Clovis

King of the Franks (r. 481-511)

• Born: c. 466
• Birthplace: Probably Tournai (now in Belgium)
• Died: November 27, 0511
• Place of death: Paris (now in France)

In the early sixth century, Clovis extended his Frankish domain by conquest to form the nucleus of France and, in the process, united his interests with those of the Orthodox Church in the West, which he saved from the threat of the Arian heresy.

Early Life

Clovis (KLOH-vuhs), or Chlodovech (meaning “noble warrior”), was born probably near the Frankish stronghold of Tournai, near the present-day Franco-Belgian border; he was the son of the Frankish chieftain Childeric I. The family was descended from a West German barbarian tribe, the Salian (dwellers by the sea) Franks, which had settled two centuries earlier near the North Sea, on the outskirts of Roman Gaul. From there, they had gradually spread in small groups perhaps as far south as the Loire River. Another branch of the Franks, the Ripuarian (dwellers by the riverbank), had settled along the west bank of the Rhine River near the city of Cologne.

Clovis was the grandson of Merovech, “the sea-fighter,” who had conquered Tournai in 446 and installed the Merovingian Dynasty, which was to dominate Frankish political history for three centuries. By the time of Merovech, the Franks, unlike other generally migratory German tribes, appear to have become permanently settled in this region. They had begun to gain the acceptance of native Gallo-Romans, whom they supported against Attila and the Huns in a battle at Châlons (Mauriac Plain, 451), near Troyes. Indeed, a significant determinant of the Franks’ success in creating a powerful and long-lasting kingdom in Gaul was that they expanded gradually from a homeland a settled base of strength in which they gained the allegiance of the native population as Roman imperial control disintegrated in the West.

The acceptance of the Franks by the Gallo-Roman natives is reflected in the work of Gregory of Tours. Gregory, who lived in the second half of the sixth century, was himself a Gallo-Roman aristocrat who succeeded to the bishopric of Tours, an ecclesiastical seat long held by his family. He became a prominent political and religious leader in western Gaul, but his greatest contribution was as a historian. Gregory was the author of the Historia Francorum (late sixth century; The History of the Franks, 1927), one of the great narratives of the early Middle Ages and the one that provides the only near-contemporary account of Clovis and the early Merovingians. To Gregory, the Franks, and Clovis in particular, were the divinely ordained saviors of the Church from the heresy of Arianism, to which other German tribes had been converted. Indeed, the Clovis of history is Gregory’s Clovis, and all subsequent accounts of Clovis’s career, with minor modifications of later scholarship, reflect their indebtedness to the Gallo-Roman cleric.

Nothing is known of Clovis’s early life, and no contemporary artistic representation of his appearance has survived. The only clues regarding his early life are found in the contents of his father’s burial chamber, discovered in Tournai in 1653. Childeric’s tomb contained ornaments, weapons, and hoards of coins, demonstrating that he had established important contacts with the Roman Empire as well as with the barbarians. He was, without question, a very rich man. Clovis, therefore, appears to have been groomed to succeed his father as chieftain.

Life’s Work

Clovis was only fifteen years of age when he succeeded his father, in 481, as leader of the Frankish tribes that recognized the supremacy of Tournai. The use of the title “king” at this point seems premature, although it has become traditional. It would appear that Clovis was regarded by his people as nothing more than a chieftain and that the magical element associated with kingship did not come until later, after his identification of himself and his dynasty with Christianity .

Clovis spent most of his reign fulfilling the obligations of a Frankish chieftain: by cunning and when necessary cruelty and brutality securing booty and additional land with which to reward himself and his retainers. In the process, he created a kingdom encompassing much of what later became France and West Germany. He first contracted alliances with two relatives, Ragnachair and Chararic, who were Salian Frankish chieftains at Cambrai and Saint-Quentin. Within five years, with their aid, he moved against Syagrius, the last independent Roman ruler in Gaul, who ruled over most of the area around Soissons. Ruthlessly, Clovis put to death Syagrius, his former allies Ragnachair and Chararic, and their brother, Rigomer, who had ruled the region of Le Mans. Having conquered their territories, Clovis was recognized as Syagrius’s successor in northern Gaul by certain Gallo-Roman bishops, especially Bishop Rémi of Reims. This recognition by the regional clerical hierarchy of a fait accompli was of great significance to Clovis, since he was still a pagan and not yet acknowledged by the emperor in Byzantium.

The fateful bond between the Franks and Catholicism was then strengthened by another event: During the early 490’, the most obscure period of his reign, Clovis married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, who is credited with converting him to Christianity. Soon after, Clovis succeeded in expanding his Frankish state by bringing the Ripuarian Franks under his protection. Their allegiance to him was necessitated by their fear of the fiercest of the West German tribes, the Alamanni, who, well-armed and on horseback, were moving from Alsace in a northwesterly direction toward the Ripuarian settlements along the banks of the Rhine River. At the famous Battle of Tolbiacum (now Zülpich) in 496, on the borders of Alsace and Lorraine, the combined Frankish forces under Clovis defeated the Alamanni and extended their control as far south as Basel.

Clovis’s victory at Tolbiacum was, according to Gregory of Tours, the central event of his reign and indeed of Frankish history, for it is from this battle that Gregory dates Clovis’s conversion to Catholicism. All Clovis’s subsequent military engagements are portrayed by Gregory as purposeful crusades for the advancement of Christianity. Although it is now generally believed that Clovis’s conversion came some seven years later, the precise date of his conversion is irrelevant to its significance. According to Gregory, Clovis invoked the aid of Jesus during the course of the battle and, in the tradition of the emperor Constantine, promised his belief and baptism in return for victory. Following the victory, Queen Clotilda asked Bishop Rémi to instruct her husband in the Christian religion. There soon followed the baptism of Clovis and three thousand of his soldiers at Reims. The doubtful tradition of Clovis’s baptism was important in the history of the French monarchy, for it established the feature of canonical investiture, adding a mystical religious element to the earlier military component. The site of the baptism, Reims, was also to become traditional for the coronation of French monarchs.

Of greatest contemporary significance was that Clovis and the Franks converted to orthodox Christianity and acknowledged the authority of the pope. The Franks, alone among the German tribes that moved into the western Roman Empire, never subscribed to the heresy of Arianism. This anti-Trinitarian belief had been first propounded by an early fourth century priest from Alexandria, Arius, who held that Christ, the Son, was not the coequal of God the Father. Arius contended that God was self-existent throughout eternity and immutable. Christ, however, had become existent and incarnate; he had been created by God and, in human form, was subject to growth and change. Christ was different from God the Father and, being his creation, by inference, inferior. He did not fully share in divinity. Arius and his teachings had been condemned on the basis of the arguments of Athanasius, the future bishop of Alexandria, at the Council of Nicaea, called by the Emperor Constantine in 325. The Athanasian position, which the Church established as orthodox, held that the Son is “of one substance with the Father,” that he had existed throughout eternity, that he was begotten, not created, and that he is God’s coequal and completely divine. Christ’s total divinity and his coequality with God were central to the legitimacy of the Church and its clergy, to whom Christ had entrusted the dispensation of the Sacraments and the task of mediating between Christ and the believers. As the authority of the Roman Empire declined in the West during the fourth and fifth centuries, the Church, through its clergy, assumed many former imperial functions and sought to solidify its position by enforcing religious orthodoxy. The native Gallo-Roman population submitted to orthodoxy; the German barbarian tribes, however, had converted to Arianism before they entered Western Europe. As a result, they were unacceptable to the Church there and found their beliefs to be an impediment to popular acceptance and assimilation. Clovis’s conversion to orthodoxy, eliciting not only the Church’s acceptance of the Franks but also its support of Clovis’s campaign to conquer Arian German tribes, significantly aided in the establishment of a permanent Frankish successor state in Roman Gaul.

The chronology of the events of Clovis’s reign is disputed, probably as a result of the naïve confusion of Gregory, who, obsessed with the consequences of Clovis’s conversion, preferred to view additional military campaigns as religious crusades against the Arian Germans. According to tradition, after his conversion, Clovis turned his attention to the Burgundians and the Visigoths, Arian Germans located respectively in southeastern and southwestern Gaul. Having recently allied himself with the Burgundian ruler of Geneva, an orthodox Christian, Clovis defeated the army of Gundobad, the Arian Burgundian chieftain of Lyon, in battle near Dijon. Gundobad was forced to flee to Avignon, which was besieged until he agreed to pay tribute. Clovis’s final campaign was against the Visigoths. At Vouillé, near Poitiers, the Visigothic leader, Alaric II, was killed. Visigothic power north of the Pyrenees collapsed to Clovis, who pillaged Alaric’s treasury at Toulouse before returning to give thanks at the shrine of the Merovingian patron, Saint Martin, at Tours.

During his sojourn at Tours, Clovis received a legate from the Emperor Anastasius in Constantinople. The imperial representative brought with him letters bestowing on Clovis the title of consul. Clovis now had received imperial recognition of his legitimacy and preferment to add to his earlier recognition from the Church. Only Provence in southern France remained free of Frankish control in Gaul. Theodoric, the powerful Ostrogothic ruler of Italy, in alliance with the Burgundians permanently blocked Clovis’s advance toward the Mediterranean.

After leaving Tours, Clovis returned to previously conquered Paris, which became the seat of his kingdom for the remainder of his reign. There he constructed his royal palace and, with Clotilda, oversaw the construction of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul (later known as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève), where he was subsequently entombed. In his last years, Clovis became a lawgiver and statesman rather than conqueror. On his orders, the Lex Salica (Salian law), a code of criminal law applied by Clovis to the Franks, was drawn up. Shortly before his death, he convened the first national church council held in Gaul, at Orléans. He died in November 27, 511, at forty-five years of age.

Significance

Clovis’s kingdom in France did not long survive him; according to Frankish tradition, it was divided among his four surviving sons. Nevertheless, Clovis left an indelible imprint on the history of early medieval Europe. He brought together all the areas, except for Provence, that would make up the nucleus of the nation of France, which, as the native and Frankish populations were assimilated, began to develop its unique identity. He also, perhaps more by necessity than conviction, saved Christian orthodoxy from the encroachments of Arianism and in so doing played a major role in subverting the Unitarian heresy in the West. In turn, having recognized his military and administrative talents, the clerical leadership in Gaul adopted Clovis and the Franks as the logical successors to secular Roman imperial authority in Gaul. Together, Clovis and the Church restored order, religious orthodoxy, and political legitimacy to a region that had long endured the chaotic political vacuum left by the decline of Roman imperial authority.

The Merovingian Kings

Reign

• Ruler

447-458

• Merovech

458-481

• Childeric I

481-511

• Clovis I (with Clotilda, r. 493-511)

511

• Kingdom split among Clovis’s sons

511-524

• Chlodomer (Orléans)

511-534

• Theodoric I (Metz)

511-558

• Childebert I (Paris)

511-561

• Lothair I (Soissons 511-561; all Franks 558-561)

534-548

• Theudebert I (Metz)

548-555

• Theudebald (Metz)

561

• Kingdom split among Lothair’s sons

561-567

• Charibert I (Paris)

561-575

• Sigebert I (Austrasia)

561-584

• Chilperic I (Soissons)

561-592

• Guntram (Burgundy)

575-595

• Childebert II (Austrasia 575-595, Burgundy 593-595)

584-629

• Lothair II (Neustria 584, all Franks 613-629)

595-612

• Theudebert II (Austrasia)

595-613

• Theodoric II (Burgundy 595-612, Austrasia 612-613)

613

• Sigebert II (Austrasia, Burgundy)

623-639

• Dagobert I (Austrasia 623-628, all Franks 629-639)

629-632

• Charibert II (Aquitaine)

632-656

• Sigebert III (Austrasia)

639-657

• Clovis II (Neustria and Burgundy)

656-673

• Lothair III (Neustria 657-673, all Franks 656-660)

662-675

• Childeric (Austrasia 662-675, all Franks 673-675)

673-698

• Theodoric III (Neustria 673-698, all Franks 678-691)

674-678

• Dagobert II (Austrasia)

691-695

• Clovis III (all Franks)

695-711

• Childebert III (all Franks)

711-716

• Dagobert III (all Franks)

715-721

• Chilperic II (Neustria 715-721, all Franks 719-720)

717-719

• Lothair IV (Austrasia)

721-737

• Theodoric IV (all Franks)

743-751

• Childeric III (all Franks)

Bibliography

Cantor, Norman F. Medieval History/Middle Ages: The Life and Death of a Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Although the scope of this work is broad, it is still helpful, given the dearth of material available in English on Clovis. Cantor discusses Clovis at some length and credits him with his proper significance.

Castries, Due de. The Lives of the Kings and Queens of France. Translated by Anne Dobell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Although the treatment of Clovis, whom the author portrays as the creator of France and its first king, is brief, it is balanced and contains a surprisingly large amount of information about Clovis’s conversion and conquests.

Fletcher, R. A. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Looks at the history of the development of Christianity in pagan Europe during the time of Clovis.

Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Translated and edited by O. M. Dalton. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1971. This translation of an account of the early Merovingians should be consulted by students of Clovis, for Gregory provided the portrayal of the Frankish chieftain on which all later historians have been required to base their evaluations of his significance, especially as the savior of Christian orthodoxy.

MacMullen, Ramsay. Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Surveys the relationship between paganism and the Christian world in the time of Clovis.

Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. The Barbarian West, A.D. 400-1000: The Early Middle Ages. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Although the scope of this book is broad, the foremost modern historian of the Franks devotes considerable attention to the Franks and to Clovis. Contains a comprehensive treatment of the Franks and their significance in European history.

Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. The Long-Haired Kings and Other Studies in Frankish History. London: Methuen, 1962. This and the above volume are two indispensable works in English on Clovis and the Franks.