General Notes

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ema p 128, 307 "the first great king of the Franks, was 15 when he
succeeded his father in 481."
ohme p 5 "With time the passive antagonism of the Roman population
undermined the power of the Visigothic kings, despite their frantic
attempts to court support by issuing Roman law codes, and facilitated
their defeat at the hands of the newly converted king of the Franks,
CLOVIS, at Vouille near Tours in 507.  Thereafter the Visigothic kingdom
was confined to Spain . . .", 68, 88
p 65 "Childeric was succeeded by his son CLOVIS, usually seen as the real
founder of Frankish power in Gaul.  The details of his reign, recorded
for us by Bishop Gregory of Tours some seventy years after Clovis's
death, are in some dispute, but his achievements are plain.  He united
the Romans of north Gaul under his rule, by force of arms and by the
expedient of converting to their own religion, Catholic Christianity.  He
united the Franks under his own rule, partly at least by having all rival
kings assassinated.  And both Romans and Franks must have been impressed
by the success with which he led his armies against other Germans:  he
conquered the Thuringians to the east, and the Alamans, who were moving
from their homes in south-west Germany into what is now Alsace and
northern Switzerland; and in 507 Clovis led his followers south across
the Loire to destroy the Visigothic kingdom of Alaric II.  When he died
in 511 the kingdom was ruled jointly by his four sons, and it was they
who destroyed the Burgundian kingdom and who, by offering military aid to
the Ostrogoths in exchange, annexed Provence to their kingdom.  By the
middle of the sixth century the Frankish kings descended from Childeric
and Clovis, known as the Merovingians, had become by far the most
powerful of the barbarian heirs to the Roman Empire.  Almost all Gaul was
under their direct rule; they had a foothold in Italy and overlordship
over the Thuringians, Alamans, and Bavarians in Germany; and the
suzerainty they claimed over south-east England may have been more of a
reality than most English historians have thought."
FIMassachusetts "the royal name Louis, that is, Clovis."
pp 13-5 "There was a gradual acceptance of the idea of a gradual shift of
political focus westwards from the East--a notion whose origins are to be
found in the cosmology of the crucifixion discussed in the previous
chapter.  In contemporary eyes, this explained the successive transfer of
power from the Greeks to the Romans and then to the Franks.  The idea was
strengthened by memories of the alliance made between the leader of the
Franks and the Pope in the eighth century, which led to the formal
restoration of the Empire with the coronation of Charlemagne in 800.
There was also the more distant memory of CLOVIS's pact with the Catholic
Church, as a result of which he and his people saw themselves as
especially chosen by God.  In their eyes the pact had been an important
factor in his victories over pagan and heretic barbarians.  There was a
firmly rooted conviction that the Franks had established the Church in
Gaul.  The prologue of the Lex Salica (Salic Law), which had been
retranscribed in the eighth century, priased them because they had taken
care of 'the bodies of the holy martyrs burnt by the Romans, tortured by
them, or thrown to wild animals', digging up their remains and preserving
them in fine gold and jewelled reliquaries.  Most of the scholarly
historical writers at this date came from the lands of the Franks and
they were convinced that this chosen people had freed the inhabitants of
Gaul from the yoke of Roman oppression.  This assertion was based upon
the books which they found in cathedral and monastic libraries,
especially the History of the Franks written by Gregory of Tours in the
late sixth century.  His account