corrupted long before it was vanquished. The patriarchal system of government which characterized
the ancient Germans, in their relations with their children and slaves as well as with their chiefs,
fell into ruin in contact with that contagious depravity."^101
The conversion of the Salian Franks took place under the lead of their victorious king
Chlodwig or Clovis (Ludovicus, Louis), the son of Childeric and grandson of Merovig (hence the
name of Merovingians). He ruled from the year 481 to his death in 511. With him begins the history
not only of the French empire, its government and laws, but also of the French nation, its religion
and moral habits. He married a Christian princess, Chlotilda, a daughter of the king of the
Burgundians (493), and allowed his child to be baptized. Before the critical battle at Tolbiac^102 near
Cologne against the invasion of the Allemanni, he prayed to Jesus Christ for aid after having first
called upon his own gods, and promised, in case of victory, to submit to baptism together with his
warriors. After the victory he was instructed by Bishop Remigius of Rheims. When he heard the
story of the crucifixion of Christ, he exclaimed: "Would I had been there with my valiant Franks
to avenge him!" On Christmas, in the year 496, he descended before the cathedral of Rheims into
the baptismal basin, and three thousand of his warriors followed him as into the joys of paradise.
"When they arose from the waters, as Christian disciples, one might have seen fourteen centuries
of empire rising with them; the whole array of chivalry, the long series of the crusades, the deep
philosophy of the schools, in one word all the heroism, all the liberty, all the learning of the later
ages. A great nation was commencing its career in the world—that nation was the Franks."^103
But the change of religion had little or no effect on the character of Clovis and his
descendants, whose history is tarnished with atrocious crimes. The Merovingians, half tigers, half
lambs, passed with astonishing rapidity from horrible massacres to passionate demonstrations of
contrition, and from the confessional back again to the excesses of their native cruelty. The crimes
of Clovis are honestly told by such saintly biographers as Gregory of Tours and Hincmar, who feel
no need of any excuse for him in view of his services to religion. St. Remigius even advised the
war of conquest against the Visigoths, because they were Arians.
"The Franks," says a distinguished Catholic Frenchman,^104 "were sad Christians. While
they respected the freedom of the Catholic faith, and made external profession of it, they violated
without scruple all its precepts, and at the same time the simplest laws of humanity. After having
prostrated themselves before the tomb of some holy martyr or confessor; after having distinguished
themselves by the choice of an irreproachable bishop; after having listened respectfully to the voice
of a pontiff or monk, we see them, sometimes in outbreaks of fury, sometimes by cold-blooded
cruelties, give full course to the evil instincts of their savage nature. Their incredible perversity
was most apparent in the domestic tragedies, the fratricidal executions and assassinations, of which
Clovis gave the first example, and which marked the history of his son and grandson with an
ineffaceable stain. Polygamy and perjury mingled in their daily life with a semi-pagan superstition,
and in reading these bloody biographies, scarcely lightened by some transient gleams of faith or
(^101) Montalembert, Vol. II. p. 230.
(^102) Tolbiacum Zülpich.
(^103) Ozanam, Etudes Germaniques, II. 54.
(^104) Montalembert II. 235. Comp. also the graphic description of the Merovingian house in Dean Milman’s Lat. Christ.,
Bk. III, ch.2 (Vol. I., p. 395, Am. ed.).