80 FOURTH PEEIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
of France and the papacy, destroyed the independence of the Lombards after a duration of about two hundred years, and transferred the greater part of Italy to the Eastern empire and to the Pope. In these struggles the Popes, being then (as they have been ever since) opposed from hierarchical interest to the politi cal unity of Italy, aided the Franks and reaped the benefit.
§ 22. Conversion of Clovis and the Franks.
GREGORIUS TURONENSIS (d. 595) : Historia Francorum Eccles. (till A. D. 591).
J. W. LOBELL : Gregor von Tours und seine Zeit. Leipz. 1839.
A. THIERRY : Eecits des temps Merovingiens. Par. 1842, 2 vols.
F. W. EETTBERG : Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. Gott. 1846,1.258- 278.
KORNHACK: Geschichte der Franken unter den Merovingern. Greifsw. 1863.
MONTALEMBERT, L c. II. 219 sqq.
Coinp. also HENRI MARTIN: Histoire de France; Sir JAMES STE PHEN: Lectures on the History of France (Lond. 1859); GUIZOT : Histoire de la civilization en France (1830 sqq.), and his Histoire de France, 1870.
The Salian Franks were the first among the Teutonic tribes which were converted to catholic or orthodox Christianity. Hence the sovereign of France is styled by the Popes " the oldest son of the church," and Rheims, where Clovis was baptized, is the holy city where most of the French kings down to Charles X. (1824) were consecrated.1 The conversion of the Franks pre pared the way for the downfall of the Arian heresy among the other Germanic nations, and for the triumph of the papacy in the German empire under Charlemagne.
The old Eoman civilization of Gaul, though nominally Chris tian, was in the last stage of consumption when the German barbarians invaded the soil and introduced fresh blood. Several savage tribes, even the Huns, passed through Gaul like a tempest,
1 With the oil of the miraculous cruise of oil (Ampulla Remensis) which, ac cording to Hincmar, a dove brought from heaven at the confirmation of Clovis, and which was destroyed in 1794, but recovered in 1824.
\ 22. CONVERSION OF CLOVIS AND THE FRANKS. 81
leaving desolation behind them, but' the Franks settled there and changed Gaul into France, as the Anglo-Saxons changed Britain into England. They conquered the Gallo-Romans, cru elly spoiled and almost exterminated them in the North-Eastern districts. Before they accepted the Christianity of the conquered race, they learned their vices. " The greatest evil of barbarian government," says Henri Martin,1 " was perhaps the influence of the greedy and corrupt Romans who insinuated themselves into the confidence of their new masters.'7 To these degenerate Christians Montalembert traces the arts of oppression and the refinements of debauchery and perfidy which the heathen Ger mans added to their native brutality. " The barbarians derived no advantage from their contact with the Roman world, depraved as it was under the empire. They brought with them manly virtues of which the conquered race had lost even the recollec tion ; but they borrowed, at the same time, abject and contagious vices, of which the Germanic world had no conception. They found Christianity there; but before they yielded to its benefi cent influence, they had time to plunge into all the baseness and debauchery of a civilization corrupted long before it was van quished. The patriarchal system of government which charac terized the ancient Germans, in their relations with their children and slaves as well as with their chiefs, fell into ruin in contact with that contagious depravity."2
The conversion of the Saliau Franks took place under the lead of their victorious king CIILODWIG or CLOVIS (Ludovicus, Louis), the son of Childeric and grandson of Merovig (hence the name of Merovingians). Pic ruled from the year 481 to his death in 511. With him begins the history not only of the French empire, its government and laws, but also of the French nation, its religion and moral habits. He married a Christian princess, Chlotilda, a daughter of the king of the Burgundians (493), and allowed his child to be baptized. Before the critical battle at
1 Vol. I. p. 394, quoted by Montalembert.
2 Montalembert, Vol. II. p. 230.