_The Barbarian Invasions--St. Genevieve--The Conversion of Clovis--The
Merovingian Dynasty_
In the Prologue to _Faust_, the Lord of Heaven justifies the existence
of the restless, goading spirit of evil by the fact that man's
activity is all too prone to flag,--
"_Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh._"[18]
[Footnote 18: "He soon hugs himself in ease at any price."]
As with men so with empires: riches and inaction are hard to bear. It
was not so much a corruption of morals as a growing slackness and
apathy in public life and an intellectual sloth that hastened the fall
of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of
slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was
content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or
incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries
the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the
imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men,
giants in stature and strength, surging like an angry sea against
their boundaries.
[Footnote 19: To protect home producers against the competition of the
Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing
better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the
vine and olive in Gaul.]
The end of the fifth century is the beginning of the evil times of
Gallic story: the confederation of Frankish tribes who had conquered
and settled in Belgium saw successive waves of invasion pass by, and
determined to have their part in the spoils. They soon overran
Flanders and the north, and at length under Clovis captured Paris and
conquered nearly the whole of Gaul. That fair land of France, "one of
Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest barns for corn,
one of Bacchus' prime wine cellars and of Neptune's best salt-pits,"
became the prey of the barbarian. The whole fabric of civilisation
seem doomed to destruction, Gaul had become the richest and most
populous of Roman provinces; its learning and literature were noised
in Rome; its rhetoricians drew students from the mother city herself;
it was the last refuge of Graeco-Roman culture in the west. But at the
end of the sixth century Gregory of Tours deplores the fact that in
his time there were neither books, nor readers, nor scholar who could
compose in verse or prose, and that only the speech of the rustic was
understood. He playfully scolds himself for muddling prepositions and
confusing genders and cases, but his duty as a Christian priest is to
instruct, not to charm, and so he tells the story of his times in such
rustic Latin as he knows. He draws for us a vivid picture of Clovis,
his savage valour, his astuteness, his regal passion.
After the victory at Soissons over Syagrius, the shadowy king of the
Romans, Clovis was met by St. Remi, who prayed that a vase of great
price and wondrous beauty among the spoil might be returned to him.
"Follow us," said the king, "to Soissons, where the booty will be
shared." Before the division took place Clovis begged that the vase
might be accorded to him. His warriors answered: "All, glorious king,
is thine." But before the king could grasp the vase, one, jealous and
angry, threw his _francisque_[20] at it, exclaiming: "Thou shalt have
no more than falls to thy lot." The broken vase was however
apportioned to the king, who restored it to the bishop. But Clovis hid
the wound in his heart, and at the annual review in the Champ de Mars
near Paris, as the king strode along the line inspecting the weapons
of his warriors, he stopped in front of the uncourtly soldier, took
his axe from him, complained of its foul state, and flung it angrily
on the ground. As the man stooped to pick it up Clovis, with his own
axe, cleft his skull in twain, exclaiming: "Thus didst thou to the
vase at Soissons." "Even so," says Gregory quaintly, "did he inspire
all with great fear."
[Footnote 20: The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe,
used as a missile or at close quarters.]
At this point of our story we are met by the first of those noble
women, heroic and wise, for whom French history is pre-eminent. In the
early fifth century "saynt germayn[21] of aucerre and saynt lew of
troyes, elect of the prelates of fraunce for to goo quenche an heresye
that was in grete brytayne, now called englond, came to nannterre for
to be lodged and heberowed and the people came ageynst theym for to
have theyr benyson. Emonge the people, saynt germayn, by
thenseignemente of the holy ghoost, espyed out the lytel mayde saynt
geneuefe, and made hyr to come to hym, and kyste hyr heed and
demaunded hyr name, and whos doughter she was, and the people aboute
hyr said that her name was geneuefe, and her fader seuere, and her
moder geronce, whyche came unto hym, and the holy man sayd: is this
child yours? They answerd: Ye. Blessyd be ye, said the holy man, whan
god hath gyven to you so noble lignage, knowe ye for certeyn that the
day of hyr natiyuyte the angels sange and halyowed grete mysterye in
heuen with grete ioye and gladnes."
[Footnote 21: Again we quote from the _Golden Legend_.]
Tidings soon came to Paris that Attila, the felon king of Hungary, had
enterprised to destroy and waste the parts of France, and the
merchants for great dread they had, sent their goods into cities more
sure. Genevieve caused the good women of the town to "wake in
fastynges and in orysons, and bade the bourgeyses that they shold not
remeuve theyr goodes for by the grace of god parys shold have none
harme." At first the people hardened their hearts and reviled her, but
St. Germain, who had meantime returned to Paris, entreated them to
hearken to her, and our Lord for her love did so much that the
"tyrantes approachyd not parys, thanke and glorye to god and honoure
to the vyrgyn." At the siege of Paris by Childeric and his Franks,
when the people were wasted by sickness and famine, "the holy vyrgyne,
that pyte constrayned her, wente to the sayne for to goe fetche by
shyp somme vytaylles." She stilled by her prayers a furious tempest
and brought the ships back laden with wheat. When the city was at
length captured, King Childeric, although a paynim, saved at her
intercession the lives of his prisoners, and one day, to escape her
importunate pleadings for the lives of some criminals, fled out of the
gates of Paris and shut them behind him. The saint lived to build a
church over the tomb of St. Denis and to see Clovis become a
Christian. She died in 509, and was buried on the hill of Lutetius,
which ever since has borne her name.
The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis
and his queen Clotilde replaced in 506 by a great basilica dedicated
to SS. Peter and Paul,--whose length the king measured by the distance
he could hurl his axe--and the famous monastery of St. Genevieve.[22]
[Footnote 22: Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of
Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil
is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous
relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper
was long preserved at Notre Dame.]
The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history.
Clotilde had long[23] importuned him to declare himself a Christian,
and he had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the
infant's death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous
gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his
wife's prayers, and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the
trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the
teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple
with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against
him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from
his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of
Battles was winged with victory.
[Footnote 23: If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were
vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is
_omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator_."]
The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle
with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the
arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. Her scribes are tender
to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace.
He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to
affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the
assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and
more puissant tribal deity. "Long live the Christ who loves the
Franks," writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and when
the bishop was one day reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the
king, _qui moult avait grand compassion_, cried out: "Ah! had I been
there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ." Nor was their
ideal of kinship any loftier. Their realm was not a trust, but a
possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and
strife excited by the repeated partitions among sons, make the history
of the Merovingian[24] dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose
every page is stained with blood.
[Footnote 24: Merovee, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was
fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.]
[Illustration: TOWER OF CLOVIS.]
Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at
his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four
sons--Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert and Clothaire. Clodomir after a
short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the
guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came
to her in the old palace of the Caesars on the south bank of the Seine
from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be
entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices
that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted
their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace
of the Cite. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and
a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her
wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the
sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: "If they are not to be raised
to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn." The messenger
waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire
then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the
armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother's blood, flung
himself at Childebert's feet, burst into tears, and cried: "Help me,
dear father, let me not die even as my brother." Childebert's heart
was softened and he begged for the child's life. Clothaire's only
answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected
the victim. Childebert then disentwined the child's tender arms
clasping his knees--he was but six years of age--and pushed him to his
brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants
of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire became at his
brother's death, in 558, sole king of the Franks.[25] The third child,
Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was
hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris
and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud)
about two leagues from the city.
[Footnote 25: Among the wives of Clothaire was the gentle Radegonde,
who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in
works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion
with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by
St. Medard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at
Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that
he might be near her. Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for
it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by
the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble
church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus
College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496.]
In the days of Siegbert and Chilperic, kings of Eastern and Western
France, the consuming flames of passion and greed again burst forth,
this time fanned by the fierce breath of feminine rivalry. Siegbert
had married Brunehaut, daughter of the Visigoth king of Spain:
Chilperic had espoused her sister, Galowinthe, after repudiating his
first wife, Adowere. When Galowinthe came to her throne she found
herself the rival of Fredegonde, a common servant, with whom Chilperic
had been living. He soon tired of his new wife, a gentle and pliant
creature, Fredegonde regained her supremacy and one morning Galowinthe
was found strangled in bed. The news came to King Siegbert and
Brunehaut goaded him to avenge her sister's death. Meanwhile Chilperic
had married Fredegonde, who quickly compassed the murder of her only
rival, the repudiated queen, Adowere. Soon Chilperic drew the sword
and civil war devastated the land. By foreign aid Siegbert captured
and spoiled Paris and compelled a peace. Scarcely, however, had the
victor dismissed his Germain allies, when Chilperic fell upon him
again. Siegbert now determined to make an end. He entered Paris, and
prepared to crush his enemy at Tournay. As he set forth, St. Germain,
bishop of Paris, seized his horse's bridle and warned him that the
grave he was digging for his brother would swallow him too. When he
reached Vitry two messengers were admitted to see him. As he stood
between them listening to their suit he was stabbed on either side by
two long poisoned knives: the assassins had been sent by Fredegonde.
But Fredegonde's tale of blood was not yet complete. She soon learned
that Merovee, one of Chilperic's two sons by Adowere, had married
Brunehaut. Merovee followed the rest of her victims, and Clovis, the
second son, together with a sister of Adowere, next glutted her
vengeance. "One day, after leaving the Synod of Paris," writes St.
Gregory, "I had bidden King Chilperic adieu and had withdrawn
conversing with the bishop of Albi. As we crossed the courtyard of the
palace (in the Cite) he said: 'Seest thou not what I perceive above
this roof?' I answered, 'I see only a second building which the king
hath built.' He asked again, 'Seest thou naught else?' I weened he
spoke in jest and did but answer--'If thou seest aught else, prithee
show it unto me.' Then uttering a deep sigh, he said: 'I see the sword
of God's wrath suspended over this house.'" Shortly after this
conversation Chilperic having returned from the chase to his royal
villa of Chelles, was leaning on the shoulder of one of his companions
to descend from his horse, when Landeric, servant of Fredegonde,
stabbed him to death.
Thirty years were yet to pass before the curtain falls on the acts of
the rival queens, their sons and grandsons, but the heart revolts at
the details of the wars and lusts of these savage potentates.
Battle and murder had destroyed Brunehaut's children and her
children's children until none were left to rule over the realms but
herself and the four sons of Thierry II. The nobles, furious at the
further tyranny of a cruel and imperious woman, plotted her ruin, and
in 613, when Brunehaut, sure of victory, marched with two armies
against Clothaire II., she was betrayed near Paris to him, her
implacable enemy. He reproached her with the death of ten kings, and
set her on a camel for three days to be mocked and insulted by the
army. The old and fallen queen was then tied to the tail of a horse:
the creature was lashed into fury and soon all that remained of the
proud queen was a shapeless mass of carrion. The traditional place
where Brunehaut met her death is still shown at the corner of the Rue
St. Honore and the Rue de l'Arbre Sec. Thierry's four sons had already
been put to death. In 597 her rival Fredegonde, at the height of her
prosperity, had died peacefully in bed, full of years, and was buried
in the church of St. Vincent[26] by the side of Chilperic, her
husband.
[Footnote 26: (_See_ pp. 32 and 36.)]
Amid all this ruin and desolation, when the four angels of the
Euphrates seem to have been loosed on Gaul, one force was silently at
work knitting up the ravelled ends of the rent fabric of civilisation
and tending a lamp which burned with the promise of ideals, nobler far
than those which fed the ancient faith and polity. The Christian
bishops were everywhere filling the empty curule chairs in the cities
and provinces of Gaul. At the end of the sixth century, society lived
in the Church and by the Church, and the sees of the archbishops and
bishops corresponded to the Roman administrative divisions. All that
was best in the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy was drawn into her bosom,
for she was the one power making for unity and good government. From
one end of the land to the other the bishops visited and corresponded
with each other. They alone had communion of ideas, common sentiments
and common interests. St. Gregory, bishop of Tours, was the son of a
senator; St. Germain of Auxerre was a man of noble lineage, who had
already exercised high public functions before he was made a bishop;
St. Germain of Autun was ever on the move, now in Brittany, now at
Paris, now at Arles, to crush heresy, to threaten a barbarian
potentate, or to sear the conscience and, if need were, ban the person
of a guilty Christian king.
By the end of the sixth century two hundred and thirty-eight monastic
institutions had been founded in Gaul, and from the sixth to the
eighth century, eighty-three churches were built. The monasteries were
so many nurseries of the industry, knowledge and learning which had
not perished in the barbarian invasions; so many cities of refuge from
violence and rapine, where the few who thirsted after righteousness
and burned with charity might find shelter and protection. "Every
letter traced on paper," said an old abbot, "is a blow to the devil."
The ecclesiastical and monastic schools took the place of the
destroyed Roman day-schools, and whatever modicum of learning the
Frankish courts could boast of, was due to the monks and nuns of their
time; for some at least of these potentates when not absorbed in the
gratification of their lusts, their vengeance, greed or ambition,
were possessed by nobler instincts.
[Illustration: ST. GERMAIN DES PRES.]
To St. Germain of Autun, made bishop in 555, Paris owes one of her
earliest ecclesiastical foundations. His influence over Childebert,
king of Paris, was great. He obtained an order that those who refused
to destroy pagan idols in their possession were to answer to the
king, and when Childebert and his warriors, seized by an irresistible
fighting impulse, marched into Spain, and were bought off the siege
and sack of Saragossa by the present of the tunic of St. Vincent, he
induced the king to found the abbey and church of St. Vincent (St.
Germain des Pres), to receive the relic and a great part of the spoil
of Toledo, consisting of jewels, golden chalices, books and crucifixes
of marvellous craftsmanship. In the same reign was begun on the site
of the present sacristy of Notre Dame a great basilica, dedicated to
St. Stephen, so magnificently decorated that it was compared to
Solomon's Temple for the beauty and the delicacy of its art. The
church of Ste. Marie or Notre Dame, already existing in 365, stood on
a site extending westward into the present Place du Parvis Notre Dame.
During this great outburst of zeal and devotion, another monastery
(St. Vincent le Rond), was established and dedicated to St. Vincent,
which subsequently became associated with the name of the earlier St.
Germain of Auxerre (l'Auxerrois).
A curious episode is found in Gregory's _Chronicle_, which is
characteristic of the times, and proves that a monastery and church of
St. Julien le Pauvre were already in existence. An impostor, claiming
to have the relics of St. Vincent and St. Felix, came to Paris, but
refused to deposit them with the bishop for verification. He was
arrested and searched, and the so-called relics were found to consist
of moles' teeth, the bones of mice, some bears' claws and other
rubbish: they were flung into the Seine and the impostor was put in
prison. Gregory, who was lodging in the monastery of St. Julien le
Pauvre, went into the church shortly after midnight to say matins, and
found the creature, who had escaped from the bishop's prison, lying
drunk on the pavement. He had him dragged away into a corner, but so
intolerable was the stench that the pavement was purified with water
and sweet smelling herbs. When the bishops, who were at Paris for a
synod, met at dinner the next day, the impostor was identified as a
fugitive slave of the bishop of Tarbes.
Dagobert the Great, who came to the throne in 628, and his favourite
minister, St. Eloy, goldsmith and bishop (founder of the convent in
Paris which long bore his name), are enshrined in the hearts of the
people in many a song and ballad: St. Eloy, with his good humour, his
ruddy countenance, his eloquence, gentleness, modesty, wit, and wide
charity, singing in the church processions _a haute gamme jubilant et
trepudiant_ like David of old before the ark: Dagobert, the Solomon of
the Franks, the terror of the oppressor, the darling of the poor. The
great king was fond of Paris and established himself there when not
scouring his kingdom to administer justice or to crush his enemies. He
was the second founder of the monastery of St. Denis, which he rebuilt
and endowed with great magnificence, and to which he gave much
importance by the establishment there of a great fair, which soon drew
merchants from all parts of Europe. He was a patron of the arts and
employed St. Eloy to make reliquaries[27] for St. Denis and the
churches in Paris, of such richness and beauty that they were admired
of the whole of France.
[Footnote 27: The works of art traditionally ascribed to St. Eloy are
many. He is reported to have made a golden throne set with stones (or
rather two thrones, for he used his material so honestly and
economically). He was made master of the mint, and thirteen pieces of
money are known which bear his name. He decorated the tombs of St.
Martin and St. Denis, and constructed reliquaries for St. Germain,
Notre Dame, and other churches.]
The monkish scribes who wrote the Chronicles of St. Denis were not
ungrateful to the memory of good King Dagobert, for it is there
related that one day, as a holy anchorite lay sleeping on his stony
couch on an island, being heavy with years, a venerable, white-haired
man appeared to him and bade him rise and pray for the soul of King
Dagobert of France. As he arose he beheld out at sea a crowd of devils
bearing the king away in a little boat towards Vulcan's Cauldron,
beating and tormenting him cruelly, who called unceasingly on St.
Denis of France, on St. Martin and St. Maurice. Then thunder and
tempest rolled down from heaven, and the three glorious saints
appeared to him, arrayed in white garments. He was much affrighted,
and on asking who they were, was answered: "We be they whom Dagobert
hath called, and are come to snatch him from the hands of the devils
and bear him to Abraham's bosom." The saints then vanished from before
him and sped against the devils and reft the soul from them, which
they were tormenting with threats and buffetings, and bare it to the
joys perdurable of Paradise, chanting the words of the Psalmist
_Beatus quem eligisti_.