in God.

FORTUNATUS’ CONNECTIONS TO Merovingian royalty had many facets and lasted throughout his career. This chapter demonstrates how ideas of patronage and friendship informed Fortunatus’ works for Merovingian kings. While Fortunatus’ poems for royalty are by no means an understudied topic, scholarly discussion has primarily focused on his most formal and mannered poetry and its connections to classics models for such works. Integrating ideas of patronage and friendship into these discussions illuminates the poet’s innovative use of traditional models as it developed throughout his career. To explore this development over time, this chapter takes a chronological approach, first discussing Fortunatus’ epithalamium for the wedding of Sigibert and Brunhild, in which he chose to present Merovingian marriages within the late antique tradition of friendship between spouses. I will analyze the influence of late antique Christian thinkers on his ideas about royal marriage in order to illuminate this neglected aspect of his work. Secondly, I discuss the panegyrics for the Merovingian kings Childebert and Chilperic as carefully crafted public responses to the situations in which they were written. By contrast, many of poems for royal patrons lack a clear context and cannot be analyzed as occasional poems in the same way as the panegyrics for kings, but they offer a clear portrait of the importance of family, patronage, and generosity in the lives of Merovingian royal women. The final two sections of this chapter focus on the themes of Fortunatus’ last poems for Merovingian royalty: grief, loss, and the appearance of the next generation.

Fortunatus began his career in Merovingian Gaul with the patronage of royalty, writing for the wedding of Sigibert and Brunhild, and performing at royal functions, while also composing poetry for bishops and members of the nobility. Save Chlodomer (r. 511–524) and Chlothar II (r. 584–629/630), Fortunatus mentioned all sixth-century Merovingian kings, and he knew and wrote about Sigibert, Charibert, Chilperic, and Childebert II in detail. However, of the kings who controlled Poitiers during his lifetime, he wrote only for Charibert, Chilperic, and Childebert II. Guntram is named only once, in a poem for an obscure comes Galactorius. Reydellet, surprised by this absence, argues that this must be explained by the assumption that Fortunatus never met Guntram, who came to prominence in his world in 584, when the king assumed guardianship of Chlothar II and Childebert II. The poet celebrated the king’s visit to Metz in 588. The rulers in X.9, discussed below, are not named, though I take them to be Brunhild and Childebert.

IN MEROVINGIAN GAUL, networks of friendship and patronage were essential for the exchange of mutual favours, protection, and goodwill. To find an audience and commissioners for future work, a poet needed a patron. In the fragmented world of Merovingian Gaul, it was necessary to have more than one patron. Throughout his career, Fortunatus sought to make and maintain connections with kings, queens, nuns, bishops and other elite men and women. This chapter addresses how a patronage relationship was made and maintained by examining the language Fortunatus used to address his episcopal patrons, especially Gregory of Tours.

Merovingian friends operated within the parameters and precedents set by earlier Gallic writers, who blended conventions of patronage and friendship, addressing each other as a patron in the salutations of their letters, and expressing admiration of each other’s literary skills. In a letter to Sidonius’ Apollinaris’ son, the early sixth-century bishop Avitus of Vienne mentions how he looked up to Sidonius as a master; Ruricius of Limoges expresses similar feelings of polite deference. However, neither Avitus nor Sidonius address their aristocratic correspondents as patron. Ruricius was a senatorial aristocrat like Avitus and Sidonius, but he used the word patronus with extraordinary frequency—fourteen times, exclusively in addressing fellow bishops. This should not be taken as a sign that Ruricius felt only bishops could be patroni, nor does it necessarily indicate distant deference, as is made clear in a playful exchange between Ruricius and Bishop Sedatus of Nimes about a horse. These letters show that the language of patronage could be used in the context of friendship.

Venantius Fortunatus, like Ruricius, often wrote to bishops and called them patroni. This chapter explores when and why the poet addresses Eufronius of Tours (r. 557–573), Martin of Braga (r. 556–579), and Felix of Nantes (r. 549–582) as patrons. These writings reveal the reciprocal chain of patronage relationships that stretched between heaven and earth. Fortunatus’ single prose letter to Martin of Braga provides further evidence of how Fortunatus saw his episcopal correspondents as his advocates before the even more august patrons of heaven. This letter also enables us to consider the route letters travelled between correspondents, and the people who carried them.

MEROVINGIAN BISHOPS, ROYALTY, and aristocrats repaired, restored, or had constructed from scratch the sacred spaces of Christian worship. Fortunatus’ poetry provides a useful vantage point from which to consider how these activities fit into Merovingian conceptions of patronage and friendship. Fortunatus’ poems emphasize the appropriate use and display of wealth, which indicates that churches were not just visible signs of piety, but also that they were exhibitions of social display and competition. The donor’s own social status and importance influenced the amount and tone of the attention he or she receives in a given poem. In highlighting the wide range of patrons of buildings in Merovingian Gaul, church-building activities were influenced by social status as well as religious obligations. Though the majority of the builders are bishops, Fortunatus’ poems mention a range of donors, from a local church community to barbarian aristocratic families. Their activities demonstrate the convergence of an aspect of patronage, the sponsorship of buildings, and an aspect of friendship, the creation of networks and celebration of merit.

Out of a corpus of two hundred and eighteen poems, there are twenty-five about the construction or repairing of churches and four about episcopal villas or castles. In addition to these, ten episcopal epitaphs or praise-poems make mention of construction projects. This chapter is concerned with an important aspect of friendship-writing in this period: the praise of patronage, construction, and refurbishment of buildings. Most of Fortunatus’ poems on this subject are found in Books 1 and 2 of his poems. This chapter considers three groups of church-builders: episcopal builders, particularly Bishop Leontius of Bordeaux and his wife Placidina, Merovingian royalty, and aristocratic couples. The occasion provided friends with the opportunity to meet and exchange greetings.

I argue that both secular and ecclesiastic donors were engaging in social and pious display by using their wealth in a manner designed to bring them heavenly reward and the favourable attention of their friends, neighbours, and clients. As I discuss in relation to the construction activities of Felix of Nantes, ecclesiastical buildings and festivals had been intertwined with ideals of friendship, and thus aristocratic culture, since the fifth century.