Gregory on Clotilda and her Sons--Documenting Historical Vengeance or Creating Political Propoganda?

Gregory placed the revenge of Clotilda at the center of the Frankish desire to conquer Burgundy. Yet, as has already been discussed, Clotilda may have had nothing to avenge. She probably arranged the original alliance between Clovis and Gundobad around A.D. 507. This act of diplomacy would be difficult to accept of a woman with vitriolic hatred for her uncle. Further, as Ian Wood explains (The Merovingian Kingdoms), if Clotilda had "waited from the A.D. 490s until A.D. 523 the feud cannot have been uppermost in her mind."

Herwig Wolfram (Germanic Peoples) noted that both the Franks and Theodoric’s Goths invaded Burgundy, claiming revenge as a reason "that may well have been intended merely to veil hard power politics." Godefroid Kurth (Saint Clotilda) offered another viable counterargument to Gregory’s account.

If Clotilda was so eager for vengeance why did she not urge the duty on her husband Clovis, and why did she wait for the death of [Gundobad] in order to vent her wrath upon the innocent son of the latter?

He supported his belief with the fact that when Clovis had Gundobad within his power at Vienne, he left the field. Even when Gundobad failed to send tribute the next year, Clovis did not go to war with him. Instead, he made an alliance, and, according to Kurth:

...all this under the very eyes of Clotilda just at the time of his own conversion to Christianity, when we may presume that his wife’s influences was most potent with him.

Given this, it seemed Clotilda, if she had wrongs to avenge, must have forgotten them until after both Clovis, her “natural avenger” and Gundobad were dead. Kurth again:

[I]t was only after both offender and offended had been in their graves the one during nine and the other during twelve years, and when there was nobody to punish, that we are asked to believe that this pious widow, living in retirement and devoting herself to good works, separated from her sons and peacefully awaiting death, suddenly bethought herself to crown a life filled with good works by initiating a fratricidal war in which her own flesh and blood were to perish.

On the other hand, while advocating for the strong role that medieval queens played in politics, Suzanne Fonay Wemple (Women in Frankish Society) made the interesting argument that since:

Loyalty to the uterine line was inculcated in aristocratic males in their early childhood...we should not be surprised to learn that Clotild[a] asked her sons, not her husband, to avenge the murder of her parents.

Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood (Avitus of Vienne) remarked upon the duality between the supposed vengeance wrought upon the sons of Gundobad and Gregory's account of the supposed murder of Chilperic and his wife. In fact, they observed that Gregory reveals a remarkable penchant for fratricide and patricide among many of the Franks' rivals (Thuringians, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Burgundians). Given this, repeated accusations of murder and mayhem "may...have been an aspect of Merovingian political propaganda." Revenge as a reason for war. To this I might add that it is a common tactic in politics to accuse your opponent of those things that you have or would do. Could Gregory have ascribed so many instances of inter-family murder in an attempt to portray such acts as commonplace, thus diminishing the horrendous crimes often committed by the ancestors of his own Merovingian patrons?

Some believed that the story was invented by popular imagination in an attempt to explain the reason that led two closely allied families to go to war. Accordingly, a connection was made by portraying the story of Gundobad’s murder of Chilperic and his wife first to justify the nearly identical form of Clotilda’s supposed revenge. Because Clodomir killed Sigismund and his wife, the legend grew that Chilperic’s wife, (Clotilda’s mother) was killed with him and both thrown in a well. Because Clodomir also killed Sigismund’s two remaining sons, then Gundobad was said to have killed Chilperic’s two sons (though these may have never actually existed).

As Wood explains:

There is also a curious parallel between the manner of [Chilperic II’s] death, supposedly by drowning in a well, and the similar disposal of Sigismund’s body after his defeat and capture in 524. It seems that Gregory’s account of the murder of Chilperic and the subsequent bloodfeud reflected later assumptions, rather than historical reality. The marriage of [Clotilda], therefore, may not have had the ominous implications which the bishop of Tours attributed it.

A parallel can be drawn in the similarity between Gregory’s account of Clovis’s battlefield conversion and that of Constantine roughly two hundred years earlier. Gregory was not above using one event as a template for another if he deemed it convenient or necessary. After all, Gregory and Fredegarius were Merovingian chroniclers and probably desired to show their patrons in the best light, often at the expense of historical truth.

Kurth speculated that this legend grew up out of the medieval mind, so to speak.

[There is a] universal tendency of the popular mind to explain great misfortunes as being the expiation of great crimes. When Sigismund, king of Burgundy, was killed with his wife and children by his cousin Clodomir, it was supposed that he must have perished in expiation of some similar crime which one of his ancestors had perpetrated against some member of Clodomir’s family. And hence it was easy to assume that [Gundobad] had inflicted on Chilperic, the grandfather of Clodomir, the same treatment as, at a later date, Clodomir had inflicted on his son.

[Of] the pretext on which the sons of Clovis took up arms against their unhappy cousin we have no information, nor indeed is the question of much historic importance. The war may have been caused simply by that insatiable love of fighting and of glory which lies at the root of uncivilised [sic] nature, or again by that desperate avarice which gave men no rest so long as there remained anything to covet or to conquer.

J.B. Bury summarized, "We can thus safely conclude that the true Gundobad was not the sanguinary tyrant of later tradition, nor was Clotilda the bearer of tragedy and doom to the Burgundian house as she appears in the story."

Don't bet on historical certainty, JB!

UP NEXT: Epilogue

SOURCES:

Wolfram, Germanic Peoples.
Kurth, Saint Clotilda.
Wemple, Women in Frankish Society.
Avitus of Vienne, Shanzer and Wood.
Kurth, “St. Clotilda,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908 ed.
Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms.
Bury, Invasion of Europe.

Doubting Gregory of Tours: "All that was best known of the life of Clotilda was that which never really occurred."

Gregory of Tours' account of the marriage of Clovis and Clotilda portrayed the Burgundian King Gundobad (and Clotilda's uncle) in an unflattering light. Yet, the truth may have been different than that put forth by the Merovingian propagandist and the debate regarding the credibility of Gregory's account has encompassed nearly as many years as did the duration of the short-lived second Burgundian Kingdom in Gaul!

Most historians from the time of Gibbon to the turn of the 20th century seem to have taken Gregory's stories at face value. However, some historians--like Godefroid Kurth, who was an early skeptic (relatively speaking) of the Gregory account--have questioned some of Gregory's tales. Kurth examined Gregory’s own sources and concluded that Gregory relied too much on legend, which he uncritically used to fill in gaps in his historical record. Another, later, historian--I.N. Wood--remarked that:

the account of fifth-century Gaul offered by Gregory in his Histories is intended, on the one hand, to denigrate the Arian Goths and Burgundians, and, on the other, to elevate the Franks and their king, the Catholic convert, Clovis.

J.M. Wallace-Hadrill unequivocally stated that Gregory’s hero is Clovis, and Gregory placed Clovis’ conversion too early to make it appear as if all of Clovis’ great deeds were done as a Catholic. (Wallace-Hadrill’s chapter, “The Work of Gregory of Tours in the Light of Modern Research,” in The Long-Haired Kings, is informative on the subject Gregory’s work, point of view and motivation). Ian Wood also urges us to take Gregory with a grain of salt:

Gregory’s account of Clovis seems to be more concerned to create the image of a catholic king against whom his successors could be assessed, than with any desire to provide an accurate account of the reign. In order to understand Clovis within the context of the late fifth and early sixth centuries it is necessary to emphasize the contemporary evidence, and to treat Gregory, as far as possible, as a secondary source.

Despite these warnings, many have continued to uncritically accept Gregory's account of Clotilda and the events surrounding her while she lived in Burgundy.

That Clovis probably married her in the early 490’s and that she was the niece of King Gundobad is accepted, but that is about it. Some historians have contended that the story, or legend, of Gundobad’s murder of Chilperic II and Clotilda’s subsequent desire for revenge grew up about a generation after the marriage of Clovis and Clotilda.

Skeptics of the widespread acceptance if Gregory's tale as historical fact have relied on a textual criticism of both Gregory and the Fredegarius account as well as other sources that mention Clotilda, especially the Saint’s Lives. They have contended, to quote Kurth, that the story of Gundobad murdering Chilperic II threw “a shadow over the character of Clotilda [ie; her later supposed desire for revenge upon her uncle, Gundobad], and a still darker shadow over the character of King Gundobad” and maintained that the “the very basis of [the story] is entirely fictitious.”

Some skeptics have held that Clotilda had no reason to avenge her father’s death by Gundobad because Gundobad didn’t commit the murders. They cited as proof a letter written by Bishop Avitus of Vienne to console Gundobad on the death of a daughter. Within this letter, Avitus wrote that, “[i]n the past, with ineffable tender-heartedness, you mourned the deaths of your brothers.” Accordingly, the brother mentioned was not Godegisil who later fought Gundobad and died, so it must have referred to Chilperic II. Another alternative may have been that the unnamed brother was the mysterious Godomar, who was barely mentioned in the sources and is but a name listed along with Gundobad and his Burgundian brothers.

Thus, skeptics contend, Avitus’ letter seems to absolve Gundobad of the murder of Chilperic II. Herwig Wolfram noted that, “It is likely that both Godomar and Chilperic II—the father of Clotild[a], the future wife of Clovis—died natural deaths around 490.” J.B. Bury also expressed doubts that Gundobad murdered his brother and explained that Gregory was engaged in a bit of medieval "retcon" (my term, not Prof. Bury's!).

Bury says that the legend of a vengeful Clotilda “originated sometime after the great war of A.D. 523 between the Burgundians and the Franks.” This is the year that Gundobad's son and heir Sigismund and his family perished at the hands of Clovis' and Clotilda' sons by being thrown down a well. As such, to explain the reason that two closely allied families would go to war, a story was invented by, as Bury put it, "popular imagination" to help explain why saintly Clotilda would allow her sons to kill their kinsmen. So the story of old wrongs was created and the connection is made by portraying the old wrong to have been nearly identical to the form of revenge perpetrated.

Because King Sigismund and his wife were killed and thrown in a well, the legend grew that the same happened to Chilperic. Because Sigismund’s two sons were killed, then two sons of Chilperic--sons who may have never actually existed--were said to have been killed by Gundobad. Bury contended that "we can thus safely conclude that the true Gundobad was not the sanguinary tyrant of later tradition, nor was Clotilda the bearer of tragedy and doom to the Burgundian house as she appears in the story."

Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson has explained some of the historiographical problems with Gregory's story of Clovis, in general. First is the chronological problem, “which is wellnigh hopeless.” It has been the subject of scholarly debate for decades. “What confidence can be placed in judgments that sometimes must be based on the tense of a verb in a manuscript corrupted by copyists whose knowledge of Latin was admittedly faulty?” The second problem is on the primary source, Gregory of Tours. He “was a honest man, but he was possessed with a burning desire to prove that Clovis, from a very early time in his extraordinary career, had been the champion of true Christianity.” She also noted that most agree Gregory placed Clovis’s conversion too early so that all of his campaigns would be deemed victories for the Church. The third problem is the anachronistic belief that Clovis sought to create a French nation. “In reality," Randers-Pehrson writes, "if we read closely, he was a greedy opportunist who seized upon whatever chances arose in the flux of any given critical situation.” The first two problems seem viable while the last may be a bit too cynical for most.

While Kurth relies heavily on Saints Lives to poke holes in Gregory's accounts, others are wary. In Forgetful of Their Sex, author Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg warned that, while hagiography often provided the only source of information for medieval women, it is important to note that most hagiographers were less historians than saint propagandists. This does not necessarily exclude Saints Lives as valuable historical sources, she continued, but historians must be aware of the motivation of the hagiographer. Schulenburg is far more accepting of Gregory's account, which she used to conclude that Clotilda was a woman who was active in determining her own destiny:

Considering that Gundobad had killed her parents and exiled her sister, and continued to espouse Arianism, Clotilda was no doubt anxious to escape from his court and to start a new life.

Ian Wood and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill were also wary of the accounts in the Saints Lives and, despite their misgivings about Gregory, were willing to accept much of his tale concerning Clotilda and her vengeance. In his description of Clotilda urging her sons to attack Gundobad’s as part of a “blood feud,” Wallace-Hadrill notes that, “Some historians look upon the story as essentially a myth. I do not know why.”

For his part, Kurth believed that both Fredegarus and the monk of St Denis, who wrote the Liber Historiae, were even less critical of their sources than Gregory. Kurth also offered a defense of the hagiographers when he wrote:

[O]n this occasion at least hagiography can defend the legitimacy of its traditions in the name of science, while on the other hand we have the amusing spectacle of rationalistic learning, engaged in angry argument against the conclusions of the critical methods. Can it be true that in the estimation of certain historians the legends which glorify the saints are the only ones to be struck out, while those that calumniate them are to be preserved with pious care?

Regardless of this lively ongoing debate, the political factors that influenced the marriage are obvious. There appear to have been two factions in the kingdom of Burgundy; one that favored an alliance with the Franks, led by Godegisel, and another that mistrusted such an alliance, led by Gundobad. Clotilda had been living at Geneva*, the capital of her uncle Godegisel, who made a secret pact with Clovis. Thus, that Clotilda was Catholic was known to Clovis beforehand and was probably considered to be a desirable condition.

“Pious intrigue” was probably partly influential in matching a Catholic princess with the king of the pagan Franks. Since the Burgundians were known Arians, as were all of the other barbarian tribes, was it a coincidence that Clovis chose a Catholic Burgundian princess from this particular tribe?

However, though the Burgundians were Arian, they also seemed more tolerant of their Catholic subjects than the Vandals and Visigoths, and some of Gundobad’s closest advisors, such as Patiens and Avitus, were Catholic bishops. Though he may have not yet been Christian himself, it is probable that Clovis realized the political benefits of having a Catholic wife, especially one related to, at the time, a strong Arian kingdom that was also sympathetic to Catholics. The Burgundians also realized the importance of political marriages, as when Gundobad married his son to Theoderic’s daughter. For Clovis though, a marriage to Clotilda was more important for the ties it would strengthen to the dominant Roman Catholic Church than with those of the Burgundian kingdom.

Whether Gregory’s or Fredegarius’s accounts of Clotilda’s flight from the Burgundian kingdom to meet her betrothed are believable or not, what has been generally accepted is that the marriage was arranged at Chalon-sur-Saone and that Clovis met her at Villery, south of Troyes, and accompanied her to Soissons for the wedding. As Kurth explained, a poem written describing the ceremony replaced the historical facts as the historical record.

In this way legend at an early date took the place of historical fact, and, during many centuries, all that was best known of the life of Clotilda was that which never really occurred.

* Though, as I've already noted, Gregory's story of Clotilda's engagement and betrothal to Clovis implies Clotilda is at Gundobad's court (which is in Lyons), not Geneva.

UP NEXT: Clotilda, Clovis and the Conversion

SOURCES:

Avitus of Vienne, Shanzer and Wood.
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks.
Fredegarius, Chronicle of Fredegar.
Godefroid Kurth, Saint Clotilda.
I.N. Wood, “Continuity or calamity?: the constraints of literary models,” in Fifth-century Gaul: a crisis of identity?, ed. Drinkwater and Elton.
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings.
Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms.
Kurth, “St. Clotilda,” in Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908 ed.
Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson, Barbarians and Romans.
J.B. Bury, Invasion of Europe.
Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society ca. 500-1100.
Herwig Wolfram, Germanic Peoples.

Young Clotilda

Chilperic II’s daughter Clotilda was born at Lyons around A.D. 474. She had a younger sister named Sedeluba, or Chrona, and both were educated as Christians, probably under the guidance their mother, who was most likely Roman Catholic. The court of Chilperic II was probably frequented by many Catholic bishops and other luminaries, including Sidonius, who was a regular visitor, as well as the Catholic bishops Avitus of Vienne and Patiens of Lyons. The girls were also probably familiar with the saints of Lyons, such as the slave martyr Saint Blandina.

That Clotilda was surrounded by such religious personages as Avitus and Patiens lends credence to the theory that she was undoubtedly much influenced by them in the faith. Thus, it is widely accepted that Clotilda’s mother, and perhaps her father, were Catholic. Clotilda’s mother was mentioned by Sidonius who sang her praises (as mentioned previously) and compared her to Tanaquil and Agrippina. As Godefroid Kurth elaborates (Saint Clotilda, 20-21), “each of which recalls the influence exercised by a noble-hearted woman over her husband.” Kurth also explained that while Sidonius was “addicted to hyperbole,” the compliments he gave to the wife of Chilperic II were probably not those of a cloying sycophant. “Sidonius had no affection for the Burgundians, and did not owe allegiance to Chilperic.”

Chilperic II probably died around A.D. 490 and, according to Gregory of Tours, his daughters were supposedly sent to the court of Godegisil in Geneva when Gundobad took the throne at Lyons.* If this is so, it is likely that Chilperic II was the eldest, and when he died, Gundobad assumed the throne as the preeminent king among his remaining brothers.

The death of Chilperic II, as described by Gregory of Tours, has spawned a debate among historians that has filled volumes. According to Gregory, “Gundobad killed his brother Chilperic and drowned Chilperic’s wife after tying a stone round her neck. He drove Chilperic’s two daughters into exile: the elder, whose name was Chroma, became a religious, and the younger was called Clotild[a].” (Some believe that the sisters went to Geneva because Godegisil was Catholic, while Gundobad was an Arian). This is the first example of how Gregory is, as Edward James (The Origins of France, 23) puts it, "on the whole hostile to Gundobad."

In Geneva, we are told that Clotilda became a pious Christian and she and her sister performed charitable deeds. According to Fredegarius, Sedeluba founded the Church of St Victor in the outskirts of Geneva and disappeared from the pages of history. Clotilda was also pious--she was said to have washed the feet of the poor--however, unlike her sister, Clotilda had a still larger role to play in Merovingian history.

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* While it's not impossible to imagine Clotilda shuttling between the courts of her uncles in Geneva and Lyons, as will be discussed in the future, Gregory's story of Clotilda's engagement and betrothal to Clovis implies Clotilda is at Gundobad's court (which is in Lyons), not Geneva.**

** Incidentally, I'm not even sure if "court" is the proper term for whatever you called the place from which the Burgundian (and other barbarian) kings managed their holdings.

UP NEXT: Marriage of Clovis and Clotilda

SOURCES:

Godefroid Kurth, Saint Clotilda, trans. V.M. Crawford with a preface by G. Tyrell (London: Duckworth & Co., 1898).
Avitus of Vienne, Shanzer and Wood.
Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks.
James, The Origins of France.
Fredegarius, Chronicle of Fredegar.