the Loire, and in 511, at Orléans, he presided over the
fi rst great church council of the Frankish kingdom.
Clovis was the master of a heterogeneous popula-
tion. Franks and other Germanic peoples were in the
northeast, northern Gaul was Gallo-Roman but relatively
barbarized and included Franks as well, and the south
was thoroughly romanized. His administration contin-
ued Roman practices; Clovis worked closely with the
Gallo-Roman aristocrats, while his military was primar-
ily Frankish. Upon his death in 511, in proper Frankish
fashion his kingdom was divided equally among his
four sons. The Frankish kingdom was not united again
until 558, by his youngest son, Clotar I.
Most of our knowledge of Clovis comes from the
writings of Gregory of Tours, three-quarters of a cen-
tury after the king’s death. Despite the obvious greed
and treachery of his hero, Gregory was impressed by
Clovis’s promotion of orthodox Christianity, especially
in the face of the detested Arians. Gregory hailed Clovis
as a new Constantine and praised him in terms borrowed
from biblical laud for King David. The name “Clovis,”
which evolved into the French name “Louis,” was itself
a French form of his correct Frankish name, Chlodovech
(Chlodwig in German).
See also Gregory of Tours
Further Reading
Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
James, Edward. The Franks. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
Martindale, J.R. “Chlodovechus (Clovis).” In Prosopography of
the Later Roman Empire. 3 vols. in 4. London: Cambridge
University Press, 1980, Vol. 2: A.D. 395–527, pp. 288–90.
Tessier, Georges. Le baptême de Clovis. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
Wood, Ian N. “Gregory of Tours and Clovis.” Revue belge de
philologie et d’histoire 63 (1985): 249–72.
——. The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751. London: Long-
man, 1994.
Steven Fanning
CNUT (d. 1035; r. 1016–35)
Danish and English king, best known in English legend
as the king whose command to the waves to stop was ig-
nored by the incoming tide. The story, fi rst recounted by
Henry of Huntingdon in his Historia Anglorum, shows
Cnut’s posthumous fame as a man of power.
From his youth Cnut certainly understood power and
wielded it ruthlessly. On the death of his father, Swein,
in 1014 the Scandinavian army tried to make him king
of England, but the Anglo-Saxon leadership negotiated
instead for Æthelred II’s return from Normandy. In
Denmark Cnut’s brother, Harald, had become king, so
in August 1015 he again sought the throne of England,
joined now by Thorkell the Tall, a former supporter of
Æthelred. Cnut gained control of Wessex but foiled to
capture the southeast. When Æthelred died in 1016, the
Londoners recognized his son, Edmund Ironside, as
king, while Cnut retained his support in Wessex. After
Edmund’s defeat at Ashingdon in Essex he and Cnut
agreed to divide the country between them.
The death of Edmund on 30 November 1016 enabled
Cnut to become ruler of England. Three strategies en-
sured his hold on power. In July 1017 Emma, sister of
Duke Richard II of Normandy and widow of Æthelred
II, became his queen, thereby neutralizing any threat
from Normandy, where Æthelred’s two sons, Edward
and Alfred, were residing. The young sons of Edmund
Ironside were moved to Hungary, well beyond Cnut’s
grasp, unlike Edmund’s brother Eadwig, who was mur-
dered by agents of Cnut.
Cnut’s second step was to eliminate several of
Æthelred’s supporters, most notably the duplicitous
Eadric Streona; he initially depended on Thorkell the
Tall and Edward the Norwegian, whom he recognized
as earls of East Anglia and Northumbria, respectively.
His third policy was to acknowledge the power of the
church by founding monastic houses and becoming,
with Emma, a lavish ecclesiastical benefactor. His
generosity was doubtless assisted by the mammoth
geld payment of £72,000 levied in 1017 on his new
kingdom, supplemented by a further £10,500 extracted
from London’s citizenry.
In the fi rst of four trips he made to Scandinavia
between 1019 and 1028 Cnut obtained the throne of
Denmark following his brother Harald’s death. Our
knowledge of his rule in the early 1020s is sketchy. In
England Thorkell became an outlaw in 1021 but must
have retained a substantial band of supporters, as Cnut
was persuaded to accept him as his vicegerent in Den-
mark in 1023.
In 1027 Cnut attended the coronation of Conrad as
Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, presumably in part
as a diplomatic move to protect his southern Danish
fl ank against German encroachments. The following
year he conquered Norway, driving out Olaf Haralds-
son and he made Ælfgifu of Northampton regent there
for their young son, Swein. He had contracted a union
with Ælfgifu before his marriage with Emma, and he
never repudiated the English woman. In the same year
Cnut received the submission of three Scottish kings,
including Malcolm and (probably) Macbeth of later
Shakespearean fame, possibly to ensure that the Norse
settlers in northern Britain would not return to Norway
to assist in rebellion against his rule there. His Norwe-
gian conquest was nevertheless unsuccessful, and in
1035, just before his death, Ælfgifu and her son had to
withdraw to Denmark.
The administrative structures in England were strong
enough to continue through his reign, though few ofCNUT