Last modified: 2019-01-14 by ivan sache
Keywords: franks |
Links: FOTW homepage |
search |
disclaimer and copyright |
write us |
mirrors
See also:
Clovis [Chlodweg] (465-511), became King of the Salian Franks in Tournai after the death of his father Childéric I in 481. He defeated Syagrus in Soissons (486°, the Alamans (495 and/or 505 or 506), the Burgunds (506), and the Wisigoths in Vouillé (507). Clovis founded the unified Frank monarchy and became the only king of the whole Gaul. Granted the title of patricius by the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I (491-518), Clovis protected the Roman Catholic religion and called a Council in Orléans (511).
His baptism c. 496 made him the first "Barbarian" king to adopt
the Roman Catholic religion as his personal faith. The only documentation on his
baptism is St. Gregory of Tours' (538-594) Historia Francorum and the year of the event is still controversial, as well as most of the "historical" events of
Clovis' life. The mythification of Clovis was one of the ideological bases of
the absolute power of divine origin exerted by the king of France,
and the Monarchists still consider his baptism as the founding act of
France (as the "Senior Daughter of the [Roman Catholic] Church).
After Clovis' death, the Kingdom was divided among his four sons
Theuderic I I (King of Austrasia), Chlodomer (king of Orléans),
Clotaire (king of Neustria), and Childebert (king of Paris).
Ivan Sache, 22 October 2000
An heraldic legend from the 13th century claims that Clovis
used a banner charged with toads before his conversion to
Christianism. The toads were considered as pagan and devilish
animals.
During his baptism by St. Remigius in Reims on Christmas Day
496, an angel brought from the heaven a shield
semy with fleurs-de-lis, which was
immediatly adopted by the new Christian king.
The event explains the mythical, divine origin of the arms of France
and the specific protection granted by Christ, the Blessed Virgin
(whose attribute is the lily), and the Holy Trinity to the King and
the Kingdom of France.
The legend was widespread during the 14th-16th centuries. In the
17th century, it was understood that no coat of arms could not have
existed before the 12th century and the legend was rejected by
heraldists. Anyway, it remained accepted in the United Provinces and
England during the wars fought by Louis XIV as a means of
ridiculing France and its king. Louis XIV was often represented
with a banner and a coat charged with toads.
[M. Pastoureau, Les emblèmes de la France
[pst98]]
Ivan Sache, 22 October 2000
Golden bees were found in the grave of Childéric (father of Clovis) in 1653, and these are the bees adopted by Napoléon to legitimize his royal claim. Given the primitive state of iconography in the 5th-11th centuries (and the paucity of evidence that has survived), could it possibly be that the bees, toads and fleurs-de-lis are all one and the same?
It is possible that they were so stylized to begin with that their interpretation varied even in official circles. The bees from Childéric's grave were perhaps really toads and misinterpreted as bees. And perhaps those toads had in the meantime evolved into fleurs-de-lis.
A 9th-century mosaic in Rome shows the Pope presenting to Charlemagne a green gonfalon sprinkled with gold dots. I think this has usually been interpreted as a proto-typical papal banner of ancient Roman derivation, but could it possibly be that the gold dots merely recognised pre-existing Merovingian-Carolingian toads/bees/lilies?
T.F. Mills, 22 October 2000
According to M. Pastoureau, the theory linking bees and fleur-de-lis has already been proposed by earlier scholars but was finally rejected. The toads seem to be a pure invention.
Only two of the original Merovingian jewels have survived. All of them were stolen in the Royal Library in 1831 and only a few of them (including the two "bees") were found in a bag which had been thrown in the river Seine. Pastoureau shows a black-and-white drawing of the "bees", which are now "locked up" in the Cabinet des médailles et des antiquités of the National Library. The typical insect structure head-thorax-wings (or elytrons) is evident. The jewels cannot be lilies, the only flowers they could be associated with are tulips, which were not known in Western Europe in Merovingian times.
Ivan Sache, 2 November 2000
