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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 8, 36. Of the Death of Magnovald

At the court of Childebert, for some cause unknown, Magnovald was slain by the king’s orders in the following way. The king being in his palace at Metz,¹ and looking on at a sport in which a beast was being worried by a pack of dogs on all sides, summoned Magnovald to him. He came, and in ignorance of what was afoot joined freely in the general laughter as he watched the creature. Then a man who had received his orders, as soon as he saw his victim intent upon the sport, swung his axe and cleft his skull. He fell dead, and was thrown out of a window of the house; his own people buried him. His property was seized, and all that was found was taken to the public treasury. Some averred that the reason for his murder was that after his brother died he had done his own wife to death, after cruelly ill-treating her, and then taken his brother’s wife to his bed.

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