So I've been reading about the danish vikings and their interaction with the different people and cultures in western Europe, especially the merovingian and karolingian dynasties. I came across the Salian Franks and understood, that they were assimilated into being Franks at some time around the 7th century, but that the merovingian dynasties had some kind of Salian ancestry.
This made my think of whether there were any connection between the merovingian (Salian) and the Salian dynasty which ruled what we now know as Germany from the year 1000. If yes, was it a 'real' dynastical connection or was it some kind of hoax to make legitimate claims for the crown?
Sorry but this will be brief as I have to bounce.
The name of the dynasty "merovingian" comes from Mérovée the mythical father of Childéric, a Salian Frank who ruled over the province of Gallia Belgica, which was confided to him by the roman empire. Nothing really remarkable happened to Childéric however, his son Clovis, had an great life. He conquered what is basically today France except the south and part of northern Germany. Clovis had several sons and when he died, the kingdom was split in four. And quickly it only became three : Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy.
Cue two centuries of alternate hegemony between the kings of the three kingdoms. But during this time, their power increasingly diminished and the real power was at the hand of the aristocracy. Until the days of Pepin the short, an aristocrat from Neustria, usurped the throne in 751, kicked the other kings butts and became king of the Franks. He is the first of the Carolingians.
Pepin the short had a great son : Charlemagne.
Like I said, it's a very quick, very simplified explanation. Hope you will forgive me for the English ! For people who can read french, there is a great book which was written by one of my professors : MERIAUX C., BUHRER-THIERRY G.,La France avant la France (481-888).
There is no real connection between the two. The Salian Franks are a sub-group of the Frankish people, of uncertain origin; the name is probably no more than a geographical appelation (the Franks of the Lower Rhine, near the sea), which acquired over the course of time a political significance. As their name implies, they were Franks from the very beginning; they were not “assimilated into being Franks.” The origins of the Merovingian dynasty, on the other hand, is unclear. Ian Wood, among others, has argued that they may actually have Thuringian roots, on the basis of various origin stories and findings. However, even if this hypothesis actually has merits, the scholarly consensus is still to analyse the Merovingians as a Frankish dynasty, whose origin can be traced back to Chlodio, a kinglet of the early 5th century.
Since the Merovingian dynasty soon became, in the early years of the 6th century, the only ruling family of the Frankish people (except, as recent scholarship has shown, for the intriguing case of Bavaria), they became associated with the Franks; and the term “Salian” probably became, in a loose sense, a synonym of Franks (other words came to be synonyms of “Franks”: according to an interesting passage of Beowulf, the Franks are called “Hugones” — without delving into all the details of this identification, it probably comes from the preeminence of the Robertian dynasty in West Francia in the 10th century, and especially of Hugh the Great, father of Hugh Capet. More generally, any successful dynasty could become an ethnonym; and the Merovingians were indeed very successful).
As for the Salian dynasty, their primitive origins lay in the Wormsgau, a region that does not belong to the original territory of the Salian Franks, but rather to the ancient domain of the Rhenish/Ripuarian Franks — but these old labels had lost their meaning by that time, even if they were still recycled and reused. However, some traces of earlier senses were retained by later reinterpretations. In this case, the origin of the appelation is probably linked to the self-identification of the “Salian” dynasty as Franks (a self-identification that was, by the way, well-grounded: modern studies show that they were linked to the Widonids, a leading family of the Carolingian Reicharistokratie). The first historian of their family, Wipo of Burgundy, also said that they were “nobles from Franconia” (i.e. the country of the Franks, a linguistic doublet of “Francia”; Franconia, in this case, was a precise region of medieval Germania). Ottonian rulers (who were replaced by the Salians) were not Franks, but Saxons; they traced their origin to another Germanic people, which had long been a part of the Frankish zone of influence and which was eventually annexed by Charles the Great.
I do not know when this association between the house of Conrad II and the word “Salian” appeared, but it seems reasonably clear that it stemmed from their association with the Franks, and, indirectly, with the Merovingians. It is also possible that they deliberately fostered this identification as Franks in opposition to the Saxon dynasty of the Ottonians.