Clovis, King of the Franks, Towards a New Chronology.
By
Dane R. Pestano ©2015
Introduction.
In these posts I will
look at the chronological framework of the events of the life of
Chlodovech, or Clovis as he is more commonly known, Catholic King of the
Franks in early sixth century Gaul. In doing so the evidence of
contemporary sources will be used exclusively to date and structure
the chronological events of his life. The testimony of Gregory of
Tours, in his 595 work The
Histories in Ten Books,
will be examined alongside these sources to determine where Gregory
may have any useful information to add or where he actually placed
events in the correct time-frame. Other later secondary sources, such
as works by Fredegar, Marius of Avenches, letters, Vitae, Chronicles,
Archaeology and the Liber
Historia Francorum will also be considered. Historians have long
noticed and mentioned many of the problems I will discuss. Halsall,
being the most recent to raise serious doubts about the early
chronology in his 2001 paper Childeric's
Grave, Clovis' succession and the origins of the Merovingian
kingdoms,
which has been a great help.
He
comments :
“As has long been recognized, however, Gregory’s knowledge of Clovis was sketchy and his chronology of the reign entirely artificial. Thirty years was a convenient and appropriate length for the reign of a great king, with suitable biblical precedent. Furthermore, Gregory’s approach to numbers was such that, like many of his contemporaries, he worked in multiples of five (using poetic lustra as a unit of chronological measurement), but more usually in simple multiples of ten. It is difficult, therefore, to take Gregory’s statement that Clovis reigned thirty years literally. By the same token, one must be sceptical of the bishop’s statement of Clovis’ age at death: forty-five. This may have been derived from the age at which Merovingian kings appear to have come of age (fifteen), but it seems more likely that Gregory has once again thought of a suitable age given as a multiple of five (in this case, Clovis had lived nine lustra). Gregory is simply saying that Clovis died in his prime. The placing of events at five-yearly intervals has been shown to be the work of a later interpolator.”
Halsall's
comment citing Krusch, regarding an interpolator, will be examined
later.
Shanzer,
writing her foreword in 20121,
had already seen the strange obits for Clovis in Gregory's work
commenting “...but
if one collates Gregory's claims about when Clovis died, one comes up
with no fewer than three different dates: 509, 511 and 518.”
In
fact,
the obit of 511 for Clovis may not actually be indicated in his work
for reasons we will discuss, showing either that he was quite
inaccurate or that a proposed interpolator confused the chronology.
The first date of 509 is a simple mathematical mistake by Gregory,
miscalculating the number of years from the death of St Martin to the
death of Clovis. The final obit of 518 appears to be much too late
when the evidence of later religious Councils are taken into account,
which contain the regnal years of some of Clovis' sons.
Unfortunately, no contemporary source mentions the death of Clovis.
Current Chronology 511, henceforth CC511, places
Clovis' father Childeric's death, between 482 and 484 and hence the
beginning of the reign of Clovis to one of these dates. So popular
sources make Clovis reign from 481/482 to 511 or even 513. Some
modern authors make him reign from 486 to 5112,
dismissing, probably with good cause, the idea that Clovis reigned
thirty years according to Gregory. Patrick Geary goes as far as to
say that Childeric's grave confirms the death of Childeric in 482,
“It was in 481 or 482 that Clovis
succeeded his father. The date of his father's death is corroborated
by the signet ring.” The problem is that he follows
this by mentioning the coins of the emperor Zeno which were also
found in Childeric's grave. Emperor Zeno didn't die until 491. So
this is actually the terminus ante quem.3
Confusion has also arisen as to when Clovis converted and was
baptised as a Catholic, with dates ranging from 496 to 506/508. The
conversion has also been separated from the baptism by some authors,
who rightly see no reason for them to be necessarily linked. Then
there is the question of whether Clovis was an Arian Christian before
his baptism, an impossibility, or perhaps an Arian Catechumen.
Letters show he was well acquainted with Christianity.
Finally there is confusion over when several of Clovis' battles
occurred, such as the battle of Tolbiac and the battle against
Thuringians. Contemporary evidence seemingly at odds with Gregory's
chronology. Only three events in the life of Clovis can be dated with
any certainty up until now, the battle of Vouillé in 507 against the
Visigoths, the Burgundian civil war in 500 and the Council of Orleans
in 511. With so many differing opinions existing as to the periods
and events of his life, a look at Chlodovean chronology in a new
light is long overdue.
To
understand how the chronology has become so confused we need to
briefly examine the chronology of Gregory's Histories and
come to some conclusions about them. These chronologies have
been much discussed over the last one hundred years. Ian Wood tackled
some of the problems in his work Gregory of Tours and Clovis
(1985). He gives
a fine summary of the debate at that time4:
“For over a century the chronology of the reign of Clovis has been the subject of debate. The onslaughts on Gregory of Tour's account, especially those directed by Krusch and van de Vyver, exposed the weaknesses of the chapters associated with the king's conversion in Book Two of the 'Libri Historiarum', but a host of major scholars continued to defend the traditional outline of Clovis's reign, and prevented any alternative interpretation from securing unanimous support. Indeed the arguments over Clovis's baptism were so indecisive that Tessier proposed a truce, insisting that the exact date did not matter. Nevertheless historians have continued to argue about the chronology, with Weiss upholding the attitude of acute scepticism towards Gregory's account , while Reydellet has asserted his acceptance of the bishop of Tour's narrative... Much of the best work on Gregory has preferred not to discuss the precise factual problems created by his reconstruction of events. Meanwhile the defenders of Gregory's account of Clovis have tended to treat it as a primary source, although Books One and Two of the Libri Historiarum are secondary narratives written a considerable time after the events concerned.”
Gregory
had placed quite precise dating in the framework of the chronology he
set down in his work – The Histories in Ten Books (commonly
known as the History of the Franks).
He states that Clovis reigned for thirty years and died at the age of
forty-five. Histories II.435:
“He passed away in the fifth year after the battle of Vouillé, and all the days of his reign were thirty years, and his age was forty-five. From the death of St. Martin to the death of king Clovis, which happened in the eleventh year of the episcopate of Licinius, bishop of Tours, one hundred and twelve years are reckoned.”
Unfortunately, even this reign length and obit chronology is as questionable as the rest of Gregory's work concerning Clovis, when
contemporary evidence is consulted. It has been suggested that
Gregory was creating a hagiographical story of Clovis' life,
re-ordering events to present Clovis as a Catholic saviour,
converting to the faith early on in his career to justify defeating
the nasty Arian Christians. Richard Fletcher sums up this line of
thinking:
“If we confine ourselves to what Gregory had to say about Clovis, we need to take into account three things. First, Gregory felt concern about the squabbling kings of his own day and their endless internecine wars: he wished to uphold their ancestor before them as an example of strenuous valour. Second, Gregory wanted to show how God had helped the Catholic Clovis in all his wars, not just some of them; this affected his chronology of the kings reign and conversion. Thirdly, we must make a large allowance for ignorance; like every historian Gregory was at the mercy of his sources, which were meagre.”6
A study of those contemporary sources will show that Gregory's
chronology is a confusion, some due to his own errors and some
probably due to later interpolation. However his overriding message
of Clovis as a warrior of the Catholic faith deserves some
reconsideration in the light of the sources we will discuss. Gregory
appears to have many of the events in nearly the right order, but the
dating of these events are corrupted by various dating mechanisms
within the work. There appear to be two strands of chronology within
the Histories, one agreeing roughly with CC511 for his
birth in 466 and obit in 511 and one quite different; Gregory's
interpolated chronology 518 henceforth GC518, placing his
birth in 474 and obit in 518, as mentioned above.
To determine how these two
chronological strands came about we must look at Gregory's own
words. In the above quote from Gregory one small error crept in when
describing the end of Clovis' reign; Gregory miscalculating by two to
ten years the number of years from the death of St Martin in 397 7to the death of Clovis, which he gives as CX11 - 112 years, when it
should have been CXIV -114 years (to 511) or CXXII – 122 years (to
518). We can see here the obvious error point CXII/CXXII. In the very
same sentence where he gives this date he states that it was also in
the eleventh year of Bishop Licinius of Tours (508-519), which is
518. Gregory, earlier in his work indicated the 397 obit of St.
Martin which would place Clovis' death 112 years later in 508/509,
obviously a mistake.
Historians realised that the battle of Vouillé occurred in
507, and they added on Gregory's statement that Clovis died five
years later, so placing his death in 511, which appears correct. As
Clovis had convened the Council of Orleans in 511, he must have been
alive then, so that then must have been the year Clovis died when the
evidence from later Church Councils are considered8.
All that needed to be done then was to count back all chronological
event dates given by Gregory from that date, so creating a chronology
that has Clovis start to reign thirty years previously in 481.
However, this was not quite as simple as it looks. Gregory appears
not
to have dated the battle of
Vouillé to 507; or an interpolator created a secondary strand
of dating. This alternative piece of information was overlooked. In
his Histories he mentions that Euric had reigned twenty-seven
years (instead of seventeen) and hence had died in 492 instead of
485, Histories, II.20 9:
“Euric, king of the Goths, in the 14th year of his reign, placed duke Victorius in command of seven cities. And he went at once to Clermont (this is 479 as Euric started to reign in 466)..He was at Clermont nine years..(so 488)...Euric reigned four years after Victorius's death, and died in the twenty-seventh year of his reign (so 492 in both instances).... There was also at that time a great earthquake..”
Gregory (or interpolator) certainly meant 492 as he also mentions an
earthquake at that time, which did indeed occur in 493 at Gargano,
Italy10.
Perhaps he confused Euric with Odoacer, who died in 492. He also
states that Alaric, Euric's son, reigned twenty-two years11,
which is correct; hence Alaric in GC518 did not die until 513
(492+22nd year). Which is confirmed when Gregory says in
II.37 that Vouillé was around the twenty-fifth year of
Clovis' reign, so 513. He then links a statement to this saying that
Clovis died in the fifth year after this date for the battle
of Vouillé, i.e. in
518. Quite clearly then, a secondary (interpolated) strand had
placed Clovis' death in 518 and hence his accession as king to 489,
thirty years earlier. This obit of 518 though is far beyond the
accepted date for his death in 511. These two strands then became
confused. One where his accession as King appears to be placed in
around 489 and one where he died in 511. Combine both and we might be
nearer the truth.
This seven year error caused Wood to comment “Thus
Gregory's hagiography reveals that the exile of Quintianus of
Rodez...is placed a decade earlier in the Histories”12.
It possibly wasn't. In the secondary
strand it occurred just before Vouillé in 512. Which is actually
around the correct time for his exile from Rodez. We will return to
Quintianus later but this chapter of Gregory actually covered a wide
period of time.
Gregory's chronology appears to work
in multiples of five. Five years to Syagrius,
ten years to Thuringian battle,
fifteen years to the Battle of Tolbiac, twenty-five
years to Vouillé, thirty
years reign and
forty-five years at death.
Halsall, agreeing with Handley, has suggested that Gregory was
working to a poetic lustra
pattern with his event dating mechanism, numbering
them in multiples of five, but then appears to dismiss this
hypothesis when he states that Krusch has shown that the numbering
system was a later interpolation13.
Looking at the Latin14,
some of the year numbering could indeed be interpolations, year
fifteen and year
twenty five, and
nearly all of the detail in II.43 could
be an interpolation after the first sentence saying he died five
years after Vouillé. If we also look carefully at the Latin in II.20
about Euric, some of the dating there could be later additions.
If they were interpolations, then
the interpolator was working to a scheme to re-adjust the life of
Clovis. This is evident as we can see above in II.20 where the
interpolator was clearly placing Euric's death in 492; hence Alaric
must have died in 513 in this scheme;
hence the interpolator's statement that Vouillé
was around the twenty-fifth year from 489 is actually correct for the
scheme he was creating. What is not explained is why the proposed
interpolator created an adjusted life for Clovis and why he missed
out a twentieth year in the supposed lustra scheme.
The answer to these questions will dealt with later.
Let us
then present three strands of chronology, side by side. One is the
interpolated chronology based on the given synchronism of years and
dates within this and one the old combined chronology from 482, based
on a combined effort of sources and the Gregory/interpolated
chronology. The third is based on an accession date of 484. Dates in
brackets are more up to date suggestions for events.
Event
|
Interpol. Chronology
GC518
|
Combi. Chronology CC511
|
484
Chronology
|
Death of Childeric Start of Clovis
|
489
|
482
|
484
|
Siagrius 5th year
|
493
|
486
|
489
|
Thuringians 10th year
|
498
|
491
|
493
|
Marriage to Clothilda
|
499
|
492
|
494
|
Birth of Chlodomer
|
501
|
494
|
495
|
Battle of Tolbiac 15th year
|
503
|
496 (506)
|
498
|
Clovis converts /Baptism
|
503/4
|
496 (508)
|
499
|
Godigisel and Gundobad
|
504
|
500
|
500
|
Gundobad converts (dubious)
|
505
|
501
|
501
|
Meeting with Alaric
|
506
|
503
|
502
|
Battle of Vouillé 25th
year.
|
513
|
506 (507)
|
508
|
Clovis Consul /Patrician
|
514
|
508
|
509
|
Defeat of Frankish kings
|
514 - 517
|
509 - 510
|
509-512
|
Death of Clovis, five years after
Vouillé.
|
518
|
511
|
513
|
We can see from this an obvious hiatus in the GC518 scheme. The interpolator has completely removed six years between 506 and 512
and placed them in 512-518. We can also see that CC511 is based on actual events and a usage of the interpolated
chronology. Accurately speaking, if we dated the reign of Clovis from
481 the numbered years would not work with known events so they need
to start from 482. Hence why the other date for the beginning of his
reign in some sources is 484 and death in 513. His death in 513
though appears to be untenable. So we are left with three
chronologies which fail to work because they are dependent on Gregory
or the interpolator's synchronisms, although CC511 is closest to
getting it right.
Then there is the date of 486 for his accession in some modern works
as discussed. 484 would, in effect, reduce Clovis' reign by three
years and 486 by five years. A thirty year reign is now twenty-five.
What is evident is that the date for the accession of Clovis has been
slowly creeping up and I will continue in this direction with some
caveats. CC511 is actually
fairly accurate in it's dating but has been confused by more recent
ideas as to when the baptism and certain wars took place. What
we now require is a new chronology based on the sources rather than
this combined confusion.
When we examine the rest of Gregory's statements concerning Childeric
and Clovis and the letters of Cassiodorus, Avitus, St. Remigius and
other characters we will discover that Clovis must have died in 511,
but this does not mean that his rule began in 482, as we cannot take
for granted anything that Gregory or the interpolator has said about
the thirty year reign length. It
has been questioned by Halsall, who expressed his scepticism15.
I would agree with that scepticism, as only contemporary
evidence can show us an approximate reign length and I will propose
that this was instead, around twenty-three years..
The second assertion that we must dismiss is that Clovis was forty
five years old at the time of his death. Letters of Cassiodorus on
behalf of King Theoderic the Great, show that Clovis was a young king
under the age of forty at the time letters were written to him in
507. Theoderic calls Alaric II and Clovis “Regii Juvenes”.
Clovis therefore
cannot have been born in 466 as this would make him about forty-one
at that time.16
His correct age must have been early to mid thirties. When we examine
the life of his father Childeric we will be able to better place his
birth in the context of events at that time.
As there is no contemporary annalistic evidence
for Clovis' death, much later Gallic annalistic evidence wildly
differs. Some sources support the interpolated chronology obit of 518
but these annals are not known for their accuracy so we can only
mention them as insignificant sources17.
In the Gallic Annals of Flaviniacenses,
a ninth century annal which covers the period 384CE to 853CE, it
gives the year of the start of Clovis' reign as 488 and states he
reigned thirty years (Clodoveus annis
XXX), hence 517/518 for his death. In
the continuation of these annals – the Annals
of Luasonensibus, (ninth to tenth
century) Clovis' obit is given as 517 (Chlodoveus
rex obiit). There
are another fifty or more annals or chronicles that mention obits for
Clovis, many placing his obit after 511. Such as the Chronicle
of Saint Claude,
obit 524, Annales of Saint
Gregoire's Abbaye,
(14th century), obit, 514. Annals
of Saint Denis,
(11th century to 13th century), obit 524. This secondary annalistic
evidence must therefore be dismissed.
The Chronicle of Marius
of Avenches (late sixth century)
only gives some details about Clovis' attack on the Burgundian
Gundobad with Godigisel, dating it to around 500CE. In the Gallic
Chronicle of 511, no mention is
made of the death of Clovis, a strange omission.
In conclusion, it is clear that there was an effort to place the death of Clovis in 518. It follows therefore, that the interpolator, to make this appear correct, would have to have added on seven years to Clovis' age at death and seven years to his reign length. Remove these spurrious assertions and we will see that Clovis was actually born in 473, became King in 488 at the age of 15 and died aged 38 in 511. So let us now examine a full life of Clovis to prove this and see how events can be placed in the correct time-frame when the sources are examined, in part two.
In conclusion, it is clear that there was an effort to place the death of Clovis in 518. It follows therefore, that the interpolator, to make this appear correct, would have to have added on seven years to Clovis' age at death and seven years to his reign length. Remove these spurrious assertions and we will see that Clovis was actually born in 473, became King in 488 at the age of 15 and died aged 38 in 511. So let us now examine a full life of Clovis to prove this and see how events can be placed in the correct time-frame when the sources are examined, in part two.
Footnotes :
1 Mathisen-Shanzer,
The First Franco-Visigothic War and the Prelude to the Battle of
Vouillé, Battle of Vouillé, Brill, 2012, 3-10
2 See
works of Walter Goffart, Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and
the Later Roman Empire, 2006. David Rollason - Early Medieval
Europe 300-1050: The Birth of Western Society, 2014 and
Christopher Tadgel The West: From the Advent of Christendom to
the Eve of Reformation,
2013, to name just a few.
3 Also
pointed out by Halsall.
4
Wood, Ian N.
Gregory
of Tours and Clovis. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire.
Tome 63 fasc. 2, 1985. Histoire médiévale,
moderne et contemporaine — Middeleeuwse, moderne en hedendaagse
geschiedenis. pp. 249-272
5 II.43:
His ita transactis, apud Parisius obiit, sepultusque in basilica
sanctorum apostolorum, quam cum Chrodechilde regina ipse
construxerat. Migravit autem post Vogladinse bellum anno quinto.
Fueruntque omnes dies regni eius anni triginta; [aetas tota XLV
anni]. A transitu ergo sancti Martini usque ad transitum Chlodovechi
regis, qui fuit XI. annus episcopatus Licini Toronici sacerdotes,
supputantur anni CXII. Chrodechildis autem regina post mortem viri
sui Toronus venit, ibique ad basilica beati Martini deserviens, cum
summa pudititia atque benignitate in hoc loco commorata est omnibus
diebus vitae suae, raro Parisius visitans.
6 Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity University of California Press; First Edition edition, 1999, P.103
6 Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity University of California Press; First Edition edition, 1999, P.103
7 Greg,
Histories I.48. “In the
second year of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, Saint Martin,
bishop of Tours, departed this life”. Arcadadius
became Empeor in 395, Honorius was already Western Emperor from 393.
So date is 397.
8 The
fifth Council of Orleans is dated to the thirty-eighth or
thirty-ninth year of Childeric in 550.
9 Hist.II.29:
Eoricus autem Gothorum rex Victorium ducem super septem civitatis
praeposuit anno XIIII, regni sui. Qui protinus Arvernus adveniens,
civitatem addere voluit, unde et criptae illae usque hodie perstant.
Ad basilicam sancti Iuliani colomnas, quae sunt in aede positae,
exhibere iussit. Basilicam sancti Laurenti et sancti Germani
Licaniacensis vici iussit aedificare. Fuit autem Arvernus annis
novem. Super Euchirium vero senatorem calumnias devolvit; quem in
carcere positum nocte extrahi iussit, ligatumque iuxta parietem
antiquum, ipsum parietem super eum elidi iussit. Ipse vero dum
nimium esset in amore mulierum luxoriosus et ab Arvernus veriritur
interfeci, Romam aufugit, ibique similem timptans exercere luxoriam,
lapidibus est obrutus. Post cuius excessum regnavit Euricus annus
IIII; obiit autem anno vicissimo septimo regni sui. Fuit etiam et
tunc terrae motus magnus.
10 Gianfreda,F.,
Mastronuzzi, G., Sanso P., Impact
of historical tsunamis on a sandy coastal barrier: an example from
the northern Gargano coast, southern Italy, Natural
Hazards and Earth System Sciences (2001) 1: 213–219, P.218 “The
second event had a similar magnitude and was responsible for the
development of the Foce Cauto fan at 1550 years BP (488±55 cal AD).
It was caused by the strong earthquake that occurred on the Gargano
Promontory in 493AD and reported by a medieval sacred legend”.
We could of course now add that it was mentioned by Gregory.
11 Hist
II.37: Regnavit autem Alaricus viginti duos annos. There
is plenty of evidence for Alaric's reign length.
12 Wood,
Ian N. The
Merovingian Kingdoms, 450 – 751.
London,
1994, P.14
13 Halsall,
Guy. Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in
History and Archaeology,
Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages 1992-2009 p.171
14 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/gregorytours.html
15 Ibid
Halsall 2009 Pgs. 170-171
16 Halsall
comes to the same conclusion.”by the same token one must be
sceptical about the Bishop's statement of Clovi's age at death:
45....Gregory guessed that Clovis had been forty-five when he died
which, as noted above, was certainly a shorthand for ‘in his
prime, but not old.” ibid Halsall 2009, p.171
17 See
study by Santschi, C. Les évêques de Lausanne et leurs
historiens des origines au 18e siècle: érudition et société,
Société d'histoire de la Suisse romande. Mémoires et documents,
1975
No comments:
Post a Comment