Clovis I (b. 466 - d. 511), Merovingian founder of the Frankish kingdom that dominated much of western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Clovis was the son, and probably the only son, of Childeric I, king of the Salian Franks of Tournai. To judge from the remains of Childeric's burial at Tournai, he seems to have been a federate chieftain of some standing and certainly a pagan. Under the same pagan gods, his son Clovis, who succeeded him in 481, advanced south to conquer northern Gaul. There survives a letter to him written by Bishop Remigius (Rémi) of Reims, congratulating him on taking over the administration of Belgica Secunda and advising him to listen to the bishops.

At Soissons, in 486, Clovis defeated Syagrius, the last Roman ruler in Gaul. This opened to him the whole area of the Somme and the Seine and in particular brought him the extensive properties of the Roman treasury in that area. Clovis appears to have met with some resistance from the cities, and Franks not of his following seem to have been slow in coming to his aid. But he established his power at least as far south as Paris between the years 487 and 494. The Armoricans of western Gaul and the Germanic peoples of the Rhineland offered more serious opposition; and at the Loire he made contact with the Visigoths, protégés of Theodoric, the formidable ruler of Ostrogothic Italy.

A famous story told of him by Gregory best illustrates his qualities. A splendid vase was seized by Clovis' followers from a church (perhaps Reims), and the bishop begged for its return. At the next division of booty, which took place at Soissons, the king asked for the vase in addition to his agreed share of booty. One Frank objected and smashed the vase with his axe. The king restored it, broken as it was, to the bishop and said nothing. But a year later, at a military assembly, he recognised the offending warrior and took occasion to rebuke him for his ill-kept weapons, flinging his axe to the ground. As the man bent to pick it up, the king split his skull with his own axe, remarking, "Thus you treated the vase at Soissons." Gregory entirely approved: the church was avenged and so was the king; and the rest of Clovis' following was terrified. But Clovis was also pious and credulous, as befitted a warrior whose gods had brought him great success. Though master of a Roman province effectively controlled by dynasties of able Gallo-Roman bishops, he showed no disposition to seek conversion until after his marriage to a Catholic princess, the Burgundian Clotilda (later St. Clotilda), in about 493.

Three years later he undertook a campaign against the Alamanni of the middle Rhine, and at Zülpich (Tolbiac) his forces faced defeat. Only at this point did he think of invoking the help of his wife's god; and defeat was turned to victory. Even then a period of some two years elapsed before the combined efforts of Clotilda and Bishop Remigius (later St. Remigius of Reims) persuaded him to seek baptism. This took place at Reims, after a visit to Tours and due consultation with his warriors, several of whom were baptised with him. The Frankish settlers of the countryside remained pagan, and their conversion was a slow and spasmodic business. Their grave-site goods were to betray a rustic paganism at least until the 7th century. It was to Catholicism, not to Arianism, that Clovis had turned. This may have affected his abortive intervention in the political affairs of Burgundy shortly afterward, for the Burgundians were mostly Arians. Some Burgundian detachments followed him on his subsequent campaigns, but he cannot be said to have conquered Burgundy or annexed it to Francia.

In 506 Clovis was still active in the Rhineland against both the Alamanni and the Thuringians. In 507 he finally turned against the powerful Visigoths of Gaul south of the Loire. But first he sought the patronage of St. Martin of Tours, greatest of the Gallo-Roman saints. His subsequent victory over the Arian Visigoths at Vouillé, near Poitiers, was attributed by him to that patronage. His family had acquired a spiritual patron revered by all his Gallo-Roman subjects. Though he penetrated as far south as Bordeaux and sent his son to capture the Visigoth capital of Toulouse, he did not expel the Goths from Septimania or turn southern Gaul into a settlement area for his people. He contented himself with returning to Tours, where he gave thanks to St. Martin for victory and received the insignia of an honorary consulate from the Eastern emperor, Anastasius. He abandoned the Gallo-Roman south to its own devices and established himself at Paris, a good forward post from which to control the Armoricans of the west, the Thuringians on the Rhine, and the still-troublesome Franks of the north and east. In Paris he built a church dedicated to the Apostles (later Sainte-Geneviève).

Two revealing actions belong to the last year or so of Clovis' life. The first was the summoning of a church council at Orléans, attended by 32 bishops. Its canons, which survive, reveal the extent to which the king personally concerned himself with its deliberations. The second was the promulgation of Lex Salica, the law of the Salian Franks who accepted his authority. This constitutes 65 clauses regulating the life of the countryside. Uninfluenced by Christianity, they are a political manifesto rather than a precise legal statement of how the Franks ordered their lives. What they certainly reveal is the enhanced authority of the king and his willingness to make use of Gallo-Roman skills in ruling his own barbarians.

Clovis died at the age of 45 and was buried in his Church of the Apostles. His Christian grave has never been found. Making every allowance for Gregory of Tours's intention to represent him as a second Constantine, Clovis still stands out as a barbarian of heroic stature. Starting from small beginnings, he had been accepted as ruler by the Gallo-Romans; with imperial approval he had made the first serious attack on the Arian-Gothic confederation of western Europe; he had taken for his people the momentous decision that they were ultimately to be converted to Catholicism, not Arianism; and, perhaps most difficult of all, he had made one political people of the various Frankish tribes of modern Belgium and the Rhineland. Henceforward, Frankish power was to penetrate and colonise east of the Rhine. His family was secure in an unrivalled dominance that was to last until the 8th century