There is little information about him in the later histories of the Franks.
Gregory of Tours only names him once as the father of
Childeric I but remained vague about his relationship to
Chlodio. The
Chronicle of Fredegar recounts that Merovech was born after Chlodio's wife encountered a
sea creature while bathing in the sea; according to Fredegar it remained unclear whether Merovech's father was the creature or Chlodio. Another theory considers this legend to be the creation of a mythological past needed to back up the fast-rising Frankish rule in Western Europe. Chlodio is said to have been defeated by
Flavius Aëtius at Vicus Helena in Artois in 448.
Ian S. Wood would therefore place Merovech, as his apparent son, somewhere in the second half of the fifth century. A contemporary Roman historian,
Priscus described having witnessed in
Rome a “lad without down on his cheeks as yet and with fair hair so long that it poured down his shoulders,
Aetius had made him his adopted son”. Priscus writes that the excuse
Attila used for waging war on the
Franks was the death of their king and the disagreement of his children over the succession, the elder being allied with Attila and the younger with Aetius. As Chlodio died just before Attila's invasion, this seems to suggest that Merovech was in fact Chlodio's son. Historians are divided on whether Merovech is one of the protagonists in Priscus's account: • Some, like Erich Zöllner, believe that the prince Priscus described was a
Ripuarian Frank. • Others like Émilienne Demougeot believe that Merovech is the king who died in 451, and his son Childeric is the adopted son of Aetius. • Finally, Christian Settipani has proposed that Chlodio is the king who died in 451, and Merovech is the son allied with Rome. Some historians, such as Georg Waitz, suggest that Merovech might be a mythological figure, theorized to be a son of the sea (
mari in Frankish), implying a god or demigod revered by the Franks before their conversion to Christianity. Another proposition is that Merovech is a reference to the Merwede, a Dutch river, whose initial course matched the area where the Salian Franks lived, as per some Roman historians. However, etymological studies seem to refute this theory. Historian Étienne Renard, based on a new interpretation of two royal genealogies from the 9th and 10th centuries, suggests that Merovech could be an eponymous ancestor founder of the lineage rather than being a grandfather of Genildis. According to him, Merovech is an evanescent character, whose name is not associated with any act of war or any historical event. The existence of Merovee should not be excluded. An
Austrasian genealogy carried out between 629 and 639 mentions that For the genealogist
Christian Settipani, this would be a list of Salian kings in which the lineages were established after its constitution. The genealogy should thus be corrected as follows: Chlodion begot Chlodebaude and Merovee. Merovee begot Childeric. However the historian Jean-Pierre Poly believes that if Merovee (Merow'ih) is the son of Chlodebaude (Hl'udbead), married in 435, he could hardly have had Childeric (Hildrih), himself king around 456, as a son. He deduces that Merovee (Merow'ih) is the nickname of Chlodebaude (Hl'udbead), son of Chlodion (Hl'udio). While it seems accepted that bound by a
foedus with the Roman Empire, the Salian Franks fought alongside the Roman general
Aetius at the Battle of the
Catalaunian Fields, (a plain near
Châlons-en-Champagne and
Troyes), in 451. The sources do not, however, specify who led them into battle. The Franks suffered heavy losses in a preliminary engagement against the
Gepids, however history does not say anything more, while it has recorded the death of
Theodoric I, king of the
Visigoths, killed the next day in the battle. ==References in popular culture==