Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

The Ripuarian Franks were without a leader, and like all barbarians they worshipped success; so, believing that Clovis would surely lead them to victory, they raised him on their shields and hailed him as king.

‘Each day God struck down the enemies of Clovis under his hand,’ says Bishop Gregory of Tours, describing these events, ‘and enlarged his kingdom, because he went with an upright heart before the Lord and did the things that were pleasing in His sight.’ It is startling to find a bishop pass such a verdict on a career of treachery and murder, the more that Gregory of Tours was no cringing court-flatterer but a priest with a high sense of duty who dared, when he believed it right, to oppose some of the later Frankish kings even at the risk of his life. Yet it must be remembered that a sense of honour was not understood by barbarians, except in a very crude form. They believed it was clever to outwit their neighbours, while to murder them was so ordinary as to excite little or no comment, save the infliction of a wergeld if the crime could be brought home. Centuries of the civilizing influence of Christianity were needed before the men and women of these fierce tribes could accept the Christian principles of truth, justice, and mercy in anything like their real spirit.

The Romans in Gaul had almost given up expecting anything but brutality from their invaders if they aroused their enmity, and therefore welcomed even the smallest sign of grace. Thus the protection that Clovis afforded to the Catholic Church, after her years of persecution, blinded their eyes to many of his vices.

When Clovis had made himself master of the greater part of northern Gaul, he determined to strike a blow at the Visigoths in the south. ‘It pains me,’ he said to his followers, ‘to see Arians in a part of Gaul. Let us march against these heretics with God’s aid and gain their country for ourselves.’

Probably he was sincere in his dislike of heresy, but it was a politic attitude to adopt, for it meant that wherever he and his warriors marched they would find help against the Burgundians and Visigoths amongst the orthodox Roman population. It seemed to the latter that Clovis brought with him something of the glory of the vanished Roman Empire, kept alive by the Catholic Church and now revived through her in this her latest champion.

In a fierce battle near Poitiers, Clovis defeated the Visigoths and drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving them merely narrow strips of territory along the Mediterranean seaboard and on either slope of the Pyrenees. He also fought against the Burgundians and, though he was not so successful, reduced them temporarily to submission. When he died, at the age of forty-five, he was master of three-quarters of Gaul, and had stamped the name of his race for ever on the land he had invaded.

His work of conquest was continued by his successors and reached its zenith in the time of King Dagobert, who lived at the beginning of the seventh century. Dagobert has been called ‘the French Solomon’, because, like the Jewish king, he was world-famed for his wisdom and riches. Not content with maintaining his power over Gaul to the west of the Rhine, he fought against the Saxon and Frisian tribes in Germany and forced them to pay tribute. At last his Empire stretched from the Atlantic to the mountains of Bohemia; the Duke of Brittany, who had hitherto remained independent of the Franks, came to offer his allegiance, while the Emperor of Constantinople sought a Frankish alliance.

A chronicler of the day, speaking of Dagobert, says, ‘He was a prince terrible in his wrath towards traitors and rebels. He held the royal sceptre firmly in his grasp, and like a lion he sprang upon those who would foment discord.’

Another account describes his journeys through his kingdom, and how he administered justice with an even hand, not altogether to the joy of tyrannical landowners. ‘His judgements struck terror into the hearts of the bishops and of the great men, but it overwhelmed the poor with joy.’

In the troublous years that were to come his reign stood out in people’s minds as an age of prosperity, but already, before the death of the king, this prosperity had begun to wane. Luxury sapped the vigour of a once-powerful mind and body, and the authority that ‘the French Solomon’ relaxed in his later years through self-indulgence was never regained by his successors.