HE was son of king Clotaire, and grandson of Clovis I. and St.
Clotildis. Being the second son, while his brothers Charibert reigned at
Paris, and Sigebert in Austrasia, residing at Metz, he was crowned king
of Orleans and Burgundy in 561, making Challons on the Saone his
capital. When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers
and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories under the
conduct of a brave general called Mommol, than to give peace to his
dominions. He protected his nephews against the practices of the wicked
dowager queens, Brunehault of Sigebert, and Fredegonde of Chilperic, the
firebrands of France. The putting to death the physicians of the queen,
at her request, on her death-bed, and the divorcing his wife Mercatrude,
are crimes laid to his charge, in which the barbarous manners of his
nation involved him: but these he effaced by tears of repentance. He
governed his kingdom, studying rather to promote the temporal happiness
of others than his own, a stranger to the passions of pride, jealousy,
and ambition, and making piety the only rule of his policy. The
prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condemn those who think
that human policy cannot be modelled by the maxims of the gospel,
whereas nothing can render a government more flourishing. He always
treated the pastors of the church with respect and veneration, regarding
them as his fathers, and honoring and consulting them as his masters. He
was the protector of the oppressed, and the tender parent of his
subjects, whom he treated as his children. He poured out his treasures
among them with a holy profusion; especially in the time of a pestilence
and famine. He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick. He
fasted, prayed, wept, and offered himself to God night and day, as a
victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of his justice, to avert his
indignation, which he believed he himself had provoked, and drawn down
upon his innocent people. He was a severe punisher of crimes in his
officers and others, and, by many wholesome regulations, restrained the
barbarous licentiousness of his troops, but no man was more ready to
forgive offences against his own person. He contented himself with
imprisoning a man who, through the instigation of queen Fredegonde, had
attempted to stab him, and he spared another assassin sent by the same
wicked woman, because he had taken shelter in a church. With royal
magnificence he built and endowed many churches and monasteries. St.
Gregory of Tours relates many miracles performed by him both before and
after his death, to some of which he was an eye-witness. This good king,
like another penitent David, having spent his life after his conversion,
though on the throne, in the retirement and penance of a recluse, (as
St. Hugh of Cluny says of him, exhorting king Philip I. to imitate his
example,) died on the 28th of March, in 593, in the sixty-eighth year of
his age, having reigned thirty-one and some months. He was buried in the
church of St. Marcellus, which he had founded. The Huguenots scattered
his ashes in the sixteenth century: only his skull escaped their fury,
and is now kept there in a silver case. He is mentioned in the Roman
Martyrology. See St. Gregory of Tours, Fredegarius, and Baillet.
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