King Chlodevech Dies, Leaving His Kingdom to Be Ruled by His Four Sons: November 27, 511

This text comes from our book, Hope for the Ages.

By becoming Catholic and uniting most of Gaul under his rule, Chlodevech had established the first Catholic Germanic kingdom in Europe. Though the significance of this achievement was not apparent in his time or for over 200 years after Chlodevech’s death, history would later understand its meaning. The Germanic peoples would gradually be weaned away from their paganism and Arianism and drawn together by the unifying force of the Catholic Church. At the center of this development would be the very kingdom Chlodevech established—a land that eventually took its name (Francia or France) from its conquerors.

Yet, this development was still a long way off in the days when Chlodevech established his government at the old Roman center on the Seine River in northern Gaul—the city known as Lutetia Parisiorum—Paris. From this regal center, Chlodevech administered the provinces of his kingdom through officials called comites (plural of Latin, comes, “companion”, from which we derive the word “count”). He ruled his subject peoples—his own Franks and the Gallo-Romans—each by their own laws, without granting privileges to one group over the other. He cared for religion, protecting the Church in a way reminiscent of the old Roman emperors. It was Chlodevech, for instance, who called a Church council in Orléans in 511 so the bishops could settle policies for governing the Church throughout Gaul. Chlodevech established uniformity of religion by requiring the remaining Arians in his kingdom to become Catholic—though more by persuasion, it is said, than by force.

Chlodevech calls on Christ for victory over the Alemanni, by Ary Scheffer (1795–1858)

It seems, though, that baptism did not wash away all the barbarism in Chlodevech’s heart. According to old Germanic heroic songs of his deeds, from which early chroniclers and historians drew some of their accounts of his life, Chlodevech dealt treacherously with members of his family by having those of them who ruled smaller Frankish domains on the borders of Gaul assassinated. Many modern historians doubt the accuracy of these old tales, which tell, for instance, of how Chlodevech persuaded a Ripuarian Frank, Chloderic, to kill his father, Sigebert, the ruler of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (Cologne or Köln) on the Rhine, and claim the throne. When Chloderic had done this impious deed, Chlodevech had him assassinated as a parricide and claimed Köln for himself. It is said that, when Chlodevech could find no more kin to kill, he wept, saying that he had no family left in the world, and that the royal house of the Franks was threatened with extinction.

Though Roman culture had influenced the Franks, they could not conceive of government in the Roman way as a res publica belonging to the people, not an individual ruler. For Chlodevech, his kingdom seemed his personal possession, to be divided among his sons upon his death. Thus, when Chlodevech died at the relatively young age of 45 on November 27, 511, his kingdom passed to his four sons: Theodoric, Chlodomir, Childebert, and Chlotar. Though the kingdom was still thought of as a united regnum Francorum (kingdom of the Franks), it had four rulers, governing from four centers—Reims, Orléans, Paris, and Soissons—breeding confusion and civil war that tore at the fabric of Gaul for the next two centuries.