Question

Why the conversion of the Franks to Catholic Christianity was an important victory for the pope?

Answer 1

The Franks were a confederation formed in Western Germany of a certain number of ancient barbarian tribes who occupied the right shore of the Rhine from Mainz to the sea. Clovis was the son of the pagan Frankish king Childeric and the Thuringian queen Basina. He succeeded his father in 481 as the ruler of the Salian Franks and other Frankish groups around Tournai (now in Belgium). Although the chronology of his reign is imprecise, it is certain that by the time of his death in 511 he had consolidated the Franks and expanded his influence and rule to include the Roman province of Belgica Secunda in 486 and the territories of the Alemanni (in 496), the Burgundians (in 500), and the Visigoths (in 507).

Recent scholarship has revealed flaws in Gregory’s account of Clovis and raised questions about the ultimate purpose of the Histories. Gregory elevated the Franks to equivalency with the ancient Hebrews, the chosen people, and Clovis to the stature of their great king David. Even more important, he held Clovis up as a model for his own contemporary Frankish kings, Clovis’s grandsons. In Gregory’s estimation, unlike their grandfather, they did not maintain unity and peace within the kingdom nor adequately respect the advice of bishops. While the Histories provides broad background and engaging stories about the early Frankish world, the Clovis of the Histories is more a literary fiction than a historical reality.

Clovis' gains made him feared in neighboring kingdoms. An envoy that Clovis sent to the king of Burgundy told Clovis of the king's exceptionally attractive and graceful granddaughter – Clotilda. Clovis sent a representative to the king asking to marry Clotilda, and the king was afraid to refuse.

Clotilda was a believer in the Trinity and a Roman Catholic. A hundred years later, a Catholic historian, Gregory of Tours, would write that three years after Clovis and Clotilda had married, Frankish people fought a major battle near what today is Bonn, Germany, against invading Alemanni Germans. According to some modern historians, the Franks who fought the Alemanni Germans were led not by Clovis but by a king called Siegebert. At any rate, Gregory of Tours described Clovis' forces as suffering during the battle against the Alemanni and Clovis as calling on his gods for help. But no help was forthcoming. Then, according to Gregory, Clovis "lifted his eyes up to heaven" and, "moved to tears," said: "Jesus Christ, Clotilda proclaims you the living God. You are said to give aid to those in need and to grant victory to those who have hope in You."

According to Gregory, Clovis told Christ that if he helped him he would have himself baptized in his name, and the battle then turned in Clovis' favor and Clovis defeated the Alemanni. Jesus had apparently taken an interest in Clovis' expansions and had seen in Clovis an agent in his cause. Again Jesus, according to Gregory, had become a god of war, as with the pagan Constantine almost two hundred years before.

Clovis continued to war for more territory and extended his rule as far south as Switzerland, to what today is the city of Basel, on the Rhine River just inside Switzerland. Italy's king, Theodoric, who was the elder statesman among the German kings in western continental Europe, warned Clovis to expand no farther toward Italy and no closer to the kingdoms of those Germans to whom he, Theodoric, was patron.

Meanwhile, Christian evangelists had been finding converts among Clovis' Franks. The Franks had been impressed by Christianity's association with Roman civilization, and they had no theology that rivaled that of the Christians. But despite the victory that Gregory claimed that Jesus had given him, Clovis remained unconvinced in his choice of faiths. Clovis' family was divided in religion: Clotilda's uncle (the new king of Burgundy) was an Aryan Christian; one of Clovis' sisters was an Arian Christian and married to the Arian king Theodoric; a second sister was also Arian; and a third was pagan. Clovis, the story goes, consulted those closest to him: his warriors. Then, on Christmas day – more than two years after his purported victory near Bonn – Clovis and several of his warriors were baptized Catholics. And the conversion of Clovis' subjects was soon to follow.

This description, it is true, is somewhat of a caricature, and there is evidence in public charters that the position of the Merovingian kings was not as insecure as Einhard says. Nevertheless, it expresses well the marked contrast between the humiliating position of the king and the exalted, powerful standing of the mayor of the palace. It can be understood, therefore, that in 751, Pepin and the Frankish nobles might well discuss the question as to whether he should assume the kingly crown. The question had a moral side, namely, whether it was lawful to assume a title which seemed to belong to another. It was decided to appeal for a solution to the sovereign pontiff, recognized by all as the custodian and interpreter of the moral law. A Frankish embassy left for Rome and submitted the question to Pope Zachary. The latter's reply was given in the form of a declaration of principles admirably embodying Catholic doctrine on this important point: "ut melius esset", said the pope, "illum regem vocari, qui potestatem haberes, quam illum qui sine regali potestate maneret" [it were better for him to be called the king who holds the power than the one who remains (king in name) without the regal power]. Reassured by this decision, Pepin hesitated no longer, and had himself proclaimed king at Soissons in 751. Childeric III was sent to end his days in a cloister. The nature of the authority with which Pepin was invested was emphasized for the first time among the Franks, by the coronation ceremony, which imparted a religious nature to his power and imprinted upon him a sacred character. It has been said, but without proof, that St. Boniface attended the coronation. In this way, after having exercised the royal power almost uninterruptedly for over a century, the descendants of Arnulf and Pepin finally assumed the title of sovereign and the Carolingian dynasty replaced that of the Merovingians on the Frankish throne.