Charibert I
Charibert (c.517-567), king of the Franks, was the eldest son of Clotaire I and Ingund.
On Clotaire's death in 561, his estates were divided among his sons, Charibert receiving Paris as his capital, together with Rouen, Tours, Poitiers, Limoges, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
Besides his wife, Ingoberga, with whom he had a daughter, Berthe, or Aldeberge, (539-640), he had unions with Merofleda, a wool-carder's daughter, and Theodogilda, the daughter of a neatherd (cowherd). Charibert was scarcely more than "king at Paris" when he married his daughter Bertha to Aethelbert, the pagan king of Kent, who probably came to his throne in A.D. 560. She took with her Bishop Liudhard as her private confessor. According to Bede, Aethelbert's supremacy in 597 stretched over all the petty English kingdoms as far as the Humber, at any rate sufficient to guarantee the safety of Augustine when in 597 the mission of Augustine landed in Thanet. The Christian mission was received at first with some hesitation by the king, who gave Augustine a dwelling-place in Canterbury, and the Christian conversion, first of Kent, then of other Anglo-Saxons proceeded from there, thanks to Charibert's daughter.
Though Charibert was eloquent and learned in the law, he was one of the most dissolute of the Merovingian kings, his early death in 567 being brought on by his excesses. At his death his brothers Guntram, Sigebert I, and Chilperic I shared his realm.
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