[52] This amusing comment of Gregory was due largely to his prejudice in favor of the Franks and against the heretical Visigoths.
[53] The Visigothic kingdom in Spain, with its capital at Toledo, endured until the Saracen conquest of that country in 711 and the years immediately following, but it did not give evidence of much strength. It stood so long only because the Pyrenees made a natural boundary against the Franks and because, after Clovis, for two hundred years the Franks produced no great conqueror who cared to crowd the Visigoths into still closer quarters.
[54] Clovis, particularly after his conversion to Christianity in 496, was the hero of Gregory's history and apparently the enthusiastic old bishop did not lose an opportunity to glorify his career. At any rate it would certainly be difficult to relate anything more remarkable about him than this legend of the walls of Angoulême falling down before him at his mere approach.
[55] This notable campaign had advanced Frankish territory to the Pyrenees, except for the strip between these mountains and the Rhone, known as Septimania, which the Visigoths were able to retain by the aid of the Ostrogoths from Italy. No great number of Franks settled in this broad territory south of the Loire, and to this day the inhabitants of south France show a much larger measure of Roman descent than do those of the north. It may be added that Septimania was conquered by Clovis's son Childebert in 531, and thus the last bit of old Gaul—practically modern France—was brought under Frankish control.
[56] This was Cloderic, son of Sigibert the Lame, king of a tribe of Franks living along the middle Rhine. Sigibert was one of the numerous independent and rival princes whom Clovis used every expedient to put out of the way.
[57] Along the Upper Weser, near the monastery of Fulda.
[58] Ragnachar's kingdom was in the region about Cambrai.
[59] The mallus was the local court held about every six weeks in each community or hundred. In early German law the state has small place and the principle of self-help by the individual is very prominent. To bring a suit one summons his opponent himself and gets him to appear at court if he can. Ordinarily the court merely determines the method by which the guilt or innocence of the accused may be tested. Execution of the sentence rests again with the plaintiff, or with his family or clan group.
[60] "The monetary system of the Salic law was taken from the Romans. The basis was the gold solidus of Constantine, 1/72 of a pound of gold. The small coin was the silver denarius, forty of which made a solidus. This system was adopted as a monetary reform by Clovis, and the statement of the sum in terms of both coins is probably due to the newness of the system at the time of the appearance of the law."—Thatcher and McNeal, Source Book for Mediæval History, p. 17. The gold solidus was worth somewhere from two and a half to three dollars, but its purchasing power was perhaps equal to that of twenty dollars to-day, because gold and silver were then so much scarcer and more valuable. Such estimates of purchasing power, however, involve so great uncertainty as to be practically worthless.
[61] The Burgundian law (Chap. 41) contained a provision that if a man made a fire on his own premises and it spread to fences or crops belonging to another person, and did damage, the man who made the fire should recompense his neighbor for his loss, provided it could be shown that there was no wind to drive the fire beyond control. If there was such a wind, no penalty was to be exacted.