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- Saint Arnulf of Metz (c 582, Lay-Saint-Christophe, Meurthe-et-Moselle - 640) was a Frankish bishop of Metz and advisor to the Merovingian court of Austrasia, who retired to the Abbey of Remiremont.
Arnulf was born of an important Frankish family at an uncertain date around 582. In his younger years he was called to the Merovingian court of king Theudebert II (595-612) of Austrasia and sent to serve as dux at the Schelde. Later he became bishop of Metz. During his career he was attracted to religious life, and he retired to become a monk. After his death he was canonized as a saint. In French he is also known as Arnoul or Arnoulf.
Arnulf gave distinguished service at the Austrasian court under Theudebert II After the death of Theudebert in 612 he was made bishop of Metz. The rule of Austrasia came into the hands of Brunhilda, the grandmother of Theudebert, who ruled also in Burgundy in the name of her great-grandchildren. In 613 Arnulf joined his politics with Pippin of Landen and led the opposition of Frankish nobles against Queen Brunhilda. The revolt led to her overthrow, torture, and eventual execution, and the subsequent reunification of Frankish lands under Chlothachar II.
Chlothachar later made his son Dagobert I king of Austrasia and he ruled with the help of his advisor Arnulf. Not satisfied with his position, as a bishop he was involved in the murder of Chrodoald in 624, an important leader of the Frankish Agilolfings family and a protégé of Dagobert.
From 623 (with Pippin of Landen, then the Mayor of the Palace), Arnulf was an adviser to Dagobert I. He retired around 628 to a hermitage at a mountain site in the Vosges, to realize his lifelong resolution to become a monk and a hermit. His friend Romaric, whose parents were killed by Brunhilda, had preceded him to the mountains and together with Amatus had already established Remiremont Abbey there. Arnulf settled there, and remained there until his death twelve years later.
Arnulf was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. In iconography he is portrayed with a rake in his hand and is often confused in legend with Arnold of Soissons, who is a patron saint of brewing.
Shortly after 800, most likely in Metz, a brief genealogy of the Carolingians was compiled, modelled in style after the genealogy of Jesus in the New Testament. According to this source, Arnulf's father was a certain Arnoald, who in turn was the son of a nobilissimus Ansbertus and Blithilt (or Blithilde), an alleged and otherwise unattested daughter of Chlothar I. This late attribution of royal Merovingian descent at a time when the Carolingian dynasty was at the peak of its power contrasts clearly with the contemporary Vita Sancti Arnulfi's failure to mention any such a connection: The Vita, written shortly after the saint's death, merely states that he was of Frankish ancestry, from "sufficiently elevated and noble parentage, and very rich in worldly goods", without making any claims to royal blood. While modern historians generally dismiss the later Carolingian genealogy as spurious[2], it constitutes an important link in Christian Settipani's suggested line of unbroken descent from antiquity via Flavius Afranius Syagrius.
Arnulf was married ca 596 to a woman whom later sources give the name of Dode or Doda, (born ca 584), and had children. Chlodulf of Metz was his oldest son, but more important is his second son Ansegisel, who married Begga daughter of Pepin I, Pippin of Landen.
Sources
Vita Arnulfi c. 1, MG. SS. rer. Merov. 2, p. 432.
Cf. R. Schieffer, Die Karolinger, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin / Köln, 2nd ed., 1997.
Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, edited, revised and supplemented by Thurston and Attwater. Christian Classics, Westminster, Maryland.
Christian Settipani - La Préhistoire des Capétiens, Première Partie.
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