The Franks emerged from the early centuries C. E. as the most powerful and influential of the Germanics. They created a medieval empire, founded in 800 C. E. and extending throughout much of western Europe—including present-day France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany west of the Elbe, Austria, Switzerland, and northern and central Italy—and they laid the political foundation for what evolved into the modern-day nations of France and Germany.
ORIGINS
Gregory of Tours, a sixth-century Frankish prelate and a bishop at Tours in present-day France, wrote in Historia Francorum, a history of the Merovingian kingdom, that the Franks originally lived in the Roman province of Pannonia (modern Hungary and surrounding areas), but the accuracy of this assertion is uncertain. Pannonia is where the confederacy of GOTHS emerged, and Franks may have wanted to identify themselves with Gothic greatness by claiming the same origins. Modern scholars believe
FRANKS
Location:
Western Europe
Time period:
Third to 10th century c. E.
Ancestry:
Germanic
Language:
Germanic
That those peoples who were known to history as the Franks were originally a loose coalition of war bands from the Rhine region, whose members were from a number of tribes, including the Amsivarii, Bructeri, Chamavi, Chattuari, Salii, Tubanti, Usipetes, and other small groups.
The Franks are first mentioned in sources after 250 c. e. and probably came to the notice of the Romans in the third century c. e. as signs of the weakening Roman grip on the Rhine border tempted war bands to try forays into imperial territory. The name Franks means “free,” or possibly “brave” or “hardy.” The tribes’ central political cohesiveness seems to have been rather less than that of the Alamanni until later, and they had a much closer relationship with Romans as well: Frankish groups settled under Roman authority west of the lower Rhine in the late third century. Franks were also sea raiders on the rich North sea coastal trade, and they possibly contributed to a disruption of this trade serious enough to become a factor in the systems crisis fueling the mass migrations of the time. Some among them are known to have traveled through Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula into North Africa in 257-258 c. e. The Salii, and other Germanic peoples living near them along the Lower Rhine, became known as the Salian (salty) Franks. Others along the middle course of the Rhine became known in the eighth century as the Ripuarian (river) Franks. Other Frankish settlements were located in the Meuse and Moselle valleys and in southern Belgium, centered in the Roman town of Tournai. Later Frankish groups settled the area around Rheims.
Early Contacts with Romans
The peoples who became known as Franks lived close to the Roman imperial border on the Rhine. Such close proximity meant they were heavily influenced by Rome, at first largely peacefully—there is no mention in sources of friction with tribes in their area until the third century. Probably they traded with Romans, because they were in the frontier zone east of the Rhine where market economies were beginning to emerge in the first and second centuries. Their elites were probably enlisted as clients of Rome through rich gifts symbolic of alliance with Rome, similar to the medals given to Native American tribal leaders by European authorities in the colonial period. Centuries later Childeric I, father of Clovis, was buried with a type of brooch worn by Roman officers, which indicates that Franks still treasured emblems of their allegiance to Rome. Many Franks probably joined the Roman military. By the mid-third century C. E., however, possibly because of Rome’s increasing state of beleaguerment due to Germanic incursions, Franks seem to have engaged in sporadic raids and uprisings. In retaliation they were brutally crushed by the Romans, their leaders thrown to wild animals in the circus.
In 358 the Romans under the emperor Julian defeated the Salian Franks, granting them more land in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as foederati (federates) status. The Ripuarian Franks soon afterward spread westward from the Rhine toward the Moselle River in present-day northeastern France. The Salians encroached on the traditional territory of the Thuringi along the lower Rhine.
This treatment pacified the Salian Franks, who remained largely loyal to Rome for more than a century. Indeed, the Franks’ sense of their own Frankish identity, as opposed to their tribal identities as Bructeri, Chamavi, Salii, or the like, became closely intertwined with their sense of being staunch defenders of Rome.
Many Franks served as generals in the Roman army. During the fourth century Frankish commanders dominated leadership of the Roman army of the West, becoming increasingly independent of imperial authority and engaging in the game that was being played by Roman generals throughout the West of involving themselves in politics, either by making and breaking emperors or in declaring themselves emperor. One such was Claudius Silvanus, overall commander in Gaul in the mid-fourth century, who after declaring himself emperor was murdered by his own troops in 356. Some commanders even served as Roman consuls and had close relationships with members of the Romano-Gallic senatorial aristocracy. A young rhetorician in the imperial capital in Milan, the future Saint Augustine, wrote the official oration of congratulation and praise on the consulship of one Bauto, a pagan Frank from across the Rhine. In 406 the Franks, as allies of the Romans, battled the incursions of other Germanic peoples, such as the Vandals, into Gaul. On the other hand the Salian chieftain, Chlodio, led uprisings against Rome in 428 and in the 450s, all of which were crushed. It illustrates how fragmented the Franks were at this time that in 451 other Frankish warriors from among the Salians and Ripuarians helped the Romans battle the Huns, while some Ripuarians supported Hunnic forces. With Roman power in Gaul weakening in the ensuing years the Franks expanded southward into Gaul and attacked Gallo-Roman settlements.
During the fifth century the “tribal swarm” of Franks (as they have been called) became dominated by one lineage of leaders from among the Salians, related to Chlodio, whose son may have been that Merovich whose name would be given to the Merovingian dynasty The dominant leader of this kindred group was Childeric I, the last Frankish commander who fully considered himself an “imperial German” in the service of Rome. He fought under Roman command against the Visigoths in 463 and 469.
By this time “Roman” authority in Gaul chiefly consisted of the power wielded by a variety of army commanders, both Germanic and Roman. In 461 the Roman general Aegidius, under whom Childeric had fought the Visigoths, severed relations with imperial authorities in Rome, who were in increasing disarray, because he opposed the current administration; henceforth he relied solely on his army to maintain his authority. His son, Syagrius, assumed his position on his death; Gregory of Tours later reported that Syagrius had been elected rex Romanorum, “king of the Romans,” in no sense a Roman office, but rather a Germanic understanding of what a powerful Roman general was. Childeric, too, had some kind of a disagreement, the details of which are not known, and withdrew from Gaul to Frankish territory. The royal splendor of his tomb, which contained a signet ring with the inscription Childirici regis “of King Childeric,” shows he had suffered no loss of power, and
Clovis I: Unifier of the Pranks
Clovis (or Chlodwig), born in about 466 C. E., was the first Frankish ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. His father, Childeric I, was king of the Salian Franks and fought under Roman command against the Visigoths. To the Romans, as attested in a letter to him from the Gallo-Roman bishop of Rheims, Clovis was administrator of the military sector called Belgica Secunda. The bishop of Rheims advised him to maintain the ways of his forefathers, remain pure and honest, and always honor his bishops. He did this as long as it was politically sound to do so. When in 485 the death of the powerfulVisigothic king Euric created a power vacuum in Gaul, Clovis made his move to expand his power.
Clovis defeated Syagrius of northern Gaul (the last Roman governor of Gaul) and conquered the Alamanni. According to legend while in battle against the Alamanni he had a spiritual revelation and was assisted in battle by the Christian God. His pious Christian wife, Clotilda, niece of Gundobad of the Burgundii, supposedly helped direct him toward Christianity. At some point during this time on Christmas Day of the year 496,497, or possibly even 506, Clovis was baptized as a Roman Catholic along with some 3,000 of his soldiers. His decision to be baptized was almost certainly strongly influenced by his pending showdown with the Visigoths; on becoming Roman Catholic rather than Arian Christian as were the Visigoths, he won the immediate support of Roman bishops in the Visigoths’ territory, an invaluable political advantage. By 507 he had defeated the Visigoths, killing Alaric II.
Clovis’s kingdom was the basis of the state that evolved into the French monarchy. On his death in 511 his empire was divided among his four sons, Theodoric I, Clodomir, Childebert I, and Clotaire I.
This is a 16th-century representation of Clovis I, king of the Franks. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ6i-1435])
Some historians have argued that he received direct subsidies from the Byzantines in Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The difference between the nature of Childeric’s political power and that of Aegidius, therefore, was not great, and Roman society was becoming increasingly indistinguishable from Germanic society Childeric maintained friendly relations with the Visigoths—his sister was married to one of their kings—with Aegidius and Syagrius and, although he was pagan, with Gallo-Roman bishops.
In 482 Childeric’s son, Clovis I (see sidebar), succeeded him as leader of the Salian Franks and maintained his father’s policy of supporting the remains of Roman authority in Gaul until the death of the powerful Visigothic king Euric two years later. Clovis’s first step on the way to challenging the Visigoths occurred in 486, when he defeated Syagrius near his stronghold of Soissons; later he murdered him while he was in captivity This feat can be described as replacing a Germanized Roman rex by a Romanized barbarian one. Clovis took over the whole governing apparatus of the kingdom of Soissons, including what remained of the Roman provincial bureaucracy there. The Gallo-Roman senatorial aristocracy seems to have accepted his takeover as legitimate.
Clovis established as his domain most of northern Gaul, along the way subduing other power blocs held by Celtic and Germanic leaders in a series of wars whose details are not known with certainty He may have fought Burgundii, Thuringi, and various tribes of Gauls. In 496 or 497 Clovis defeated the Alamanni at Tolbiacum (modern Zulpich, Germany), attaching their kingdom to his own. About this time Clovis converted to Christianity.
In 507 Clovis established his court at Paris. That same year he defeated the Visigoths at Vouille, northwest of present-day Poitiers. Before his death he united the Salian and Ripuarian factions and founded the Merovingian (from the sea) dynasty. His kingdom eventually included most of Gaul north to south from the North Sea to the Pyrenees and east to west from the Atlantic Ocean to the Main River. upon his death his kingdom was divided among his four sons.
The Expanding Merovingian Empire
The Merovingian dynasty took its name from a Frankish leader called Merovich (sometimes Latinized as Meroveus or Merovius), who may have been an important leader in the mid-fifth
Charlemagne: "King Father of Europe"
Charlemagne (or Carolus Magnus in Latin, which translates as Charles the Great) built a powerful European kingdom. He was born in 742 C. E., the eldest son of Pepin III the Short and grandson of Charles Martel. As a child, along with his brother Carloman, he accompanied his father not only on battlefields but also in political and religious events that prepared him as eventual heir to the throne. On Pepin’s death in 768, his kingdom was divided between his two sons. When Carloman died in 771, Charlemagne became king of all the Franks and, after assuring the pope of continued support, began a campaign of conquest that created the Frankish Empire, uniting much of western and central Europe under one sovereign. Soon thereafter he was anointed emperor of the West, a position that evolved to Holy Roman Emperor.
Charlemagne was more than a brilliant political leader and strategist. He was a reformist who built on the existing system of seignorialism, in which kings gave tracts of land to nobles in exchange for support. He also appointed counts (the head of a district called a county) and margraves (the count of a border province).To gain the support of tribal leaders, he granted lands known as fiefs. He codified and compiled tribal laws and integrated them in his legislative system. He standardized weights and measures and circulated the denarius, the first silver coin since the late Roman Empire (which featured his portrait). He established religious schools and libraries and encouraged the development of a handwriting style known as Carolingian minuscule, from which the modern printed alphabet evolved. Cultural developments during his reign are known as the Carologinian Renaissance. A poet of his court dubbed him rex pater Europae, “king father of Europe.” He in fact became the ideal of a Christian monarch for centuries.
After Charlemagne’s death his son, Louis I the Pious, succeeded him. Frankish territories were eventually divided up among Charlemage’s grandsons, Charles II, Lothair I, and Louis II.
Century, or alternatively a legendary, possibly semidivine tribal ancestor. In 531 Chlotar I, one son of Clovis, defeated the Thuringi at the Battle of Scheidungen and married their princess, Radegunda. The Franks and the SAXONS divided the Thuringian homeland. In 534 Chlotar gained control of the kingdom of the Burgundii.
The practice of partitioning and repartitioning Frankish kingdoms among surviving sons, which hindered efforts at unification, led to shifting boundaries of kingdoms, duchies, and counties. Under the Merovingians the main kingdoms were Neustria in the west, Austrasia in the east, and Burgundy in the south (see Burgundians); warfare among the kingdoms was common. Chlotar II again established rule over all the Frankish holdings in 613. Upon his death, however, the empire was again fragmented.
Dagobert I was the most powerful and successful Merovingian monarch. Succeeding to the throne of Austrasia, he was able to annex both the regions of Bourgogne and Acquitaine during his short reign. Devoutly religious, he had the Saint Denis Basilica in Paris built.
The Franks utilized what was known as the office of major domus, mayor of the palace, in their kingdoms. In Austrasia one family, the Carolingians, whose name is taken from the most powerful of them, the eighth - and ninth-century Emperor Charlemagne, filled the position for more than a century and in many cases were more powerful than the kings. In 687 Pepin II defeated the armies of Neustria and Burgundy, setting himself up as the major domus of a united Frankish kingdom.
Pepin’s illegitimate son, Charles Martel, whose surname, meaning “the hammer,” referred to his military success, further extended Carologinian power with campaigns against Chilperic II of Neustria, whom he later propped up to legitimize his own hold on power. Because of repeated incursions by the Moors northward from the Iberian Peninsula Charles Martel mobilized an army. In 732 he defeated the Moors in a battle at a location between Poitiers and Tours, ending the Moorish threat to lands north of the Pyrenees. He also campaigned in Burgundy and against the Frisians and Saxons. In 751 his son, Pepin III (Pepin the Short), deposed Childeric III, the last of the Merovingians. He also campaigned against the Lombards on behalf of Pope Zacharias and Pope Stephen II.
The anointing of Pepin legitimized the monarchy of an elected king rather than one by descent.
During the reign from 768 to 814 of Charlemagne (see sidebar), the son of Pepin III, the Frankish Empire reached its greatest extent. As had his father, Charlemagne sought legitimacy from the papacy; in 773-774 he defeated the Lombards, who were attempting to annex papal lands. With the blessing of Pope Adrian I he assumed the iron crown of the Lombard kings of Italy. In 778 he invaded Muslim Spain, eventually capturing Barcelona from the Moors and establishing control over territory beyond the Pyrenees.
From 772 until 804 Charlemagne waged brutal campaigns against the Saxons of Saxony, again with the church’s blessing because the Saxons were pagans. His actions against the Saxons took the form of forced conversions, wholesale massacres, and transportation of thousands of Saxons to the interior of the Frankish kingdom. Charlemagne effectively crushed the Avars, who controlled much of central Europe at the time, from the Elbe to the Dnieper. He destroyed the “Avar Ring”—their military fortifications—in 791 and defeated their armies in 805. He also defeated various Slavic peoples, including the Carantanians and Slovenes. To protect the borders of the conquered territory, Charlemagne established marks, or marches, frontier borders defended by Frankish armies.
In the meantime Charlemagne involved himself in Roman church politics, traveling to Rome in 800 to aid the beleaguered Pope Leo III. This time he used his political rather than military strength to insist that Leo be given a trial in court in which to answer charges of misconduct made by his enemies. After Leo was cleared of wrongdoing, he crowned Charlemagne emperor on Christmas Day, 800. This event was later claimed as the birth of the Holy Roman Empire, a political concept that, assuming different forms over time, continued to have at least a notional reality for more than a thousand years. Recognition of the Western Roman Empire’s legitimacy by the Byzantines was long in coming. Only through a combination of force and diplomacy was Charlemagne able to persuade Michael I, the Byzantine emperor, to acknowledge him as emperor of the West in 812. Pope Leo’s successor, Stephen IV crowned Charlemagne’s son, Louis I, thus establishing the papal claim to the right to consecrate the emperor.
Charlemagne’s ambition was to create a rebirth of Roman civilization, and he threw his energies into making his court at Aachen a center of culture and learning. In this endeavor he enlisted the aid of the Anglo-Saxon cleric and scholar Alcuin, who had been educated by a disciple of the venerable Bede. The curriculum developed at Aachen formed the basis of education for medieval western Europe for centuries.
Charlemagne’s empire stretched from an area in northern Spain, over the Pyrenees and almost all of present-day France (excluding Brittany, which was never conquered by the Franks) eastward to most of present-day Germany, including northern Italy and today’s Austria. Later in the Middle Ages it furnished the ideal from which European monarchs derived inspiration; it developed a semimythical aura, and writers modeled King Arthur’s court on Charlemagne’s. The modern concept of a unified Europe owes much more to Charlemagne’s empire than to the Roman Empire—unsurprisingly, since for the first time in history, under Charlemagne, the political, economic, and cultural center of Europe had decisively shifted north of the Alps, with the Mediterranean world forever having lost its primacy.
The empire remained united under Charlemagne’s son, Louis, but on his death was divided among his three sons under the Treaty of Verdun of 843 into regions that prefigured modern-day Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy Louis II received the eastern portion (later Germany); Charles II became king of the western portion (later France); Lothair I received the central portion (Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and most of Italy) and retained the imperial title. The Frankish realm was reorganized again in 870 by the Treaty of Mersen.
In partitioning the realm among sons, the Carolingians followed the example of the Merovingians—indeed, it was only because Charlemagne’s brother, Carloman, retired to a monastery and soon died that Charlemagne had his chance to unify the Frankish territories. This practice was rooted in the Germanic past, in the days when the political basis of society was that unstable entity the tribe; when ethnogenesis, the formation of new tribes, was constant; when tribal leaders and the mass of free warriors engaged in a continual contest for dominance; when new leaders could emerge at any time through success in war, splitting away to form their own tribes; and when overall war leaders, elected only in times of emergency, were the exception rather than the rule. But the circumstances in the early Middle Ages—the devastating inroads on the economy of central and western Europe made by Vikings, Slavs, Magyars, and others—also kept the socioeconomy localized and gave rise to the feudal system, with much of the defense against raiders devolving on local lords. This situation made partitioning large territories into smaller kingdoms a practical necessity for centuries.
Viking Raids and the Establishment of Normandy
The last years of Charlemagne’s reign saw the beginnings of contacts with Vikings from Denmark and Norway in the forms of both trading in silver from the Abbasid Empire in present-day Iraq and raiding, from about 799. Charlemagne began construction of a fleet to counter these raiders, but his successors overlooked the threat and so were unprepared for the much larger-scale onslaught of raiding by the middle of the next century, possibly caused by the interruption of the silver trade that followed on political turmoil among the Abbasids.
By about 900 these Vikings had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the Lower Seine River and their raids had almost crippled the Frankish economy and fabric of society In 911 the Frankish king Charles III made the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte with a Norwegian named Rollo, who had emerged as a significant personality among the Vikings, ceding him the land around the mouth of the Seine and what is now the city of Rouen. From this foothold Rollo and his successors established the Duchy of Normandy and eventually were known as Normans.
CULTURE (see also Germanics) Economy
Agriculture, the basis of the economy in Frankish lands, continued to follow the late Roman model. Most land was held by a few extremely wealthy individuals; the vast majority of the population, slave or free, barely eked out a subsistence existence and were subject to famine. Overtaxation in the last years of the empire had forced abandonment of much land when farmers were unable to raise enough produce to pay taxes. There was a serious shortage of agricultural labor. At the same time Roman devices such as the mechanical harvester used in Gaul in Pliny’s time (first century c. e.) and water mills, which made farming less labor intensive, were no longer used and iron tools were extremely scarce.
Cereal production ceased to depend on wheat, dominant in Roman times, in favor of the hardier darker grains, such as barley Wine cultivation actually increased, in part because it was essential for religious ritual; moreover, the enthusiasm of the Frankish aristocracy for wine led them to revive the ancient Roman practice of diverting increasingly more land from subsistence farming to viniculture.
Government and Society Franks and Romans The Franks’ relationship with the Romans was among the earliest and closest of all Germanic groups. The nature of the takeover by the Franks of Roman Gaul illustrates the extreme oversimplification of the picture of the Roman Empire’s crumbling before barbarian hordes, for after the third century Frankish groups were invited by Romans to settle near large villa estates for the Romans’ protection. Archaeology reveals a continuity of settlement in many such cases, with a gradual disappearance of Roman elements, probably brought about as the villa economy died away. Frankish features replaced them as more and more members of formerly mobile, roving Frankish war bands were attracted to settle near the old Roman centers. By medieval times many of these settlements had evolved into villages centered around churches.
Frankish leaders especially embraced Roman culture to a great degree, moving in the highest and most cultivated of Roman circles and receiving extensive education, which allowed them to converse with ease with the likes of Bishop Ambrose of Milan and with men of letters. Their paganism did not constitute a barrier, since many in the Romano-Gallic senatorial aristocracy, nominally Christian, preserved a pagan outlook themselves.
According to historical sources the Franks had taken over much of the Rhineland, the Meuse and Moselle valleys, and large areas of Belgium by the middle of the fifth century. Little archaeological evidence of a Frankish presence by this date has been found, however. The reason may be that the Frankish “takeover” at first took place under the guise of the Roman reorganization of the border defenses, in which native militias under their own commanders were given most of the responsibility for their own areas. As Roman central authority began to wither away, such militias, in Frankish areas composed mostly of their own warrior bands or comitati, increasingly went their own way, becoming autonomous polities. The point at which their military control ceased to represent the empire and became a straightforward takeover may be indistinguishable. By the second half of the fifth century clearly Frankish cemeteries were being established, with pagan Germanic grave goods marking a break from late Roman culture. These probably indicate that newcomers from the un-Romanized Frankish homelands east of the Rhine were joining their brethren in Gaul. This process seems to have been slow, spreading out from enclaves already established.
Royal Burials The strongest archaeological evidence for the society of the Franks is derived from their royal and elite graves. The first royal Frankish grave found was also the earliest, that of Childeric, the father of Clovis, which was found at Tournai in 1653. Childeric’s tomb contained grave goods of great splendor: a treasury of gold, silver, and garnet, including a brocaded cloak sewn with 300 gold bees, and a kind of brooch worn by late Roman officers. In all it attests to Frankish dominance and power and to the continuing allure of Rome.
With Clovis’s conversion to Christianity, Frankish kings were buried in or near churches, but for centuries they and other aristocrats followed the pagan practice of burial with weapons and rich grave goods in a decidedly non-Christian manner. A six-year-old boy, for example, buried under the site of the later cathedral at Cologne, had the full panoply of a Frankish warrior in miniature. Some nobles were buried in nonecclesiastic cemeteries.
Lex Salica (Salic Law) The lex salica, or customary law of the Salian Franks, was first compiled under Clovis sometime between 508 and 511; aside from the law of the Visigoths, it was the earliest written Germanic law code. Entitled the Pactus legis Salicae, it had influence throughout the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties and continued to be important to the Holy Roman Empire. Although it had its roots in Germanic customary law, it was strongly influenced by Roman legal and political ideas. Its prologue tells that it was first decreed by four military commanders to deal with feuding among the Franks that was disrupting society. The territories these four were said to control seem to correspond with Roman military sectors; their authority to issue a law code probably derived from their status as Roman officers, not Germanic chieftains. The Salic Law code was thus thoroughly imbued with a Roman outlook. The very idea of a top-down law code made static by being written was foreign to the much more fluid Germanic concept of folkright, consisting as it did of tradition that, however ancient, was always interpreted in the present moment by councils of freemen.
Office of Major Domus The office of major domus (chief man of the hall), or mayor of the Palace, among the Franks had its roots in both their loose early organization and late adoption of kingship; it also reflected the fact that until the migration period kingship was known among Germanic peoples only in the form of the thiudans, a sacred king who was not necessarily a war or political leader. Absolute rule by a single individual, such as was wielded by Roman emperors, seems to have sat uneasily on the Germanic mind, more accustomed to councils of leaders and assemblies of free warriors. The idea that a king ruled with the assistance and support of his nobles was more natural. As a result even after Clovis welded the Franks into a united kingdom, the office of mayor continued to be powerful.
A corollary to the king’s need for supporters was that in principle at least they had the right to decide on the king’s fitness for office. Doubt is cast on the strength of this principle in practice, however, by the fact that for all of Charles Martel’s clear primacy and great successes as war leader, he was unable to attain to the kingship, and only after his son, Pepin, gained the support of the papacy was he able to depose the last Merovingian king and win the Crown. But the strong influence of powerful nobles on the monarchy, together with the ancient Germanic tradition of electing war leaders, continued after the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire in the hereditary office of elector, held by certain German princes who elected the king of Germany (who then would be crowned emperor by the pope). Until the 12th century, however, the electors simply confirmed the hereditary succession.
Charles Martel’s victory over the Moors was the debut of feudal cavalry, revolutionizing warfare in Europe. His troops probably rode Per-cherons, among the largest of horse breeds. Martel pioneered the practice of providing horses to his troops, as well as estates for their support, which they retained as long as they served him. As the system of mounted troops supplied by kings with lands for their support was adopted elsewhere in Europe in reaction to the mobility of the mounted Muslims and Magyars, and of the Vikings in their ships, the feudal system arose.
Clovis’s conversion to Christianity is shrouded in obscurity. It is not certain what religious beliefs he held beforehand. Gregory of Tours writes that previously he worshipped the Roman gods Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury; given the extent to which Franks had been Romanized, this is possibly true. He may also have worshipped Celtic gods as well as Germanic ones such as Woden or Odin; his second son was named after the god Ingvi-Frey. Clovis’s family had a sort of tutelary deity, part man, part sea beast, and part bull, who may have been conflated with the legendary founder of his line, Merovich, eponymous ancestor of the Merovingians. It is even possible that he had begun to practice Arian Christianity for political reasons.
As to his concept of Christianity, Clovis probably saw Christ in much the same terms as his Germanic ancestors saw Woden—a powerful, victory-conferring deity There is a strong parallel in the story of his conversion with that of the emperor Constantine two hundred years earlier. At a difficult juncture in his campaign against the Alamanni, he vowed to be baptized in return for victory. The baptism of a reported 3,000 of his warriors underscores the military nature of the conversion.
Furthermore, at this time profession of Christianity, whether Arian or Roman, had a strong political component. Indeed, one of the main reasons for its importance derived from its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire. By this time the office of bishop had become highly important politically. Bishops were usually drawn from among the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, and they administered what remained of the Roman public sphere (much reduced from having been starved of revenue by the wealthy senatorial class), the affairs of the civitates—the cities and their environs. By becoming Roman Catholic, Clovis gained the support of the bishops and their aristocratic Gallo-Roman constituents. His Franks, too, could now enter a closer relationship with the rest of Gallo-Roman society, which would lead in time to a true fusion of the two peoples to a degree Germanics had not experienced.
Saint Martin of Tours, whose homeland in the fourth century was Pannonia (named by Gregory of Tours as the original homeland of the Franks themselves, possibly no more than a legend), was the chief religious patron of the Franks.
Of all the Germanic peoples impinging on the Roman Empire during the early centuries C. E., trying in their different ways to come to terms with Rome—either through simple pillaging and looting or taking part in the glory and tradition of the Roman military or of Roman cul-ture—as tribes or confederacies becoming Rome’s allies—the Franks had the most enduring success in incorporating Roman values into their society without losing their own identity as Germanics. They succeeded in achieving a true fusion of Roman and Germanic elements. Furthermore, it was the Franks under Clovis and afterward who moved the western European political and cultural center of gravity for the first time in history north of the Alps.
From the partitions of the Frankish Empire emerged the kingdom of the West Franks, which became France, and the kingdom of the East Franks, which became Germany. Both France and the region of Franconia in Germany derived their name from the Franks.
Further Reading
Alessandro Barbero and Allan Cameron. Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
Matthia Becher. Charlemagne (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003).
Paul Edward Dutton, ed. Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Vancouver, Canada: Broadview, 2004). James Edward. The Franks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
Paul Fouracre. The Age of Charles Martel (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2000).
Patrick J. Geary. Patrick J. Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Peter Lasko. The Kingdom of the Franks: North-West Europe before Charlemagne (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972).
Rosamond McKitterick. The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-98 7 (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1989).
Alexander Callander Murray, ed. From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader (Vancouver, Canada: Broadview, 2000).
Pierre Riche. The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe, trans. Michael Idmir Allen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1993).
-. Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, trans.
Jo Ann McNamara (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
Malcolm Todd. Everyday Life of the Barbarians: Goths, Franks, and Vandals (New York: Fromm
International, 1988).
Ian Wood. The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-75 (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
French: nationality (people of France)
Geography
France has an area of 547,026 square miles. Belgium and Luxembourg border France to the northeast; Germany, Italy, and Switzerland lie to the east; Spain and Andorra are to the southwest. The English Channel is to the northwest, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the North Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the southeast. France’s topography includes rolling plains, uplands, and high mountains. About two-thirds of France reaches an elevation less than 820 feet above sea level. Mountains—the
FRENCH: NATIONALITY nation:
France; French Republic (Republique frangaise)
Derivation of name:
Meaning "land of the Franks" or "land of free men."
Government:
Presidential republic
Capital:
Paris
Language:
Principal language is French; Alsatian, Flemish, Breton, Basque, Catalan, and Corsican are also spoken.
Religion:
More than 80 percent of the population are Roman Catholic; Muslims make up 5 percent; 2 percent are Protestant, and about 1 percent are Jewish; 10 percent of the population claim no religious affiliation.
Earlier inhabitants:
Gauls (Celts); Romans; Bretons; Visigoths; Burgundii; Franks; Normans
Demographics:
Majority of the population are French with mixed Celtic, Latin, and Germanic ancestry; a smaller percentage are Slavic and Nordic; minorities include Jews, Basque, North and West African, Caribbean, and Indochinese.
C. E.
751
771
843
French: nationality time line
Pepin the Short becomes first Frankish king of Carolingian dynasty.
Charlemagne expands empire from Pyrenees to Elbe River.
Treaty of Verdun divides kingdom held by Louis I among his three sons, Charlemagne's grandsons.
911 Normandy is founded.
1066 Normans conquer England; duchy of Normandy is united with England.
1206 Capetian dynasty dominates Europe; Philip II rules Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, Auvergne, and Brittany.
1309-77 Avignon is seat of Papacy.
1328 Valois dynasty replaces Capetians.
1337-1453 France defeats England in Hundred Years'War.
1420 Treaty of Troyes recognizes claim by Henry V of England to French throne.
1429 Joan of Arc leads French force in relief of Orleans under siege by the English.
1461 Louis XI becomes king; Valois-Burgundian alliance collapses.
1481 Provence and Var become part of French kingdom.
1532 Brittany falls under Valois control.
1532-34 Pantagruel and Gargantua, satirical novels by Frangois Rabelais, are published.
C. 1553 Pierre de Ronsard and six other poets form group known as Pleaide (name taken from third-century b. c.e. Alexandrian group known as Pleiad), to encourage writing in French.
1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis ends war with Spain; France gains Calais and three bishoprics in Lorraine.
1572 Protestant leaders are killed in Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day.
1595 First complete edition of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne's Essais (Essays) is published three years after his death.
1598 Henry IV issues the Edict of Nantes, granting considerable freedom to French Protestants.
1618-48 Thirty Years' War involves German Protestant princes with France, Sweden, England, and Denmark against Hapsburgs and Catholic princes of Holy Roman Empire. Peace of Westphalia recognizes French acquisitions in Alsace, Artois, Picardy, Lorraine, and Roussillon.
1637 Discours de la methode by Rene Descartes is published, considered foundation of modern philosophical method.
Le Cid, play by Pierre Corneille, wins acclaim in Paris.
1648 Fronde rebellion erupts in Paris.
1658 Moliere's theater company gains patronage of duc d'Orleans.
1667 Andromaque, play by Jean Racine, is performed at Hotel de Bourgogne, rival theater company to that of Moliere.
1668-94 Satirical Fables by Jean de la Fontaine is published.
1672-78 Louis XIV attacks Netherlands.
1678 Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cleves, considered first French psychological novel, is published.
1685 Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes.
1701-14 In War of the Spanish Succession France becomes involved in dynastic struggle for throne of Spain; in 1714 Treaty of Utrecht recognizes Philip V as heir to Spanish throne.
1733-35 After War of Polish Succession France acquires provinces of Bar and Lorraine.
1734 Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques (Philosophical letters; also known as Letters Concerning the English Nation), are banned in France.
1740 Naturalist George-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon is appointed intendant (keeper) at Jardin du Roi (King's Garden) in Paris.
1747 Denis Diderot becomes editor of Encyclopedie, published in 28 volumes in 1751-72.
1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends War of Austrian Succession.
1756-63 In Seven Years' War France and England struggle for overseas empire.
1789 Storming of Bastille begins French Revolution.
Traite elementaire de chimie (Treatise on chemical elements) by chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier is published.
1792 National Convention votes to abolish monarchy and establish republic.
1793 Louis XVI is executed. Louvre opens as public museum in Paris.
1795 New constitution, which establishes two-chambered legislature, is introduced.
Bibliotheque du Roi (Royal Library) and Bibliotheque de France (Library of France) merge as Bibliotheque Nationale (National Library).
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte forms Consulate.
1804 Napoleon I declares himself emperor, establishing First Empire.
Jacques-Louis David is appointed court painter by Napoleon.
1809 Philosophie zoologique (Zoological philosophy) by naturalist Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet de Lamarck is published.
1814 Pierre Guerin becomes professor at Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris; he later teaches painting to Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault.
1815 Napoleon is defeated at Battle of Waterloo.
1830 After Revolution of 1830 new regime, July Monarchy, takes power.
Louis-Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (Fantastic Symphony) is performed in Paris.
1831 Le rouge et le noir (The Red and the Black), novel by Stendhal, is published.
1841 Writer Victor Hugo is elected to Academie frangaise.
1842 First novels of Honore de Balzac's 47-volume series, La Comedie humaine (The Human Comedy), are published.
1848 July Monarchy is overthrown; new republic is declared; Parisian workers revolt in June Days of 1848.
1852 Louis Napoleon declares himself Napoleon III.
1857 Charles-Pierre Baudelaire's book of verse, Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil), is published and is condemned for obscenity and blasphemy; Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary is also condemned.
1870-71 Prussia and France dispute over Spanish throne in Franco-Prussian War with Germany victorious; new provisional government establishes Third Republic.
1871 Commune of Paris is formed.
1873 Arthur Rimbaud's poem Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) helps define Symbolist movement.
1874-86 Eight impressionist exhibitions occur, showing works of such painters as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, and Edgar Degas.
1875 New constitution is enacted under Third Republic.
1877 Auguste Rodin exhibits his sculpture at Paris Salon.
(continues)
Pyrenees, Jura, and Vosge—mostly run along the interior borders of France. The highest point is Mont Blanc in the Alps at 15,781 feet near the Italian border. The Massif Central and Auvergne Mountains are located in the southeast-central region. The major rivers of France include the Loire, Garonne, Seine, and Rhone.
INCEPTION AS A NATION
The Franks occupied lands once the homeland of the Gauls and occupied by the Romans. In the late eighth century C. E. Charlemagne of the Franks, united “Francia,” which eventually extended from the Pyrenees in present-day northern Spain and southern France to the Elbe River in present-day Germany. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the Carolingian Empire among the sons of Louis I: Lothair I received the central kingdom, Louis II received the territory east of the Rhine, and Charles II won the western kingdom, the territory known today as modern France.
By 1206 the Capetian dynasty had expanded the French domain over Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou, Auvergne, and Brittany During the reign of Louis IX (1226-70) France secured Guyenne and Normandy and annexed Provence and Var. The Thirty Years’ War was resolved in 1648 under the Peace of Westphalia. This treaty and the Treaty of the Pyrenees with Spain granted France Alsace, Artois, Picardy, Lorraine, and Roussillon. In the Treaty of utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, France gained the eastern province of Franche-Comte. An earlier treaty confirmed acquisition of Alsace and Strasbourg.
After the French Revolution (1789-99) France’s government dealt with transitional leadership. It experienced five republics, empires (such as the consulates of Napoleon I Bonaparte and Napoleon III), and a succession of regimes, including the Bourbon family and July Monarchy. The Third Republic in 1875
1935 Popular Front is established when Communist Party allies with Socialists and Radicals.
1937-39 Films by Jean Renoir (Pierre-Auguste Renoir's son), La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion), La Bete humaine (The Human Beast), and La Regie du jeu (Rules of the Game), influence generation of filmmakers.
1937 Novelist Roger Martin Du Gard wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1939-45 During World War II Nazi Germany occupies northern France.
1946 Cannes Film Festival is founded.
1946-58 Fourth Republic is established.
1947 Novelist Andre Paul Guillaume Gide wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1951 Magazine Cahiers du cinema (Notes on the cinema) is first published, promoting auteur (author) theory of filmmaking and nouvelle vague (New Wave) in film; Frangois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and others who write for it later become successful directors.
1952 Novelist Frangois Mauriac wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1957 France joins European Economic Community (EEC), which evolves into European Community (EC).
1958 New constitution establishes Fifth Republic; Charles de Gaulle becomes president.
1960 Poet Alexis Leger (pseudonym, Saint-John Perse) wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1962 France grants independence to Algeria.
1964 Novelist Jean-Paul Sartre wins but refuses Nobel Prize in literature.
1974 Novelist Albert Camus wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1981 Socialist Frangois Mitterrand is elected president.
1985 Novelist Claude Simon wins Nobel Prize in literature.
1993 France becomes one of original 12 members of European Union (EU).
1994 Channel Tunnel between France and United Kingdom is officially opened.
Established the system of republican democracy that prevails today
CULTURAL IDENTITY
As in many cultures, but perhaps to a more marked degree than in some, the native language is a primary distinguishing feature of French cultural identity. If French culture and society in the early Middle Ages achieved the most complete fusion between Romano-Celtic and Germanic elements of any European country, the French language allowed this fusion, as its precursor, the Latin-derived lingua vulgaris, was adopted first by the Celtic Gauls after the Roman conquest of Gaul, then by the Germanic Franks, who ruled much of France after the fall of the Roman Empire. The shared language helped to create a French culture that embraced elements of three different ancient peoples, Celts, Romans, and Germanics (including the Visigoths, Burgundii, and Normans. At the same time the dominance of Paris in French culture and society caused the French spoken in the Parisian region to become dominant in France as a whole, replacing, for example, the langue d’oc, the Provengal language spoken in Provence and most of the south of France well into the Middle Ages. The importance of language to the French, both in terms of literature and learning and as a centralizing factor in French society, is underscored by the foundation in the 17 th century of LAcademie Frangaise (the French Academy) for the specific purpose of standardizing French usage.
The town-versus-country and capital-ver-sus-provinces split had been foreshadowed in Roman Gaul. The great similarity of the lingua vulgaris to the native language of the Gauls greatly facilitated its adoption, as nobles especially evolved a Gallo-Roman culture; however, it was mostly Gauls in towns and cities who spoke it, and for centuries people in the countryside retained their native language. This situation was mirrored in the early modern era as
In this 1833 painting Joan of Arc rides triumphantly through a town. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-72045])
Basques, Bretons, and Catalanians experienced increasing pressure to adopt French.
The fusion between Gallic and Roman culture was succeeded by the adoption of Gallo-Roman culture by the Franks, which took place earlier and was more complete than was the case for any other Germanic tribe. This meant both that a distinct national character—a sense of “Frenchness”—emerged earlier in France than elsewhere after the fall of the Roman Empire, and that France became more advanced politically By the reign of Charlemagne France had an empire that in scope approached that of the Romans. Charlemagne saw to it that his court became a center of learning, and scholars from all over Europe traveled there. Thus France enjoyed a sort of cultural and political head start over the rest of Europe that continued for centuries. Although Charlemagne’s empire included much of present-day Germany, he had acquired most of this territory by conquest of the still largely divided Germanic peoples there, and the cultural center of gravity of the Carolingians remained present-day France, with Paris as major city and later capital.
Even today there is a noticeable focus on Frenchness among the French. At the same time, a self-conscious preoccupation with culture in all its forms—dress, manners, and style, as well as with high art and philosophy—is a defining trait. If the French have a particular sense of style, of being au courant or chic as opposed to the gaucherie of Germans or British, it may be the result of the long centuries, from the Middle Ages to well into the 19th century, during which France was the most admired and imitated European country in terms of manners, dress, and cuisine as well as in high culture and learning.
Modern French identity—at least as seen by many French—exists amid an emphatic challenge from external “others,” the nonFrench nations, partners and enemies, against whom the French assert their distinct existence. Part of this tendency is a reaction to France’s loss of international political power in the 20th century and the shrinkage of its cultural hegemony, as English has replaced French as the most important international language.
Much of French culture is not primarily individualistic or mystic—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
This painting shows a sullen Emperor Napoleon I of France in 1814. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-n6232])
This painting from 1699 shows Louis XIV of France. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ61-182])
Notwithstanding—but rather social in nature. Some of its best expression has occurred in the midst of social groups in which ideas flow freely. This trend has been seen repeatedly throughout history—the courts of Charlemagne, Francis I, and Louis XIV; the salons of the 17th and 18th centuries; schools of thinkers such as the 18 th-century philosophes who brought forth the French Enlightenment and the existentialists and deconstructionists of the 20th century; and artistic groups such as the impressionists, cubists, and dadaists.
Further Reading
David Avrom Bell. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Ina Caro. The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France (New York: Doubleday, 1994).
Alfred Cobban. A History of Modern France, 3 vols. (London: Penguin, 1966).
FRENTANI
Location:
Abruzzia and Campania in south-central Italy
Time period:
Sixth to first century b. c.e. ancestry:
Italic or possibly Illyrian
Language:
Oscan (Italic)
FRISIANS
Location:
Northern Netherlands; northwestern Germany
Time period:
Fifth century C. E. to present
Ancestry:
Germanic
Language:
Frisian (Germanic)
Georges Duby. France in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
Pierre Goubert. The Course of French History (London: Routledge, 1991).
Stephen C. Jett. France (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004).
Colin Jones. The Cambridge Illustrated History of France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
William W. Kibler et al., eds. Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1995).
Wayne Northcutt. The Regions of France: A Reference Guide to History and Culture (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996).
Roger Price. A Concise History of France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Monique, Wagner. From Gaul to De Gaulle: An Outline of French Civilization (Oxford: Peter Lang, 1989).
World History
