In the course of one of his battles against the Alemanni, at Zülpich (Tolbiac) in the
mid-490s, Clovis converted to orthodox Christianity. This was not a sudden move,
however. Like his father, Childeric, Clovis had been careful to maintain good relations
with Christian authorities in his lands, and he had also married an orthodox Christian, the
Burgundian princess Clotilde. The conversion of Clovis and some of his followers had
little immediate effect on their pagan and polygamous habits, nor did it immediately
christianize the Frankish people, but it did make Clovis the hero of orthodox Christians in
Gaul.
Clovis exploited this position to gain his greatest victory. He attacked the Arian
Visigoths, who controlled Gaul south of the Loire as well as Spain. In 507, Clovis
defeated their army at Vouillé, near Poitiers, and in the ensuing campaigns his forces
swept over most of southern Gaul. Only the military intervention of Theodoric the
Ostrogoth preserved Septimania for the Visigoths and prevented the Franks from gaining
the Mediterranean. Nonetheless, Clovis was the master of almost all of Gaul. For a time,
he even exacted tribute from the Burgundians.
After the victory over the Visigoths, Clovis was given some sort of official recognition
by the Byzantine empire, which began a century-long tradition of Frankish-Byzantine
cooperation, and he moved his capital to Paris. The years after 507 saw two of his most
notable achievements. It was he who probably issued the Salic Law for his Salian Franks
and all those living north of the Loire, and in 511, at Orléans, he presided over the first
great church council of the Frankish kingdom.
Clovis was the master of a heterogeneous population. 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
continued Roman practices; Clovis worked closely with the Gallo-Roman aristocrats,
while his military was primarily 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 century 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).
Steven Fanning
[See also: FRANKS; MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY; POPULAR DEVOTION]
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: Longman, 1994.
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