82 FOURTH PEKIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
Tolbiac1 near Cologne against the invasion of the Allemanni, he prayed to Jesus Christ for aid after having first called upon his own gods, and promised, in case of victory, to submit to baptism together with his warriors. After the victory he was instructed by Bishop Remigius of Rheims. When he heard the story of the crucifixion of Christ, he exclaimed : " Would I had been there with my valiant Franks to avenge him !" On Christmas, in the year 496, he descended before the cathedral of Kheims into the baptismal basin, and three thousand of his warriors folloAved him as into the joys of paradise. " When they arose from the waters, as Christian disciples, one might have seen fourteen cen turies of empire rising with them ; the whole array of chivalry, the long series of the crusades, the deep philosophy of the schools, in one word all the heroism, all the liberty, all the learning of the later ages. A great nation was commencing its career in the world — that nation was the Franks."2
But the change of religion had little or no effect on the charac ter of Clovis and his descendants, whose history is tarnished with atrocious crimes. The Merovingians, half tigers, half lambs, passed with astonishing rapidity from horrible massacres to pas sionate demonstrations of contrition, and from the confessional back again to the excesses of their native cruelty. The crimes of Clovis are honestly told by such saintly biographers as Gre gory of Tours and Hincmar, who feel no need of any excuse for him in view of his services to religion. St. Remigius even advised the war of conquest against the Visigoths, because they were Arians.
"The Franks," says a distinguished Catholic Frenchman,3 "were sad Christians. While they respected the freedom of the Catholic faith, and made external profession of it, they violated without scruple all its precepts, and at the same time the simplest
1 Tolbiacum, Ziilpich. 2 Ozanam, Etudes Germaniques, II. 54.
8 Montalembert, II. 235. Comp. also the graphic description of the Mero vingian house in Dean Milman's Lat. Christ., Bk. III., ch. 2 (Vol. I., p. 395, Am. ed.).
\ 22. CONVERSION OF CLOVIS AND THE FRANKS. 83
laws of humanity. After having prostrated themselves before the tomb of some holy martyr or confessor; after having distin guished themselves by the choice of an irreproachable bishop; after having listened respectfully to the voice of a pontiff or monk, we see them, sometimes in outbreaks of fury, sometimes by cold-blooded cruelties, give full course to the evil instincts of their savage nature. Their incredible perversity was most appa rent in the domestic tragedies, the fratricidal executions and assassinations, of which Clovis gave the first example, and which marked the history of his son and grandson with an ineffaceable stain. Polygamy and perjury mingled in their daily life with a semi-pagan superstition, and in reading these bloody biographies, scarcely lightened by some transient gleams of faith or humility, it is difficult to believe that, in embracing Christianity, they gave up a single pagan vice or adopted a single Christian virtue.
" It was against this barbarity of the soul, far more alarming than grossncss and violence of manners, that the Church trium phantly struggled. From the midst of these frightful disorders, of this double current of corruption and ferocity, the pure and resplendent light of Christian sanctity was about to rise. But the secular clergy, itself tainted by the general demoralization of the two races, was not sufficient for this task. They needed the powerful and soon preponderating assistance of the monastic army. It did not fail: the church and France owe to it the decisive victory of Christian civilization over a race much more difficult to subdue than the degenerate subjects of Rome or By zantium. While the Franks, coming from the North, completed the subjugation of Gaul, the Benedictines wefc about to approach from the South, and super-impose a pacific and beneficent domi nion upon the Germanic barbarian conquest. The junction and union of these forces, so unequal in their civilizing power, were destined to exercise a sovereign influence over the future of our country."
Among these Benedictine monks, ST. MAFRUS occupies the most prominent place. lie left Monte Casino before the death