Long Hair, Oxcarts, and Sea Beasts: Reconsidering Merovingian Sacral Kingship

Abstract Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, scholars largely agreed that certain traits of Merovingian rulers reflected the survival of an ancient form of sacral kingship. Chief among these was the requirement that Frankish kings wear their hair long—a feature widely regarded as the clearest indication of the magical and sacred powers attributed to the sovereign, understood as the guarantor of fertility and prosperity. Since World War II, however, this interpretation has come under increasingly severe critique and has now been almost entirely abandoned. In its place, the view that Merovingian royal hair carried no magical or religious meaning, but functioned solely as a marker of social distinction, has gained broad acceptance. This essay revisits the debate with the aim of demonstrating that the evidence surrounding Merovingian royal hair, when considered alongside other key sources, may still support the hypothesis of a sacral dimension to Merovingian kingship.