Did we not know, from the judgment he passes on other characters in his history, that Gregory of Tours was capable of appreciating the nobler and gentler qualities of human nature, we might easily imagine as we read what he says of Clovis that, Christian bishop as he was, he had an altogether different standard of right and wrong from ourselves. Not a single virtuous or generous action has the panegyrist found to record of his favoured hero, while all that he does relate of him tends to deepen our conviction that this favourite of heaven, in whose behalf miracles were freely worked, whom departed saints led on to victory and living ministers of God delighted to honour, was quite a phenomenon of evil in the moral world, from his combining in himself the opposite and apparently incompatible vices of the meanest treachery and the most audacious wickedness.
We can only account for this amazing obliquity of moral vision in such a man as Gregory, by ascribing it to the extraordinary value attached in those times (and would that we could say in those times only) to external acts of devotion, and to every service rendered to the Roman church. If, in far happier ages than those of which we speak, the most polluted consciences have purchased consolation and even hope by building churches, endowing monasteries, and paying reverential homage to the dispensers of God’s mercy, can we wonder that the extraordinary services of a Clovis to Catholic Christianity should cover even his foul sins as with a cloak of snow?
He had, indeed, without the slightest provocation, deprived a noble and peaceable neighbour of his power and life. He had treacherously murdered his royal kindred, and deprived their children of their birthright. He had on all occasions shown himself the heartless ruffian, the greedy conqueror, the blood-thirsty tyrant; but by his conversion he had led the way to the triumph of Catholicism; he had saved the Roman church from the Scylla and Charybdis of heresy and paganism, planted it on a rock in the very centre of Europe, and fixed its doctrines and traditions in the hearts of the conquerors of the West.
Other reasons, again, may serve to reconcile the politician to his memory. The importance of the task which he performed (though from the basest motives), and the influence of his reign on the destinies of Europe, can hardly be overrated. He founded the monarchy on a firm and enduring basis. He levelled, with a strong though bloody hand, the barriers which separated Franks from Franks, and consolidated a number of isolated and hostile tribes into a powerful and united nation. It is true, indeed, that this unity was soon disturbed by divisions of a different nature; yet the idea of its feasibility and desirableness was deeply fixed in the national mind; a return to it was often aimed at, and sometimes accomplished.[q]
“The only conceivable palliation for any of the crimes which Clovis committed,” says Hodgkin,[r] “would have been the advantage of securing the unity of the Frankish state. Yet that unity was immediately impaired by the division of his dominions among his four sons.”
SUCCESSORS OF CLOVIS TO PEPIN
[511-531 A.D.]
In the reign of Clovis a new monarchy had been formed beyond the Rhine, that of the Thuringians, who, after their incorporation with other tribes, fell on the trans-Rhenish Franks. The latter implored the aid of their kindred tribes in Gaul: Thierry, the eldest, and Clotaire, another son of Clovis, carried the war into Thuringia. These princes triumphed over the enemy, whose rulers they exterminated, and whose country Thierry added to his possessions. Some of King Hermanfrid’s children, however, escaped into Italy, whence, in the sequel, they appear to have returned and to have given rise to the ducal house of Thuringia. In the same manner the duchies of Swabia and Bavaria were added to the domains of Thierry; so that the empire of the Franks now extended from Bohemia to the British Channel, and from the mouth of the Elbe to Languedoc and Toulouse. But it did not satisfy their ambition, which next turned towards Burgundy (532).
[531-555 A.D.]
Clotilda, the widow of Clovis, whom superstition has canonised, remembered the massacre of her parents and brothers, and the dangers of her own infancy, and she instigated her sons to vengeance. Sigismund, the son of her uncle Gundebald, now occupied the throne of Burgundy. He too is honoured as a saint, though soon after his accession he had murdered his own son at the instigation of a second wife. Through the exhortations of the holy widow, her three sons Childebert, Clotaire, and Clodomir (Thierry, who was not her son, refused to have any part in the war) invaded the province, and defeated Sigismund. Clodomir took him captive, and threw him, with his wife and children, into a well. Godemar, brother of Sigismund, collected another army, defeated the Franks, and having gained possession of Clodomir—such is fate’s retributive justice!—beheaded him. After the death of Clodomir, Clotaire, the second brother, who had two wives already, married the widow, and became the protector of his two infant sons.