Grimoald I

Grimoald I was mayor of the palace of Austrasia (the eastern Frankish realm) from c. 643 until his fall around 657. The son of Pippin of Landen and an ancestral figure of the Carolingian dynasty, he consolidated his family's dominance over the Merovingian court. In a notorious episode, after the death of King Sigibert III he engineered the tonsuring of the rightful heir Dagobert II and installed his own son Childebert ("the Adopted") on the throne. The coup ultimately failed: Grimoald was seized, handed to the Neustrian king Clovis II, and put to death around 662. He appears here as a recipient in the early-7th-century letter collection of Bishop Desiderius of Cahors, situating him among the elite of Merovingian Gaul.