Wisigard

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Wisigard (c. 510 – c. 540), also called Wisigardis, was a Frankish queen by marriage to King Theudebert I. The details of her life come mainly from Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks. She was the daughter of Wacho, king of the Lombards, and grew up near the middle Danube region.

After a long engagement of seven years, Wisigard married Theudebert I, the Merovingian king of Austrasia. Around 531, Theuderich I, Theudebert’s father, arranged the engagement for political reasons. The marriage nearly fell apart when Theudebert had a liaison with a Roman woman named Deuteria. Later, for political reasons, Theudebert ended that relationship and married Wisigard in 537 or 538. She died shortly after their wedding.

In 1959, Otto Doppelfeld, then director of the Romano-Germanic Museum, found a very rich, decorated grave of a Frankish woman in Cologne Cathedral. The grave goods and her traditional dress suggested she was Lombardic royalty, and Doppelfeld identified her as Wisigard. However, this identification is not proven by an inscription or other sources.