Clovis I (variously spelled Chlodowech or Chlodwig, giving modern French Louis and modern German Ludwig) (c. 466 – November 27, 511), king of the Salian Franks, son of Childeric I., whom he succeeded in 481 at the age of fifteen.

He was the first king of the Franks to unite that entire barbarian (according to the Romans) nation. He succeeded his father Childeric I in 481 as King of the Salian Franks, one of two main groups of Frankish tribes, who were then occupying the area west of the lower Rhine, with their centre around Tournai and Cambrai along the modern frontier between France and Belgium, in an area known as Toxandria. Clovis conquered the neighboring Frankish tribes and established himself as sole king before his death.

He converted to Catholicism as opposed to the Arian Christianity common among Germanic peoples, at the instigation of his wife, the Burgundian Clotilde, a Catholic. He was baptized in the Cathedral of Rheims as most future French kings would be. This act was of immense importance in the subsequent history of France and Western Europe in general, for Clovis expanded his dominion over almost all of the old Roman province of Gaul (roughly modern France) which stands at the centre of European affairs. He is considered the founder both of France (which his state closely resembled geographically at his death) and the Merovingian dynasty which ruled the Franks for the next two centuries.

Frankish consolidation

In 486, with the help of Ragnachar, Clovis defeated Syagrius, the last Roman official in northern Gaul, who ruled the area around Soissons in present-day Picardie. This victory at Soissons extended Frankish rule to most of the area north of the Loire. After this, Clovis secured an alliance with the Ostrogoths, through the marriage of his sister Audofleda to their king, Theodoric the Great. He followed this victory with another in 491 over a small group of Thuringians east of his territories. Later, with the help of the other Frankish sub-kings, he defeated the Alamanni in the Battle of Tolbiac. He had previously married the Burgundian princess Clotilde (493), and, following his victory at Tolbiac, he converted, traditionally in 496 to her Trinitarian Catholic faith. This was a significant change from the other Germanic kings, like the Visigoths and Vandals, who embraced the rival Arian beliefs.

The conversion of Clovis to Roman Catholic Christianity, the religion of the majority of his subjects, strengthened the bonds between his Roman subjects, led by their Catholic bishops, and their Germanic conquerors. However, Bernard Bachrach has argued that this conversion from his Frankish, so-called pagan, beliefs alienated many of the other Frankish sub-kings and weakened his military position over the next few years. William Daly, in order more directly to assess Clovis' allegedly barbaric and pagan origins[4] was obliged to ignore the bishop Gregory of Tours and base his account on the scant earlier sources, a sixth-century vita of Saint Genevieve and letters to or concerning Clovis from bishops and Theodoric.

Perhaps surprisingly, Gregory of Tours wrote that the beliefs that Clovis abandoned were in Roman gods, such as Jupiter and Mercury, rather than their Germanic equivalents. If Gregory's account is accurate it suggests a strong affinity of Frankish rulers for the prestige of Roman culture, which they must have embraced as allies and federates of the Empire during the previous century.

The baptism of Clovis was an event of very great importance. From that time the orthodox Christians in the kingdom of the Burgundians and Visigoths looked to Clovis to deliver them from their Arian kings. Clovis seems to have failed in the case of Burgundy, which was at that time torn by the rivalry between Godegesil and his brother Gundobald. Godegesil appealed for help to Clovis, who defeated Gundobald on the banks of the Ouche near Dijon, and advanced as far as Avignon, but had to retire without being able to retain any of his conquests. Immediately after his departure Gundobald slew Godegesil at Vienne, and seized the whole of the Burgundian kingdom. Clovis was more fortunate in his war against the Visigoths. Having completed the subjugation of the Alemanni in 506, he marched against the Visigothic king Alaric II. in the following year, in spite of the efforts of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, to prevent the war. After a decisive victory at Vouille near Poitiers, in which Clovis slew Alaric with his own hand, the whole of the kingdom of the Visigoths as far as the Pyrenees was added to the Frankish empire, with the exception of Septimania, which, together with Spain, remained in possession of Alaric's grandson Amalaric, and Provence, which was seized by Theodoric and annexed to Italy.

In 493 Clovis married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, niece of Gundobald and Godegesil, joint kings of Burgundy. This princess was a Christian, and earnestly desired the conversion of her husband. Although Clovis allowed his children to be baptized; he remained a pagan himself until the war against the Alemanni, who at that time occupied the country between the Vosges, and the Rhine and the neighbourhood of Lake Constance. By pushing their incursions westward they came into collision with Clovis, who marched against them and defeated them in the plain of the Rhine. The legend runs that, in the thickest of the fight, Clovis swore that he would be converted to the God of Clotilda if her God would grant him the victory. After subduing a part of the Alemanni, Clovis went to Reims, where he was baptized by St Remigius on Christmas day 496, together with three thousand Franks. The story of the phial of holy oil (the Sainte Ampoule) brought from heaven by a white dove for the baptism of Clovis was invented by Archbishop Hincmar of Reims three centuries after the event.

In 508 Clovis received at Tours the insignia of the consulship from the eastern emperor, Anastasius, but the title was purely honorific. The last years of his life Clovis spent in Paris, which he made the capital of his kingdom, and where he built the church of the Holy Apostles, known later as the church of St Genevieve. By murdering the petty Frankish 1 The story is as follows. The vase had been taken from a church by a Frankish soldier after the battle of Soissons, and the bishop had requested Clovis that it might be restored. But the soldier who had taken it refused to give it up, and broke it into fragments with his francisca, or battle-axe. Some time afterwards, when Clovis was reviewing his troops, he singled out the soldier who had broken the vase, upbraided him for the neglect of his arms, and dashed his francisca to the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up, the king clove his skull with the words: "Thus didst thou serve the vase of Soissons." kings who reigned at Cambrai, Cologne and other residences, he became sole king of all the Frankish tribes. He died in 511.

Clovis was the true founder of the Frankish monarchy. He reigned over the Salian Franks by hereditary right; over the other Frankish tribes by reason of his kinship with their kings and by the choice of the warriors, who raised him on the shield; and he governed the Gallo-Romans by right of conquest. He had the Salic law drawn up, doubtless between the years 486 and 507; and seems to have been represented in the cities by a new functionary, the graf, comes, or count. He owed his success in great measure to his alliance with the church. He took the property of the church under his protection, and in 511 convoked a council at Orleans, the canons of which have come down to us. But while protecting the church, he maintained his authority over it. He intervened in the nomination of bishops, and at the council of Orleans it was decided that no one, save a son of a priest, could be ordained clerk without the king's order or the permission of the count.

Though he fought a battle in Dijon in the year 500, Clovis did not successfully subdue the Burgundian kingdom. It appears that he somehow gained the support of the Armoricans in the following years, for they assisted him in his defeat of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé (507) which confined the Visigoths to Spain and added most of Aquitaine to Clovis' kingdom. He then established Paris as his capital, and established an abbey dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul on the south bank of the Seine. All that remains of this great abbey is the Tour Clovis, a Romanesque tower which now lies within the grounds of the prestigious Lycée Henri IV, just east of The Panthéon. (After its founding, the abbey was renamed in honor of Paris' patron saint, Geneviève. It was demolished in 1802.

Death and Legacy

Clovis I died in 511 and is interred in Saint Denis Basilica, Paris, France, where as his father had been buried with the older Merovingian kings in Tournai. Upon his death, his realm was divided among his four sons, Theuderic, Chlodomer, Childebert, and Clotaire. This created the new political units of the Kingdoms of Reims, Orléans, Paris and Soissons and inaugurated a period of disunity which was to last, with brief interruptions, until the end (751) of his Merovingian dynasty.

The legacy of Clovis is well-established on three very large acts: his unification of the Frankish nation, his conquest of Gaul, and his conversion to Roman Catholicism. By the first act, he assured the influence of his people in wider affairs, something no petty regional king could accomplish. By the second act, he laid the foundations of a later nation-state: France. Finally, by the third act, he made himself the ally of the papacy and its protector as well as of the people, who were mostly Catholics.

Aside from these acts of more than just national importance, division of the state, not along national or even largely geographical lines, but primarily to assure equal income amongst the brothers, on his death, which may or may not have been his intention, was the cause of much internal discord in Gaul and contributed in the long run to the fall of his dynasty, for it was a pattern constantly repeated. Clovis did bequeath to his heirs the support of both people and church such that, when finally the magnates were ready to do away with the royal house, the sanction of the pope was sought first.

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