Clovis I

Clovis (; reconstructed Frankish: ; – 27 November 511) was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Franks under one ruler, changing the form of leadership from a group of petty kings to rule by a single king, and ensuring that the kingship was passed down to his heirs. He is considered to have been the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries. Clovis is important in the historiography of France as "the first king of what would become France."

Clovis succeeded his father, Childeric I, as a king of the Salian Franks in 481, and eventually came to rule an area extending from what is now the southern Netherlands to northern France, corresponding in Roman terms to Gallia Belgica (northern Gaul). At the Battle of Soissons (486), he established his military dominance of the rump state of the fragmenting Western Roman Empire, which was then under the command of Syagrius. By the time of his death in 511, Clovis had conquered several smaller Frankish kingdoms in the northeast of Gaul, stretching into what is now Germany. Clovis also conquered the Alemanni in eastern Gaul and the Visigothic kingdom of Aquitania in the southwest. These campaigns added significantly to Clovis's domains and established his dynasty as a major political and military presence in western Europe.

Clovis is also significant because of his baptism in 508, largely at the behest of his wife, Clotilde, who would later be venerated as a saint for this act, celebrated today in both the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. The adoption by Clovis of Catholicism (as opposed to the Arianism of most other Germanic tribes) led to widespread conversion among the Franks, and eventually to religious unification across what is now modern-day France, the Low Countries and Germany. The alliance between the Franks and Catholicism eventually led to Charlemagne's crowning by the Pope as emperor in 800, and to the subsequent birth of the early Holy Roman Empire in the middle of the 10th century.

Name

Based on the attested forms, the original name is reconstructed in the Frankish language as *''Hlōdowik'' or *''Hlōdowig'' and is traditionally considered to be composed of two elements, deriving from both Proto-Germanic: ''*hlūdaz'' ("loud, famous") and ''*wiganą'' ("to battle, to fight"), resulting in the traditional practice of translating Clovis' name as meaning "famous warrior" or "renowned in battle".

However, scholars have pointed out that Gregory of Tours consistently transcribes the names of various Merovingian royal names containing the first element as ''chlodo-''. The use of a close-mid back rounded vowel (o), rather than the expected close back rounded vowel (u) that Gregory does use in various other Germanic names (i.e. Fredegundis, Arnulfus, Gundobadus, etc.) opens up the possibility that the first element instead derives from Proto-Germanic ''*hlutą'' ("lot, share, portion"), giving the meaning of the name as "loot bringer" or "plunder (bringing) warrior". This hypothesis is supported by the fact that if the first element is taken to mean "famous", then the name of Chlodomer (one of Clovis' sons) would contain two elements (''*hlūdaz'' and ''*mērijaz'') both meaning "famous", which would be highly uncommon within the typical Germanic name structure.

In Middle Dutch, a language closely related to Frankish, the name was rendered as ''Lodewijch'' (cf. modern Dutch ''Lodewijk''). The name is found in other West Germanic languages, with cognates including Old English ''Hloðwig'', Old Saxon ''Hluduco'', and Old High German ''Hludwīg'' (variant ''Hluotwīg''). The latter turned into ''Ludwig'' in Modern German, although the king Clovis himself is generally named Chlodwig. The Old Norse form ''Hlǫðvér'' was most likely borrowed from a West Germanic language.

The Frankish name ''*Hlodowig'' is at the origin of the French given name ''Louis'' (variant ''Ludovic''), borne by 18 kings of France, via the Latinized form ''Hludovicus'' (variants ''Ludhovicus, Lodhuvicus'', or ''Chlodovicus''). The English ''Lewis'' stems from the Anglo-French ''Louis''.

Background

Clovis was the son of Childeric I, a king of the Salian Franks, and Basina, a Thuringian princess. The dynasty he founded is, however, named after his supposed ancestor, Merovech. Some sources claim that Clovis' grandfather was Chlodio, but his exact relation with Merovech is not known.

Numerous small Frankish petty kingdoms existed during the 5th century. The Salian Franks was the first-known Frankish tribe that settled with official Roman permission within the empire, first in Batavia in the Rhine-Maas delta, and then in 375 in Toxandria, which in the present day consists of the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands and parts of neighbouring provinces of Antwerp and Limburg in Belgium. This put them in the northern part of the Roman civitas Tungrorum, with the Romanized population still dominant south of the military highway Boulogne-Cologne. Later, Chlodio seems to have attacked westwards from this area to take control of the Roman populations in Tournai, then southwards to Artois, and Cambrai, eventually controlling an area stretching to the Somme river.

Childeric I, Clovis's father, was reputed to be a relative of Chlodio and was known as the king of the Franks who fought as an army within northern Gaul. In 463, he fought in conjunction with Aegidius, the magister militum of northern Gaul, to defeat the Visigoths in Orléans

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases