The Battle of Tours in 732 was a turning point in the wars against the Umayyad Caliphate. The Caliphate was one of the biggest empires in history, but it lost this battle. At the confluence of the rivers Clain and Vienne, the Franks, led by statesman maior domo Charles Martel, only just managed to defeat the great army of Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor of al-Andalus ‘Andalusia’. Historians estimate tens of thousands of soldiers died. In the run-up to this historic battle, a small Frankish army delayed the advancement of the Saracen ‘Arab‘ army into Francia. Near the modern villages of Lupiac and Bassoues both armies clashed twice. The Franks won at the end, narrowly, but at the cost of its commander’s life. He became known as Fris ’Frisian’, and was the son of King Radbod of Frisia. Fris was declared a saint. To this very day, in times of crises, people of the region pray for the help of Saint Fris.
Now how did that all happen?
King Radbod (also named Redbad), the early-medieval heathen king of Frisia, nicknamed the Enemy of God by the Franks, and his very own blood fighting for those same Christian Franks in the south of Francia? In our blog post In debt to the beastly Westfrisians (2017), we already briefly mentioned the legend of the son of King Radbod. That legend, based on the Vita Vulframni ‘Life of Wulfram’ written around 800, recounts how Radbod's son was baptised and "freed from the flesh", and died soon after. Unfortunately, no name of the son is given. Was he Fris perhaps?
The story of Fris reminds us of the three Frisian soldiers Ilderado from the town of Groningen, Leomot from the town of Stavoren and Hiaro from the town of Esens, together with a nun named Celdui from Esens too, who out of the blue find on the trail near the eternal city of Rome the body of Saint Magnus. This occurred in the ninth century. Saint Magnus too was a soldier-saint, in this case a legionnaire of the Roman army. The three Frisians who found Saint Magnus body were in service of the Frankish army, and had been chasing a Saracen army all the way down to the region of Apulia in southern Italy. Besides Frisians fighting in Frankish armies against Saracens, in both stories a (red) banner is an important element as well. The difference is, the events around Saint Magnus took place a century later. In the year 848, to be precise.
Anyway, those readers who are interested in the saga of Saint Magnus can read our blog post Magnus’ Choice. The Origins of the Frisian Freedom.
What is it with these early-medieval Frisians? Barely converted to Christianity and they turn into religious fanatics fighting Muslims across the European continent? Or were they simply happy to fight at every opportunity, and/or to get their hands on some of the loot? Wondering also, since Frisians primarily were a marsh and sea people, what made them enrolling at infantry and cavalry units and fighting in land-locked, hot, mountainous surroundings?
In the villages of Bassoues, Gazax-Bacarisse, Lupiac, Peyrusse-Vieille and in Vic-Fezensac, all in the département of Gers, the region of Occitania in southern France, Saint Fris is worshiped to this day. It was only in 2017 that a procession took place at the village of Bassoues to ask this saint to help the local farmers whose farms were affected by the bird flu. Once, the churches of the villages of Saint-Go and Préneron were dedicated to Saint Fris too. These two churches have been dismantled, maybe two centuries ago already. District Gers is an area at the foot of the northern side of the Pyrenees.
Bassoues is about 70 kilometers north of the town of Lourdes. Several statutes, relics in Romanesque churches, and a small chapel dedicated to Saint Fris can be found here. The church of Bassoues is named la basilique Saint-Fris. Also, the little lake just east of Bassoues is named Lac de Saint-Fris. On the other, western, side of the village is the location of l’Étendard. It is the plateau where commander Fris planted his banner, and is how the battle is remembered as la Bataille de l’Étendard: the Battle of the Standard.
Saint Fris is also known as Frix, Fries, Frise, Friso, or Fritz. In fact, the name of the saint was not known, so he was named after his Frisian origin. The personal names Jean-Fris (male) or Frisa (female) can still be found in this region of France. If you think it is a bit weird to name your child 'Frisian,' then know that the most common last name in the Netherlands is De Vries, 'the Frisian' (check our blog post How to recognize the Frisians by name?). Even other territories can have a proper first and last name. Think of American actresses Holland Taylor and Holland Roden, or Willa Holland and Jennifer Holland. We only miss Holland Holland.
Back to Saint Fris. According to the legend, Fris was besides being a son of Radbod, also a nephew of Mayor Charles Martel. King Radbod of Frisia is mainly remembered as the cruel pagan opponent of the Frankish kingdom. Think of the battles in 689, against the Frankish ruler Mayor Pepin of Herstal, and in 714, against Charles Martel. Read our blog post The battles of Redbad, unplugged for more details about these battles.
Radbod’s relationship with the Franks, however, might have been more complicated and less one-dimensional than only a heathen opponent. Probably, there have been periods Radbod more or less had the position of dux ‘duke’ of the prefecture western Frisia, subordinate to the Frankish empire. In a way, a continuation of the administrative organization of the Roman empire. An empire of which the Franks happened to regard themselves as the inheritor, ever since King Clovis got dominion over what is France today in the early sixth centurty. The fact King Radbod nearly was baptized in the year 718, he namely got cold feet the last minute and did not go for christendom, is an illustration of Frisia’s more complex relationship with Francia. Likewise the marriage of Radbod’s daughter Thudsinda with Grimoald, the son of Mayor Pepin of Herstal, in the year 711. This union even gave Radbod’s potential offspring pole position in becoming the future maior domo of the Frankish eastern kingdom, were it not for the fact Grimoald was assassinated not long after the marriage. Besides, Radbod died in 719, after being ill for six years. Bit of a pity, this whole ending for Radbod and his Frisia. A castle made of sand that slips into sea, eventually.
Anyhow, the whole context shows that if King Radbod indeed had a son, it was not unthinkable he was baptized at some time.
According to the Annales Mettenses Priores, dated around 800, Grimoald had a son who was named Theudoald but apparently was a bastard son of a concubine. The element theud or thud in his name, however, makes it possible, even probable, he was actually the son of Radbod's daughter Thudsinda. Are Theudoald and Fris one and the same perhaps?
As a side note, in scholarly debates there is often much ado about Radbod’s titles dux or king. Radbod is often called king in the Anglo-Saxon sources and dux in the Frankish ones. For modern Frisians, of course, a sensitive and status-sensitive topic, and they prefer the Anglo-Saxon perspective. However, it was in a time the most powerful men of Francia were 'humbly' called maior domo meaning ‘mayor of the palace’. A time when the title of king was of lesser importance. Being called dux was probably better. Much of a muchness, in any case.
The course of events in 732 was, as said at the beginning of this blog post, that the great Umayyad army entered Francia via the Pyrenees, eventually leading to the great Battle of Tours. Charles Martel saw the Saracen army advancing and send out a smaller army led by Fris, the royal son of Radbod, to scout the movements. It came to clashes between both armies at the village of Lupiac first, and then at the village of La Tapia, today known as Bassoues.
Other versions of the story suggest it was after, and not in the run-up of the great Battle of Tours that the battles at Lupiac and La Tapia/Bassoues took place. In this version Charles Martel ordered Fris to chase the Umayyad army during its retreat. We, however, follow the version that Fris battled with the Saracens befóre the Battle of Tours (Homerin 1999). This also, because the Battle of Tours happened in the month October of 732, and la Bataille de l’Étendard allegedly in the month June of that same year.
At the village of Lupiac, not far from Bassoues, was the first confrontation between the Umayyads and the Franks. This battle was won by the Umayyad army. The Franks fled and regrouped near Bassoues. Commander Fris planted his banner on the plateau which is known as l’Étendard, meaning 'the standard', ever since. Fris made a stand, so to speak. Thus, the Saracens, trying to penetrate deeper into the territory of Francia, were confronted with battle once more. And again it was an uphill fight. The battle was fought on June 24, and won this time by the small Frankish army. Bit of a David and Goliath fight.
According to the story, Fris was lethally hit by an arrow in his thigh. The horse, with Fris still on it, ran from the battlefield and brought the heavily injured Fris to a bridge over the small stream Guiroue. Here, Fris, the little David, died. He was secretly and hastily buried in a sarcophagus near the current small lake. The bridge, therefore, is named pont du Chrétien, ‘bridge of Christians,’ and it is here where the little chapel built in 1890 stands today.
For two centuries, the people of Bassoues and its surroundings had forgotten all about the place where the Frisian commander was buried, until one day a farmer witnessed strange behaviour from one of his cows. The beast had stopped eating, but it did not starve. What it did do was lick the same stone all the time. The farmer, curious, uncovered the stone and found a sarcophagus underneath. When he opened the sarcophagus, the body, armor, and all other weaponry of Saint Fris were fully preserved. This was after two centuries.
Happy to have found the remains of Fris, who had won the famous battle, the villagers built a chapel at their church for the devotion of Saint Fris. When they wanted to transfer the body to it, no beast of burden could move the carriage. Very similar is the story of Radfrid, son of Saint Walfrid of Bedum in the province of Groningen, who was killed by Vikings when they plundered Frisia in the tenth century. His body could not be moved either (unbelievers can read our blog post Walfrid, You’ll Never Walk Alone). But the villagers of Bassoues found a way. They realized the cow that had been licking the stone all that time should pull the carriage. It succeeded. Like a walk in the park, the cow transferred the remains to the church.
From this time onward, miracles started to happen and Bassoues became a place of pilgrimage. And, as often happens during a translatio ‘transfer of relics’, a fresh water well or quickborn sprang up where the body of Saint Fris had been buried for centuries. One of the first miracles that occurred was when a woman from the nearby hamlet of Andréou used water from the well to make dough. The water turned into blood. When called upon, Saint Fris can cure all kinds of sicknesses, from those who suffer from the plague to young women who are crippled.
By the way, cows assisting as intermediaries between humans and God is something we also know from many old Frisian sagas. In these sagas, cows, and sometimes horses, often point out the right spot where a church should be built. The practice was that two cows were bound together and left to walk freely for the night. After a good night’s sleep, the villagers would look for the beasts. The place where the cows had settled down in the morning was the right spot given by God. Interestingly, very similar sagas exist in parts of Switzerland as well. Check our blog post Make way for the homesick dead! to read more, if you dare.
The first time the church of Bassoues appears in written sources is in the year 1020. In a charter of November of that year – kept in the monastery of Saint Michel in Pessan – it is recorded that the castle and the ecclesia beati Frisii ‘church of the blessed Frisian’ of Bassoues are donated to the monastery of Pessan, under the condition that a new basilica and monastery will be built large enough to receive all the pilgrims from everywhere, and for all who are on their way to Santiago de Compostela. In 1047, indeed, a monastery was built at the basilica.
Unfortunately, the Crusades, many medieval wars, the Huguenots who set fire to the basilica, and last but not least, the French Revolution, all did not do much good for the basilica and the monastery of Bassoues. At the end of the fourteenth century, a new church was built, but now inside the walls of the village. Consequently, the monastery and the basilica of Saint Fris fell fully into disrepair. Its crypt survived everything, though. In the nineteenth century, the basilica was restored, and in the year 1857, relics of Saint Fris, kept in the commune Peyrusse-Grande during the French Wars of Religion, were returned.
The saga is based on a lost document in possession of Abbot Aignan de Sendat (1681-1764) of which only some notes were preserved (Van Hout 2017).
Recently, some effort has been made to explain the origin of the Saint Fris. Fris is being associated with the Roman idol Mars and with Santiago Matamoros ‘slayer of Moors’, both armed, riding a horse and wearing a red cape. But just as well, Sant Fris is connected with the mother goddess of Magna Mater, the Virgin Mary, the god Apollo, the Celtic idol and giant Gargantua, and with the Book of Genesis (Adkins 2007). In other words, the whole pantheon, and much more, is being dragged into it by scholars. Too complicated for us simple hikers to understand.
But what if a clash did take place between the Umayyad and Frankish armies at Bassoues with the participation of a Frisian contingent, possibly a cavalry scout army? Is this not less far-fetched than bringing in all the idols and gods of heaven? After all, not much later that same century, it was Frisian-Saxon contingents fighting for the Frankish Kingdom against the Slavs and the Avars, which brought them even to the River Danube in modern Hungary (Flierman 2021).
War horses
A final remark. In this blog post, we casually wondered how a sea people ended up fighting in Frankish armies across Europe. One thing was not mentioned, though: namely, that Frisians passionately kept and rode horses in their marshy heartlands along the southern North Sea coast, already during the Early Middle Ages. In the High Middle Ages, Frisians were well-known horse breeders, exporting their horses all over Europe (Savelkouls 2016). In the eleventh century, the island of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland, which was part of West Frisia still, was known for its excellent horses (Nieuwenhuijsen 2022). In the chanson de geste and the epic La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche, none other than the illustrious Charlemagne rides a ceval Frise ‘Frisian horse’. What is more, Frisian horses were renowned as the chargeur ‘war horse’ throughout the Middle Ages, and centuries afterward (Knottnerus 2004, Savelkouls 2016). We just say Fris might have been part of the cavalry and riding his own war-horse breed: a Friesian.
That the Frisians were known for their horse breeding might have to do with the fertile marshlands. Horses raised on the (former) salt marsh are of good quality. Strong horses. To this very day, the northern rim of the province of Friesland is where jumping horses are being bred.
According to the old sagas, the founders of the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the fifth century were the warrior brothers Hengist and Horsa. Names meaning stallion and horse. If we are the Frisian sagas to believe, the brothers were of Frisian origin. Read more in our blog post Hengist and Horsa – Frisian horses from overseas that founded the Kentish Kingdom.
Another Frisian fighter in France
Frisian men were quite prominent fighters during the Crusades in the High Middle Ages. Besides their ferocious reputation and their large naval fleets, a name of a Frisian cavalryman has been preserved too. It is from the siege of the great city of Toulouse, part of the Crusade against the Cathars in Occitania. His name was Rainers lo Frison 'Rainers the Frisian'. Check our blog post Terrorist Fighters from the Wadden Sea. The era of the Crusades. Hopefully these fighters did not contribute to the destruction of the basilica of Saint Fris in Bassoues.
Note 1 - Feast day of Saint Fris is on the 16th of January.
Note 2 – Saint Fris and Saint Magnus, who we briefly mentioned, are as explained (Roman) soldier saints. In medieval Frisia another soldier saint was very popular, namely Saint Martin of Tours (316-397), in the Dutch language known as Sint Martinus or Sint Maarten. Think of the Martin churches in the towns of Bolsward, Franeker, Groningen and Sneek in the province of Friesland. His feast day is on the 11th of November. Martin originated from present-day Hungary. He was a cavalryman in the Roman army who shared a piece of his cloak with a beggar, lived as a hermit for a while, and performed all kinds of miracles. Saint Martin is buried in Tours what became an important place of pilgrimage in France and beyond. It was Bishop Radbod of Utrecht, born mid-ninth century and who had studied in Tours, who propagated Saint Martin as patron of the bishopric of Utrecht (Mulder-Bakker 2021).
In the medieval saga of Saint Cunera, it is the King of the River Rhine, i.e. King Radbod, who saves Cunera from the Huns by hiding her under his cloak. Read our blog post Don’t believe everything they say about sweet Cunera.
Note 3 - Another famous Frisian standard bearer was the young Frisian women Tjede Peckes (1500-1517) from the republic of Land Wursten, east of the Lower River Weser. Find her tragic and heroic story in our blog post Joan of Arc an inspiration for Land Wursten.
Note 4 - Featured image is the village of Bassoues with its tall donjon.
Suggested music
Kid Creole and The Coconuts, Annie, I’m not your daddy (1982)
Further reading
Adkins, S.M., The Golden Legend of St. Fris (2007)
Bassoues.net (website)
Bordewijk, F., Karakter. Roman van zoon en vader (1938)
Flierman, R., Mirror Histories: Frisians and Saxons from the first to the ninth century AD (2021)
Gasconha.com (website)
Gerard, D., A Bassoues dans le Gers, un pélerinage pour les agriculteurs en difficulté (2017)
Heiligen.net (website)
Homerin, D., A l’aube de l’Europe, un saint friso-gascon: la légende dorée de saint Fris de Bassoues (1999)
Hout, van J., De zoon van Radbod op avontuur in Zuid-Frankrijk (2017)
Monumentem.fr (website)
Knottnerus, O., Culture and society in the Frisian and German North Sea Coastal Marshes (1500-1800) (2004)
Lugt, F., Rijnland in de donkere eeuwen. Van de komst van de Kelten tot het ontstaan van het graafschap (2021)
Moolenbroek, van J., Friezen op kruistocht tegen de katharen in Occitanië (2021)
Mulder-Bakker, A.B., Heiligen en relieken. Geloofspraktijk van boeren en burgers (2021)
Nieuwenhuijsen, K., Robrecht de Fries. Graaf van Vlaanderen. Held van Holland (2022)
Savelkouls, J., Het Friese Paard (2016)
Siefkes, W., Ostfriesische Sagen und sagenhafte Geschichten (1963)
Ven, van der R., The Frisian (2023)
Wiersma, J.P., Friesche mythen en sagen (1937)
Wood, I., Franks and Frisians (2021)
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