Editing Merovingian dynasty (section)

== Legendary origins ==
[[File:Seal of Childeric I Tournai tomb.jpg|thumb|[[Signet ring]] of [[Childeric I]]. [[Monnaie de Paris]].]]
The 7th-century ''[[Chronicle of Fredegar]]'' implies that the Merovingians were descended from a sea-beast called a [[quinotaur]]:
<blockquote>
It is said that while Chlodio was staying at the seaside with his wife one summer, his wife went into the sea at midday to bathe, and a beast of Neptune rather like a Quinotaur found her. In the event she was made pregnant, either by the beast or by her husband, and she gave birth to a son called Merovech, from whom the kings of the Franks have subsequently been called Merovingians.<ref name=INW>{{cite book |author-link=Ian N. Wood |first=Ian N. |last=Wood |chapter=Deconstructing the Merovingian Family |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Corradini |editor2-first=Maximilian |editor2-last=Diesenberger |editor3-first=Helmut |editor3-last=Reimitz |title=The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e6sfGt10UzcC&pg=PA149 |year=2003 |publisher=[[Brill Publishers|Brill]] |isbn=90-04-11862-4 |pages=149–}}</ref>
</blockquote>
In the past, this tale was regarded as an authentic piece of [[Germanic mythology]] and was often taken as evidence that the Merovingian kingship was [[Sacred king|sacral]] and the royal dynasty of supernatural origin.<ref>{{cite book |first=A.C. |last=Murray |chapter=7. Post vocantur Merohingii: Fredegar, Merovech, and 'Sacral Kingship' |editor-first=Walter |editor-last=Goffart |editor2-first=Walter A. |editor2-last=Goffart |title=After Rome's Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History : Essays Presented to Walter Goffart |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q_2GXKNqzdAC&pg=PA121 |date=1998 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-0779-7 |pages=121–152}}</ref> Today, it is more commonly seen as an attempt to explain the meaning of the name Merovech (sea-bull): "Unlike the [[Anglo-Saxon]] rulers the Merovingians—if they ever themselves acknowledged the quinotaur tale, which is by no means certain—made no claim to be descended from a god".<ref name=INW/>

In 1906, the British Egyptologist [[Flinders Petrie]] suggested that the Marvingi recorded by [[Ptolemy]] as living near the [[Rhine]] were the ancestors of the Merovingian dynasty.<ref>{{cite journal |author-link=W. M. Flinders Petrie |first=W.M. |last=Flinders Petrie |title=Migrations. (The Huxley Lecture for 1906) |journal=The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |volume=36 |pages=189–232 see p. 205 |year=1906 |doi=10.2307/1193258 |jstor=1193258 |url=https://zenodo.org/record/1782395 |quote=Probably among this confederacy should be included the Marvingi* of Ptolemy, to the south of the Catti, ... who seem to have given the Merving family to rule the Franks}}</ref>