Clovis

Clovis succeeded his father Childeric as a king of the Franks and, in the fifth year of his reign, defeated Syagrius, who ruled at Soissons (Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.27). Gregory of Tours tells how he married the Catholic Clotilde, vowed in battle against the Alamanni to accept her God, and was baptised by Remigius with more than three thousand of his men (Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.30–31). A letter of congratulation from Bishop Avitus of Vienne survives from the time and says the baptism took place at Christmas (Avitus, Letter 46); the year is debated (The Baptism of Clovis).

He went on to defeat and kill the Visigothic king Alaric at Vouillé, and at Tours he received from the emperor Anastasius an appointment as consul and put on the purple tunic and a diadem (Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.37–38). Gregory says that he died at Paris in the fifth year after Vouillé, aged forty-five, having reigned thirty years, and was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles which he and Clotilde had built (Gregory of Tours, Histories 2.43).