Catholicism triumphed under Grimoald (662–671), and Liutprand (773–774). Towards the close
of the eighth century, Pepin and Charlemagne, in the interest of France and the papacy, destroyed
the independence of the Lombards after a duration of about two hundred years, and transferred the
greater part of Italy to the Eastern empire and to the Pope. In these struggles the Popes, being then
(as they have been ever since) opposed from hierarchical interest to the political unity of Italy,
aided the Franks and reaped the benefit.
§ 22. Conversion of Clovis and the Franks.
Gregorius Turonensis (d. 595): Historia Francorum Eccles. (till A..D. 591).
J. W. Löbell: Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit, Leipz. 1839.
A. Thierry: Recits des temps Merovingiens. Par. 1842, 2 vols.
F. W. Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Gött. 1846, I. 258–278.
Kornhack: Geschichte der Franken unter den Merovingern. Greifsw. 1863.
Montalembert, l.c. II. 219 sqq.
Comp. also Henri Martin: Histoire de France; Sir James Stephen: Lectures on the History of France
(Lond. 1859); Guizot: Histoire de la civilization en France (1830 sqq.), and his Histoire de
France, 1870.
The Salian Franks were the first among the Teutonic tribes which were converted to catholic
or orthodox Christianity. Hence the sovereign of France is styled by the Popes "the oldest son of
the church," and Rheims, where Clovis was baptized, is the holy city where most of the French
kings down to Charles X. (1824) were consecrated.^99 The conversion of the Franks prepared the
way for the downfall of the Arian heresy among the other Germanic nations, and for the triumph
of the papacy in the German empire under Charlemagne.
The old Roman civilization of Gaul, though nominally Christian, was in the last stage of
consumption when the German barbarians invaded the soil and introduced fresh blood. Several
savage tribes, even the Huns, passed through Gaul like a tempest, leaving desolation behind them,
but the Franks settled there and changed Gaul into France, as the Anglo-Saxons changed Britain
into England. They conquered the Gallo-Romans, cruelly spoiled and almost exterminated them
in the North-Eastern districts. Before they accepted the Christianity of the conquered race, they
learned their vices. "The greatest evil of barbarian government," says Henri Martin,^100 "was perhaps
the influence of the greedy and corrupt Romans who insinuated themselves into the confidence of
their new masters." To these degenerate Christians Montalembert traces the arts of oppression and
the refinements of debauchery and perfidy which the heathen Germans added to their native brutality.
"The barbarians derived no advantage from their contact with the Roman world, depraved as it was
under the empire. They brought with them manly virtues of which the conquered race had lost even
the recollection; but they borrowed, at the same time, abject and contagious vices, of which the
Germanic world had no conception. They found Christianity there; but before they yielded to its
beneficent influence, they had time to plunge into all the baseness and debauchery, of a civilization
(^99) With the oil of the miraculous cruise of oil (Ampulla Remensis) which, according to Hincmar, a dove brought from
heaven at the confirmation of Clovis, and which was destroyed in 1794, but recovered in 1824.
(^100) Vol. I. p. 394, quoted by Montalembert.