Dagobert II

Saint Dagobert II was a Merovingian king of the Franks in Austrasia, from 675 or 676 until 679. He grew up in exile and was killed at the end of his reign in a conspiracy. He is honoured as a martyr and as a saint of the undivided Church, above all around Stenay in northern France. His commemoration is on 23 December.

Childhood and exile

He was the son of King Sigebert III of Austrasia. His mother is not known for certain, and Queen Chimnechild was probably not she. After Sigebert died, around 656, the mayor of the palace Grimoald had the boy tonsured, which made him unfit for the throne, since Merovingian kings wore their hair long. He was entrusted to Bishop Dido of Poitiers, who sent him to Ireland. Grimoald put his own son on the throne but was soon arrested and executed.

No source from the time describes Dagobert's life in Ireland. A local tradition, first recorded only in the eighteenth century, links him with the monastery of Slane.

Return and reign

When King Childeric II was murdered in 675, civil war broke out and Dagobert was recalled from exile. According to the Life of Wilfrid, his friends and relatives asked Bishop Wilfrid of York to bring him to England and send him on to Austrasia. By July 676 he was on the throne.

His reign is thinly recorded. He fought a war with Neustria and King Theuderic III, made a pact of peace with the Lombards and revived the minting of gold coins. His one surviving charter confirms the possessions of the monastery of Stavelot-⁠Malmedy. The Life of Wilfrid portrays him as a harsh king who burdened the people with taxes and quarrelled with the bishops. In 679 Wilfrid stayed at his court on the way to Rome, and Dagobert offered him the see of Strasbourg, which Wilfrid declined.

Death and veneration

In late 679 Dagobert was assassinated in a plot of great nobles. A later tradition says that he was killed while hunting in the Woëvre by his own godson John. The date of 23 December comes from late sources but is widely accepted.

The sources disagree about his burial: the Life of Audoin says Rouen, and the Life of Dagobert, written in the 890s, says Stenay. In 872 King Charles the Bald moved his relics to a new basilica at Stenay. He was honoured as a martyr in the Ardennes before the end of the ninth century, but his cult hardly spread beyond the region of Stenay. The relics there were dispersed after the Protestant sack of 1591.