~35 min read • Updated Mar 28, 2026
Britain Becomes England: 325–577
Under Roman rule in Britain, all classes except the land-owning peasants prospered. Large estates expanded at the expense of these peasants. In many cases, great landowners bought out free peasants, turning them into serfs or driving them into the urban proletariat. Many peasants, resentful of the landed aristocracy, supported the invading Anglo-Saxons.
From other perspectives, Roman Britain was moving toward prosperity. Cities grew in number and wealth; many houses had central heating and glass windows; wealthy citizens possessed luxurious villas. British weavers exported excellent woollen cloths for which Britain is still famous. In the third century, a few Roman legions sufficed to maintain external security and internal peace.
But in the fourth and fifth centuries, security was threatened on every front: in the north by the Picts of Caledonia; in the east and south by Norse and Saxon raiders; and in the west by the unsubdued Celts of Wales and the adventurous Gaels and Scots of Ireland. Between 364 and 367, coastal raids by Scots and Saxons intensified dramatically. British and Gallic forces repelled them, but a generation later the attacks resumed, and this time Stilicho drove them back.
In 381 and 407, the usurpers Maximus and Constantine called away British legions essential for the island’s own defense for their personal ambitions, and few of these soldiers returned alive. The invaders began attacking the frontiers. Britain appealed to Stilicho for help (400), but he was occupied driving Goths and Huns from Italy and Gaul. When they appealed again to Emperor Honorius, he replied that the Britons must defend themselves as best they could. Bede states: “In 409 the Romans were no longer rulers of Britain.”
Vortigern, leader of Britain, facing massive Pictish invasion, invited certain northern Germanic tribes to assist him. Saxons came from the Elbe region, Angles from Schleswig, and Jutes from Jutland. According to tradition (perhaps partly legendary), the Jutes arrived in 449 under the command of two brothers, Hengist and Horsa (“stallion” and “mare”). The powerful Germans drove back the Picts and Scots, received portions of land as reward, recognized Britain’s military weakness, and sent word to their countrymen.
Uninvited Germanic tribes landed on Britain’s shores. The Britons resisted with more courage than skill. For a century the Germans advanced and retreated in irregular warfare. Finally, in 577, the Teutons defeated the Britons at Deorham and made themselves masters of the land that later became England (the land of the Angles).
Most Britons thereafter accepted the conquerors’ victory and intermingled their blood with them. A stubborn minority retreated to the mountains of Wales and continued fighting. Others crossed the English Channel and gave their name to Brittany in France. Britain’s cities were ruined by prolonged conflict, transport was disrupted, industry declined, law and order weakened, art fell into lethargy, and the young Christian faith of the island was overwhelmed by pagan Germanic gods and customs.
Britain and its language became Teutonic. Roman laws and institutions vanished, and Roman urban organization gave way to rural communities. A Celtic element survived in English blood, physiognomy, character, literature, and art, but almost nothing remained of it in the English language, which became a bridge between German and French.
To feel the fever of those tormented days, we must turn from history to the legends of Arthur and his knights, and their mighty blows “to break the heathen and uphold Christ.” Saint Gildas, a Welsh monk, in his strange book half history and half sermon, On the Ruin of Britain (c. 546), mentions the siege of Mons Badonicus in those wars. Nennius, a later British historian (c. 796), speaks of twelve battles fought by Arthur, the last at Mount Badon near Bath. Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100–1154) narrates in charming detail the events of Arthur’s life and wars, how he succeeded his father Uther Pendragon as king of Britain, fought the invading Saxons, conquered Ireland, Iceland, Norway, and Gaul, besieged Paris in 505, drove out the Romans, suppressed the rebellion of his nephew Mordred at the cost of heavy losses, slew him at the battle of Winchester, received a mortal wound there, and died in 542. William of Malmesbury (c. 1090–1143) writes: “When Vortimer died, the power of the Britons declined severely, and had not Ambrosius, the last surviving Roman, … with the effective aid of the warrior Arthur driven back the bold barbarians, they would have been utterly destroyed. Arthur long kept the shattered country from sinking, and roused the failing spirit of his countrymen to war. Finally at Mount Badon, relying on the image of the Virgin which he had fastened to his armor, he single-handedly engaged nine hundred of the enemy and scattered them with incredible slaughter.”
We may agree on the word “incredible.” We need only be content to regard Arthur as essentially an obscure but historical figure of the sixth century, perhaps neither saint nor king. The rest of the story we may leave to Chrétien de Troyes, the eloquent Thomas Malory, and the pure-hearted Tennyson.
Ireland: 160–529
The Irish believe — and we cannot contradict them — that their “misty and fruitful isle” was inhabited a thousand years before Christ by Greeks and Scots, and that their earliest chieftains — Cúchulainn, Conchobar, and Conall — were sons of gods. The Phoenician explorer Himilco reached the island around 510 BC and described it as “populous and fertile.” Perhaps in the fifth century BC adventurers from Gaul or Britain, or both, entered the island and subdued its people, about whom we have little reliable information. The Celts apparently brought with them the Iron Age civilization of Hallstatt and a strong tribal system. This system made each individual so proud of his clan that national unity and the formation of a stable state became impossible. For a thousand years every tribe fought every other tribe, and within tribes men fought one another. Before the coming of Saint Patrick, when these pious Irishmen were slain, their bodies were buried standing, facing the enemy, ready for battle.
Most kings died in battle or at the hands of assassins. These ancient kings, perhaps for reasons of racial improvement or as representatives of gods who demanded the first fruits of everything, traditionally claimed the right to deflower every bride before handing her over to her husband. King Conchobar was praised for his particular devotion to this duty. Each tribe preserved in writing the names of its members and their genealogies, as well as the names of its kings and accounts of its wars and ancient customs “from the beginning of the world.”
The Celts established themselves as the ruling class and scattered their tribes across five kingdoms — Ulster, Northern Leinster, Southern Leinster, Munster, and Connacht. Each of these five kingdoms had its own king, but all tribes chose the city of Tara in Meath as the national capital. Every king was crowned there and, at the beginning of his reign, convened the Feis or “Assembly of the Nobles of All Ireland” to enact laws binding throughout the royal domains, correct tribal genealogies, and record everything in the national archives. To house this assembly, King Cormac mac Airt built in the third century a great hall whose foundations still stand. A provincial council (Oenach or Aenach) met every year or every three years in the capital of each kingdom, legislated for that province, levied taxes, and performed the functions of a district court. After the council ended, games, public competitions, and other entertainments began: music, singing, juggling, popular shows, storytelling, poetry recitation, and numerous weddings lent special charm to the ceremonies, and large numbers of local people participated. From our distant perspective, this compromise between central government and local freedom seems almost ideal. The “Assembly of the Nobles” survived until 560 and the “provincial council” until 1168.
The first personality we can truly regard as historical is Tuathal, who ruled around 160 AD. King Niall (c. 358) raided Wales and carried off great booty, then attacked Gaul and was killed on the banks of the Loire by an Irishman. Most subsequent kings belonged to his line, known as the Ui Néill. In the fifth year of the reign of his son Laoghaire (Leary), Saint Patrick came to Ireland.
Christianity had reached Ireland a generation or two before Saint Patrick. A historical chronicle, confirmed by Bede, records for the year 431: “Palladius, having received episcopal rank from Pope Celestine, is sent here as the first bishop of the Irish Christians.” But Palladius died the same year, and the honor of converting the Irish people fell to Patrick (the patron saint of the island).
Patrick was born around 389 in the village of Bonaventa in western England, in a middle-class family. As the son of a Roman family, he was given the Roman name Patricius. He received little formal education and always apologized for his rustic speech, yet he studied and memorized the Bible with such sincerity and faith that he could quote it for almost any purpose. At sixteen he was captured by Scottish (Irish) raiders and taken to Ireland, where he spent six years herding swine. In that lonely time he was inspired to Christianity. He rose before dawn every day and went out to pray in every weather — even in rain, snow, and hail. Eventually he escaped, found passage on a ship, and was taken to Gaul or perhaps Italy. From there he made his way back to England with difficulty, rejoined his parents, and spent two or three years with them. But an inner urge called him back to Ireland — perhaps the memory of the island’s rural beauty or the guileless kindness of its people. He interpreted this feeling as a divine mission to Christianize the Irish. He studied at Lérins and Auxerre, was ordained a priest, and was formally elevated to the episcopate. When news of Palladius’s death reached Auxerre, Patrick was appointed bishop and sent to Ireland with relics of Peter and Paul (432).
There he found a learned pagan king named Laoghaire on the throne of Tara. Nevertheless, he could not convert the king to Christianity, but he obtained complete freedom for his religious propaganda. The Druids opposed him and displayed their magical powers before the people. Patrick, aided by exorcisms he had brought to repel evil spirits, confronted them. In his Confession, written in old age, Patrick speaks of the dangers he faced in his work: he was the object of twelve assassination attempts; once he and his companions were captured and imprisoned for two weeks and threatened with death, but some friends persuaded the captors to release them. In reliable traditions dozens of attractive and vivid stories of his miracles are told. Nennius says: “He gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, healed lepers, cast out evil spirits from the possessed, freed captives, raised nine persons from the dead, and wrote 365 books.” But perhaps Patrick’s character — his steadfastness in belief and passionate persistence in his task — played a greater role than his miracles in converting the Irish. He was not a gentle man and was equally ready to bestow mercy or curse, but even this proud dogmatism strengthened the people’s faith in him. He personally chose men for the priesthood, built churches, founded monasteries for monks and nuns, and stationed groups of spiritual soldiers everywhere to guard his religious conquests. He made entry into the Church’s domain seem a splendid adventure and gathered around himself brave and devoted men and women who endured every hardship to spread the message of human salvation. He did not convert all the Irish; paganism and its poetic literature still survived in some places and their effects remain to this day. But when he closed his eyes in 461, it could be said of him that he alone succeeded in changing the religion of a nation — a claim that can be made of no one else.
After Patrick, the person who did most to consolidate his victory was a woman. According to tradition, Saint Brigid was the daughter of a slave and a king. We know nothing of her life before 476, the year she entered the religious life. After overcoming countless obstacles, she founded the “Church of the Oak” (Kildare) in a district still called Kildare after this name. This church soon became a monastery for monks, a convent for nuns, and a school whose fame rivaled that of Patrick’s school at Armagh. Brigid died around 525, revered throughout the island. Even today ten thousand Irish women bear her name — Mary of the Gael. A generation later Saint Ruadhan cursed Tara. After the death of King Diarmait in 558, the ancient halls were abandoned and the kings of Ireland, still culturally pagan, accepted Christianity.
Prelude to France: The Last Days of Old Gaul 310–480
In the fourth and fifth centuries, Gaul was the most materially prosperous and spiritually progressive province of the Western Roman Empire. Its soil was fertile, its craftsmen skilled, its rivers and seas busy highways for commerce. Universities subsidized by the state flourished at Narbonne, Arles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, Marseille, Poitiers, and Trier. Under the leadership of Ausonius and Sidonius, Gaul assumed literary leadership of Europe.
Decimus Magnus Ausonius, poet and embodiment of this Silver Age of Gaul, was born around 310 in Bordeaux, son of the city’s leading physician. He received his education there and later celebrated the virtues of his teachers in six charming and graceful verse idylls, remembering their smiles and forgetting their severity. In the later tranquil years of his life he himself became a professor at the University of Bordeaux. For a generation he taught “grammar” (that is, literature as then understood) and “rhetoric” (that is, the art of oratory and philosophy), and educated the future Emperor Gratian. His affectionate description of his parents, uncles, wife, children, and pupils recalls the domestic atmosphere and life of an American university town in the nineteenth century. With warm enthusiasm he speaks of the house and fields he inherited from his father and hoped to spend his last years in. In the first years of his marriage he says to his wife: “Let us live always as we do today, and never abandon the names we gave each other in the spring of our love. … You and I must always remain young, and you must always be beautiful to me. We must never count the years of our age.” A little later they lost their first child. Years afterward, with fresh tenderness, he speaks of that child: “O my firstborn, named after myself, I shall never let you go without lamentation. Just when you had learned to utter your first childish words … we sat in mourning for your death. You lie in the same grave with your great-grandfather, in his arms.” His wife died in the early years of their happy marriage, after bearing him a daughter and a son. Ausonius was so devoted to her that he never remarried, and in old age he spoke with renewed grief of her loss and the mournful silence of the house once familiar with her hands and voice.
His poems, with their emotional delicacy, rustic imagery, pure Latin, and Virgilian fluency, won the hearts of his contemporaries. Paulinus, who later became a saint, considered his own prose equal to Cicero’s, and Symmachus found nothing in Virgil more beautiful than Ausonius’s Mosella. The poet, while at Trier with Gratian, became enamored of the beautiful scenery of that river. He describes the river as it flows through vineyards, orchards, villas, and fertile fields. Reading his poem, one momentarily feels the green banks and pleasant flow of the river. Then, departing from his usual pure style, he composes simple, repetitive verses in praise of the river’s beloved fish. This Whitman-like enthusiasm for describing relatives, teachers, pupils, and fish has no parallel even in Whitman’s own all-embracing feeling and philosophy. After thirty years of teaching grammar (literature), Ausonius could love nothing but literary emotions. His poems are continuous threads of friendship and repeated praises, but those of us who do not know such enchanting uncles or captivating teachers are rarely pleased by these panegyrics.
When Valentinian I died (375), Gratian, now emperor, summoned his old tutor and appointed him and his family to high offices. In a short time Ausonius rose through the ranks and successively became Prefect of Illyricum, Italy, Africa, and Gaul. Finally, at the age of sixty-nine, he attained the consulship. At his urging, Gratian arranged for state subsidies to educational institutions, poets and physicians, and the protection of ancient arts. Through his influence, Symmachus became Prefect of Rome and Paulinus became governor. When Paulinus became a saint, Ausonius was deeply grieved, for the Roman Empire, threatened on every side, needed such men. Ausonius himself was a Christian, but he did not take his religion very seriously. His tastes, subjects, poems, and storytelling were shamelessly drawn from pagan tradition.
This aged poet returned to Bordeaux at seventy and lived there another twenty years. Now a grandfather, he could adapt the affectionate poems of his youth to the grandfatherly tenderness appropriate to his age. To his grandson he says: “Although the school is full of the sound of the master’s rod, and the old teacher has a stern face, never be afraid of his shouts or the sound of the whip during the hours of the day. If he brandishes the rod for show, or takes up a bundle of switches … it is only for effect. Your father and mother also passed through these stages in childhood and lived long enough to be the comfort and solace of my old age.” Ausonius was fortunate enough to die before the barbarian deluge overwhelmed Gaul.
Apollinaris Sidonius in fifth-century Gallic prose held the same position that Ausonius held in fourth-century Gallic verse. He was born in 432 in Lyon, when his father was Prefect of Gaul. His grandfather had held the same office, and his mother was related to Avitus, who later became emperor in 455. His daughter married Sidonius in 452. Better conditions could hardly be imagined. His wife Papianilla’s dowry included a magnificent villa near Clermont. For several years his life consisted merely of visiting his aristocratic friends. These were cultivated and refined people who indulged slightly in gambling and sensuality, lived in their country houses, and rarely soiled their hands with politics. When the invading Goths came, these nobles could not defend their comfortable luxury. They had little interest in city life. In that period French and British aristocrats preferred the countryside to the city. In these spacious and scattered villas, some with 125 rooms, all comforts and beauties were gathered: mosaic floors, colonnaded halls, wall paintings of beautiful landscapes, marble and bronze statues, large fireplaces and baths, gardens and tennis courts, and wooded grounds where ladies and gentlemen could hunt with falcons in a dignified manner. Almost every villa had a good library stocked with classical pagan literature and some valued Christian texts. Some of Sidonius’s friends were book collectors and, no doubt, in Gaul as in Rome, the wealthy valued fine bindings more than content and were pleased with the culture derived from the beautiful covers of their books.
Sidonius describes the finer side of this elegant life — its hospitality, courtesy, cheerfulness, and moral refinement — with touches of graceful poetry and elegant prose. When Avitus went to Rome to become emperor, Sidonius accompanied him and was commissioned to compose a panegyric of welcome (456). A year later he returned to Gaul with the deposed Avitus. But in 468 he came to Rome again and, in the last stages of the empire’s decline, obtained the important office of Prefect of Rome. Living calmly amid that chaos, he described the aristocratic society of Gaul and Rome in letters that drew from the style of Pliny and Symmachus and equaled them in artificial elegance and ornament. Literature now had little to say, and what it did say was expressed with such care that nothing remained but verbal decoration. These letters, at their best, display a tolerant, good-natured understanding characteristic of a generous, cultivated gentleman who adorned French literature from the time when it had not yet become French. Sidonius brought the Roman love of light conversation to Gaul. Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, Symmachus, Macrobius, and Sidonius are linked by a direct line to Montaigne, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Renan, Sainte-Beuve, and Anatole France; almost all represent a single spirit manifested in many bodies.
To avoid misrepresenting Sidonius, we must note that he was a good Christian and a courageous bishop. In 469, contrary to expectation and desire, he was suddenly elevated from lay office to the bishopric of Clermont. In those days a bishop had to be not only a spiritual leader but also a civil administrator, and experienced, wealthy men like Ambrose and Sidonius possessed qualities more effective than theological expertise. Sidonius, who had little of this knowledge, instead of excommunicating and issuing anathemas, gave his silver plate to the poor and forgave sins with dangerous ease. From one of his letters we learn that he sometimes interrupted the prayers of his flock so they could refresh themselves with food and drink. Finally, when Euric, king of the Visigoths, decided to annex Auvergne to his domain, the reality of this pleasant life was shattered. For four years every summer the Goths besieged Clermont, the capital of Auvergne. Sidonius fought them with diplomacy and prayer but was defeated. When the city finally fell, he was captured and imprisoned near Carcassonne (475). Two years later he was freed and sent back to his bishopric. How long he lived after his release we do not know; we only know that at the age of forty-five he longed “for a holy death to be freed from the sufferings and heavy burdens of life.” He had lost faith in the Roman Empire and now placed all his hope for the preservation of civilization in the Roman Church. The Church ignored his half-pagan poems and canonized him.
The Franks: 240–511
The first mention of the Franks in history dates to 240, when Emperor Aurelian defeated them near Mainz. The Ripuarian Franks (“river-dwellers”) settled in the early fifth century on the western slopes of the Rhine. They captured Cologne (463) and made it their capital, extending their power in the Rhine valley from Aachen to Metz. Some Frankish tribes remained on the eastern bank of the river and gave their name to Franconia. The Salian Franks probably took their name from the Sala River (now the IJssel) in the Netherlands. They moved south and west from there and by about 356 occupied the region between the Meuse, the North Sea, and the Somme.
Clodius attacked Cologne in 431. Merovech (perhaps legendary) gave his name to the Merovingian dynasty. His son Childeric carried off Basina, wife of the king of Thuringia. Basina became his queen and said she had found no man wiser, stronger, or more handsome than he. The child born of their union was Clovis, who founded the kingdom of France and gave his name to eighteen kings of France.
Clovis ascended the throne in 481 at the age of fifteen. His territory was only a corner of Gaul. Other Frankish tribes ruled the Rhineland, and the Visigothic and Burgundian realms in southern Gaul had become completely independent after the fall of Rome. Northeastern Gaul, still nominally under Roman command, was defenseless. Clovis invaded it, captured cities, took their leading men prisoner, accepted ransoms for their release, sold the property he had plundered, hired soldiers with the money, bought provisions and weapons, and advanced on Soissons, defeating the “Roman” army (486). He then expanded his conquests over the next ten years, reaching Brittany and the Loire. By granting land ownership to the Gallo-Romans and respecting the faith and wealth of orthodox Christian clergy, he gained the support of the Gallo-Roman population and the Church.
In 493 he married the Christian princess Clotilda. She soon converted him to Nicene Christianity. Remigius, bishop and saint, baptized him at Reims in the presence of a carefully selected group of nobles and high clergy from all over Gaul. Clovis, who perhaps dreamed of reaching the Mediterranean, thought France was worth becoming a Christian for. The orthodox populations in Visigothic and Burgundian Gaul now looked with anger upon their Arian rulers and openly or secretly allied themselves with the young Frankish king.
Alaric II felt the wave of danger approaching and tried to turn it back with fine words. He invited Clovis to a conference. The two met at Amboise and swore to maintain lasting friendship. But on his return to Toulouse, Alaric arrested several orthodox bishops of that city on charges of conspiracy and collusion with the Franks. Clovis convened his war council and said: “The rule of the Arians over part of Gaul weighs heavily upon me. Let us, with God’s help, overcome them.” Alaric resisted his rival as best he could with a divided people, but he was defeated at Vouillé near Poitiers (507) and slain by Clovis. Saint Gregory of Tours writes: “Clovis, after spending the winter in Bordeaux and removing Alaric’s treasures from Toulouse, set out to besiege Angoulême. God granted him such favor that all the city walls collapsed before him of their own accord.” In these sentences, from the very beginning, the characteristics of medieval chroniclers appear.
Sigibert, the old king of the Ripuarian Franks, had long been Clovis’s ally. Clovis now pointed out to Sigibert’s son the advantages of his father’s death. The son killed his father. Clovis sent agents with friendly messages to kill the parricide. When the deed was done, Clovis went to Cologne and persuaded the Ripuarian chieftains to elect him their king. Gregory says: “Every day the Lord cast his enemies down before him … for he walked with an upright heart in the way of God and did what was pleasing in His sight.”
The defeated Arians easily converted to orthodox Christianity, and their clergy, on condition of omitting one letter, were allowed to retain their ecclesiastical rank. Clovis, now enriched with captives, slaves, booty, and blessings, moved his capital to Paris. Four years later, at the age of forty-five, he died in that city. Queen Clotilda, who had helped turn Gaul into France, “after her husband’s death came to Tours and spent the rest of her life there, devoting herself with great chastity and charity to the service of the church of Saint Martin.”
The Merovingian Dynasty: 511–614
Clovis divided his realm among his four sons to prevent a war of succession. With typical barbarian energy they pursued the policy of unification through conquest. Thuringia was taken in 530, Burgundy in 534, Provence in 536, and Bavaria and Swabia in 555. Clotaire I, who outlived his brothers and inherited their lands, ruled a kingdom whose boundaries were the widest France has ever seen. At his death (561) he divided the land again: Austrasia (the East), comprising the regions of Reims and Metz, went to Sigibert; Burgundy to Guntram; and Neustria (the Northwest), the region of Soissons, to Chilperic.
Clovis’s marriage made French history bisexual and mixed love with war. Sigibert sent rich gifts to Athanagild, king of the Visigoths in Spain, and asked for the hand of his daughter Brunhilda. Athanagild, who feared the Franks even when they came bearing gifts, consented, and Brunhilda became the ornament of the salons of Metz and Reims (566). Chilperic was envious, for he had only a simple wife named Audovera and a harsh concubine named Fredegund. He therefore asked Athanagild for Brunhilda’s sister. Galswintha came to Soissons and became Chilperic’s favorite because she had brought great wealth. But she was older than her sister. Chilperic soon returned to Fredegund’s arms. Galswintha offered to return to Spain, but Chilperic ordered her strangled (567). Sigibert declared war on Chilperic and defeated him, but two slaves sent by Fredegund killed Sigibert. Brunhilda was captured but escaped, and she placed her young son Childebert II on the throne and ruled in his name with power.
Chilperic has been described as “the Nero and Herod of our time” and said to be cruel, murderous, lustful, gluttonous, and avaricious. But Gregory of Tours, our only source for this description, also presents him differently. According to Gregory, we can now regard him as the Frederick II of his time. Gregory says Chilperic mocked the doctrine of “three persons in one God” and the idea of God in human form, engaged in disgraceful debates with Jews, protested against the wealth of the Church and the political activity of bishops, annulled wills made in favor of the Church, put bishoprics up for auction, and tried to remove Gregory himself from the bishopric of Tours. The poet Fortunatus, however, calls this same king a collection of virtues, a just and benevolent ruler, and the equal of Cicero in eloquence — but Fortunatus had been rewarded for his poetry by Chilperic.
Chilperic was assassinated in 584, probably by one of Brunhilda’s agents. A small son named Clotaire II survived him, and Fredegund ruled Neustria skillfully, with cunning and cruelty, in the name of men of her time. Fredegund sent a young priest to kill Brunhilda. When the priest returned unsuccessful, Fredegund ordered his hands and feet cut off — but these stories too come from Gregory. Meanwhile, the nobles of Austrasia, incited by Clotaire II, rose repeatedly against the despotic Brunhilda. The woman maintained her power as long as she could with diplomacy and assassination, but finally the nobles deposed her at the age of eighty, tortured her for three days, then tied her hair, hands, and feet to the tail of a horse and had it whipped into a gallop (614). Clotaire II became heir to all three realms, and the Frankish land was once more united.
This account of bloody events may lead us to exaggerate the barbarism that, less than a century after the refined Sidonius, had darkened Gaul. It is natural that men, in the absence of elections, should find substitutes for them. Whatever Clovis had woven for unity, his successors unraveled. The same fate later befell Charlemagne’s efforts. But whatever happened, government continued, and as a result multiplicity and inhumanity did not spread beyond the limits of the kings and did not become widespread among all the subjects of Gaul. The kings’ open despotism was limited by the power of jealous nobles. The nobles received estates as fiefs in return for administrative and military services, and on these great estates they were absolute lords. It was here that feudalism took root, which for a thousand years would war with the French monarchy. Serfdom matured, and slavery gained new life from fresh wars. Industry moved from cities to manorial estates. Cities shrank and fell under the domination of feudal lords. Trade was still active but was hindered by monetary instability, brigandage, and tolls levied by the feudal lords. Famine and plague fought the human urge to reproduce and triumphantly reduced the population.
Frankish chieftains intermarried with the remnants of the Roman-Gallo aristocracy and created the new French nobility. The aristocrats of these centuries were powerful and warlike nobles who despised literature, prided themselves on long beards and silk garments, and were almost as polygamous as the Muslims. Rarely has a ruling class of a country shown such indifference and contempt for morality. Conversion to Christianity had no effect on the members of this class. Christianity seemed to them merely an expensive institution for ruling and preserving public order, and in the “triumph of barbarism and religion,” barbarism was dominant for five centuries. Murder, patricide, fratricide, torture and mutilation, treason, adultery, and incest relieved the boredom of rule. It is said that Chilperic ordered all the bonds of Gothic Sigila to be burned with red-hot iron rods and his hands and feet severed from his body. Charibert took two sisters as concubines, one of whom was a nun. Dagobert (628–639) had three wives. Perhaps sexual excess was what caused the sterility of the Merovingian kings: of Clovis’s four sons only Clotaire had children; of Clotaire’s four sons only one had offspring. Kings married at fifteen and were worn out by thirty. Many died before the age of twenty-eight. By 614 the Merovingian dynasty had lost its vigor and was ready to fall.
In this troubled situation, education had almost disappeared. By the year 600 literacy had declined so far that reading and writing were merely a luxury reserved for the clergy. Science was almost extinct. Medicine still survived, for court physicians are mentioned in the records, but among the people magic and prayer were preferred to drugs. Saint Gregory of Tours (538–594) considered the use of medical science instead of religion in the treatment of disease a sin. When he himself fell ill he sent for a physician but, finding the treatment ineffective, dismissed him. Then he mixed some earth from the tomb of Saint Martin with water, drank it, and was completely cured. Gregory himself was the greatest prose writer of his time. His History of the Franks is a first-hand account, crude, confused, biased, superstitious, yet full of spirit, of the later Merovingian period. His Latin is corrupt but vigorous and direct. He apologizes for his grammatical errors and hopes he will not be punished for them on the Day of Resurrection. He accepts miracles and marvels with the credulity of a child or the cunning of a bishop, and says: “In our story we shall mingle the miraculous deeds of the saints with the slaughter of nations.” He strongly condemns the actions of those accused of unbelief or harming the Church, but accepts without hesitation or doubt the savagery, treacheries, and moral corruption of the Church’s own faithful sons. His cases of bias are very obvious and can easily be detected and set aside. The final effect of his writing on the mind is a kind of attractive simplicity.
Gallic literature after him is essentially religious in content and harsh in form and language, but among it there is one outstanding exception. Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530–610) was born in Italy and educated at Ravenna. At thirty-five he went to Gaul, wrote panegyrics in praise of bishops and queens, and conceived a Platonic love for Radegund, wife of Clotaire I. When that queen founded a convent, Fortunatus became her priest and chaplain, and was eventually appointed bishop of Poitiers. He composed beautiful poems in honor of the powerful and the saints, wrote twenty-nine pieces for Gregory of Tours, and produced a verse epic on the life of Saint Martin. Superior to all his works were the grand religious hymns, one of which inspired Thomas Aquinas on a similar subject but in a more excellent style, and another of which, “Vexilla Regis,” became a permanent part of Catholic liturgical prayer. He blended feeling admirably with poetic skill. In his inspiring verses one senses the existence of tenderness, devotion, and emotional delicacy amid the brutality of the Merovingian age.
Visigothic Spain: 456–711
As we have seen, the Visigoths of Gaul retook Spain from the Vandals in 420 and gave it back to Rome. But Rome could not defend it. Eighteen years later the Suebi poured down from the northwestern hills and ravaged the entire peninsula. The Visigoths under Theodoric II (456) and Euric (466) crossed the Pyrenees again, reconquered most of Spain, and this time kept the country for themselves. From that date until the coming of the Moors (711), a line of Visigothic kings ruled Spain.
This new royal dynasty built a splendid capital at Toledo and established a magnificent court. Athanagild (564–567) and Leovigild (568–586) were strong rulers who defeated Frankish invaders in the north and Byzantine forces in the south. It was Athanagild’s wealth that made his daughters queens of the Franks and sent them to their deaths. In 589 King Reccared changed his faith from Arianism to orthodox Christianity, and most of the Visigoths of Spain followed him. Perhaps he had read the history of Alaric II. The bishops now became the chief supporters of the monarchy and an important force in the kingdom. Under clerical leadership a code of laws was compiled and published (634), the most complete and at the same time the least tolerant of barbarian law codes. This code improved the administration of justice by emphasizing the testimony of witnesses and reducing the importance of character witnesses provided by the accused’s friends. It placed Romans and Visigoths on an equal footing before the law and established the principle of equality before the law. But it rejected freedom of worship, demanded orthodox Christianity from all inhabitants, and instituted a long and harsh persecution of the Jews of Spain.
Through the influence of the Church, which had preserved the Latin language in its sermons and liturgy, the Visigoths within a century of the conquest of Spain forgot their Germanic tongue and transformed the Latin of the peninsula into Spanish, a language of masculine strength and feminine beauty. Education was carried on through monastic and episcopal schools, which gave primarily ecclesiastical and to some extent classical instruction. Academies were also founded at Vaclara, Toledo, Saragossa, and Seville. Poetry was encouraged, but the theater was condemned as immoral — and indeed it was. The only name that survives from Visigothic Spanish literature is Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636). A didactic legend tells how a Spanish boy, reproached for his slowness of mind, ran away from home. When he grew tired of wandering, he sat down beside a well. Suddenly his eye fell on a deep groove in the stone lip of the well. A maiden passing by explained that the groove had been worn by the rope that raised and lowered the bucket. When Isidore heard this he
Written & researched by Dr. Shahin Siami