Mauroald was a Frankish

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

 monk from Worms

Worms, Germany

Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River. At the end of 2004, it had 85,829 inhabitants.Established by the Celts, who called it Borbetomagus, Worms today remains embattled with the cities Trier and Cologne over the title of "Oldest City in Germany." Worms is the only...

 and the Abbot of Farfa from 790. Farfa, at less than a century old, was still interested in accruing territories through grants and donations in order to support its building projects and the expansion of its site.

According to Gregory of Catino

Gregory of Catino

Gregory of Catino was a monk of the Abbey of Farfa and "one of the most accomplished monastic historians of his age." Gregory died shortly after 1130, possibly in 1133....

, the late eleventh-century historian of the abbey, Mauroald was "of the Frankish nation" (natione Francus). He is the only abbot Gregory describes thus, and it probably indicates Mauroald was Germanic

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

-speaking. His two immediate predecessors, Ragambald

Ragambald

Ragambald was the Abbot of Farfa from 781 until his death. According to the abbey's twelfth-century historian Gregory of Catino, Ragambald was born in a city in Gaul , that is, Francia, but he does not explicitly call him a Frank...

 and Altpert

Altpert

Altpert was the Abbot of Farfa from the death of Ragambald in 786 until his own death a few years later. He was described by Gregory of Catino, writing some three centuries later, as having been born in Paris "of the Gauls" , presumably meaning that he was a Romance-speaking subject of the...

, were also from Francia, although they were probably not Frankish. The period of their abbacies (781–802) has been described as one of "ethnic tension" and the domination of "Frankish ideas", but there is little evidence to support this.

Two charters from 802 and 804 show that Mauroald and his successor Benedict

Benedict of Farfa

Benedict was the Abbot of Farfa from 802 until his death. He is the first abbot mentioned in the eleventh-century history of the abbey written by Gregory of Catino whose origins were not known. He continued the policy of his predecessor of expanding Farfa's landed endowments...

 financed the military service of two brothers from the Sabina

Sabina

Sabina, the region in the Sabine Hills of Latium named for the Sabines, is the ancient territory that today is still identified mainly with the North-Eastern Province of Rome and the Province of Rieti, Lazio.-History:...

, Probatus and Picco, sons of Ursus of the Pandoni family, who were serving the army of Charlemagne

Charlemagne

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...

 then targeting the Principality of Benevento.