The Starr Family of America

Notes
Weis' "Ancestral Roots" (190:1) calls him Frankish King of Cologne,living 420, kinsman of Clovis I.
kennwalrus@aol.com (Kennwalrus) posted toGEN-MEDIEVAL-L-request@rootsweb.com on 17 Feb 1998
Subject: Re: CLOVIS THE RIPARIAN
..."Clovis the Riparian, supposedly King at Koln ca. 420, can be tracedback, in English, to a 1940s article by G. Andrews Moriarty in the NewEngland Historical and Genealogical Register. (My papers are in disarray,so I speak -- this is a warning -- from memory.) He, however, wassummarizing his understanding of a series of 1920s articles by a scholarnamed Depoin, published in a French periodical called the Revue Mabillon.What Depoin actually theorized in this article, on the basis of muchlater and rather confused saints' lives, was that Sigebert the Lame ofCologne (real, fl. prob. ca. 500, give or take a bit) was younger brotherof his predecessor, Childebert, and that both were sons and successors ofa Clovis who was not the same man as Clovis the Great of the SalicFranks.
Moriarty apparently read or remembered this incorrectly, for he madeSigebert the Lame SON of Childebert, and GRANDSON of this 'other
Clovis.' Having done so, he guessed fl.' dates for the supposed threegenerations, at 30 years each.
....Actually, the saint's life in question is a late and shaky documentupon which to found a genealogy; while it's barely possible that thegenealogy as Depoin extracted it is valid (Moriarty's would be less so,since its alteration from Depoin's version is apparently accidental),nothing even remotely contemporary documents the Riparian kings back ofSigebert of Cologne. Assuming that there were any, it seems likely thatthey were in some degree akin to CLOWIS THE GREAT, but impossible tospecify how. (This is not for want of trying, often of an original andinventive cast, by many hands over many decades; but the originaldocumentation being so very thin, they are unlikely to approximate thehistorical truth, whatever it was.)"
The next day, Kennwalrus, further expanded on his comments:
...". . . fortunately, as I've located the relevant articles. You'reright: in NEHGR 98 (1944) 303-10, "The Origin of the Carolingians," at309, G. A. Moriarty writes: "Siegbert the Lame ... was the son ofChildebert, King of Cologne, and ... grandson of an earlier Clovis, ...King of Cologne early in the fifth century (Gregory of Tours, op.cit.)." There's nothing in Gregory about Siegbert's (or Sigebert's)ancestry, other than the general statement, made somewhere in G of T'sHistory of the Franks, that the other Frankish kings (ca. 490? 500?)were (all?) relatives of Clovis the Great, who killed them. Moriartyapparently wrote doubly absent-mindedly at that point, for it isn't justthe citation, but the proposed ancestry itself, that's reportedincorrectly. Earlier in the same article he cites his source for theWHOLE lineage as M. J. Depoin, "Les Grands [sic] Figures Monacales...," Revue Mabillon, 1921-2. The latter article says, "Il s'agit ici["ici" being the Legend of St. Goar] de trois rois de Cologne dont ledernier, Sigebert le Boiteux, apparait comme successeur d'un Childebertanterieur au fils de Clotilde, et fils d'un Clovis qui etablit sonpouvoir sur les Ripuaires probablement au temps de l'exil de ChildericIer." In another article by the same man -- "Etudes merovingiennes" --for which I can identify neither the date nor the journal (I took badnotes) -- unless it's the Revue des Etudes Historiques, 11, pp. 369-85-- he says, "Le royaume des Franks austrasiens de 450 a 509 a donc eupour titulaires:

1. Clodovie (Clovis), frere de Merovee.
2. Childibert (Childebert), fils de Clodovie.
3. Sigebert, frere cadet de Childibert.
4. Cloderic, fils de Sigebert."
   In other words, Depoin analyzed a later medieval legend as meaning that aFrank named Clovis took power at Cologne in the 460s or so; and that aChildebert and a Sigebert ("the Lame") were his sons and successors, thelatter being father of Cloderic the Parricide. Whether one accepts thisdepends on (a) one's assessment of the value of the Legend of St. Goaras a source for the fifth century (a subject on which I remain agnostichere), (b) Depoin's analysis of Goar; and (c) other sources for theperiod, which name no Ripuarian kings (they name precious few anybodys,as it was a dreadful period for annalists and historians, as foreverybody else), but do seem to indicate that there WERE 'other' Frankishkings -- other than Childeric, fa. of Clovis, that is -- in the middle400s.
   Long story to short: Sigebert the Lame's real. He definitely doesn'tdescend from Clovis the Great. (He was almost certainly older than C
   the G.) Plausibly, though not provably, he was of royal Frankish descent,and kin, in some unknown degree, to C the G; but the evidence for theexistence of Clovis the Ripuarian is debatable, which makes Depoin'sanalysis of this C's genealogical bearings of secondary relevance; andMoriarty's report of Depoin's analysis is incorrect -- either misread, or(I think more likely) misremembered in the writing. (Which would indicatethat Moriarty, at least sometimes, wrote from an unreliable memory,without his sources beside him, and without correcting from those sourceslater.)"