Ancestor Saints and More

SAINT CLOTILDE, QUEEN and Mother of Merovingian Christianity

Also spelled Clotilda, Chrodechild, or Clothilde. (b. ~ 474 d. 3 June 545, 38^th GGM)

https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/9CSQ-TR7

Christian iconography: Clotilde

Saint Clotilde was born around 474, the daughter of Chilpéric II and shared with her two brothers the kingdom of the Burgundians, from the Jura to the Durance. At the time when, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the barbarian peoples: Burgundians, Visigoths, Franks and Alemanni, competed to share Gaul. After the assassination of her parents and younger brothers by her uncle, she went into exile to Geneva, where she lived in piety. The princess youthful beauty was noticed by ambassadors of Clovis I, King of the Franks, and the latter asked her to marry him, to seal the alliance of his people with the Burgundians (around 492). Not long after her father’s death, (c. 493), she was given in marriage at about age 27 to the pagan King Clovis I.

Through her gentleness and the example of her virtuous conduct, the young queen acquired great influence over Clovis, who agreed to have their sick child baptized, (according to Gregory of Tours, the main source), even though he still died young. Clovis initially blamed it on the Christian God.

Key Role in Conversion

Over a period of fifteen years, Clotilde persistently urged her husband Clovis to convert from Frankish paganism. The turning point with King Clovis came during the Battle of Tolbiac beyond the Rhine (c. 496) against the Alemanni. The king vowed to convert if the “God of Clotilde” granted victory, which He did.

After following the catechetical teaching provided by Saint Vaast, he was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, on Christmas Day 496. During the baptism of Clovis, the Holy Chrism was miraculously brought to Saint Remi by a dove, influencing the baptism of more than three thousand nobles and Frankish soldiers. This conversion to the True Faith was hugely significant. It aligned the Franks with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of the Apostles and the Ecumenical Councils, rather than the Arian heresy common among other Germanic tribes. It helped preserve the Orthodox Faith in the West and shaped the religious future of France and much of Western Europe long before the later division between East and West.

Later Life and Legacy

Lives of the Saints – Orthodox Faith says of Clotilde:
“On the death of Clovis the queen, barely forty years old, retired to Tours, to the basilica of Saint Martin, whose veneration she also encouraged, and she spent the rest of her days in works of piety pleasing to God. Having an immense fortune, she spread her benefits over a large number of churches and monasteries. Saint Gregory of Tours writes about her: ” She was considered in those times not as a queen, but as a personal servant of God… She did not allow herself to be seduced by the power of the kingdom of her sons, nor by riches, nor by the ambition of the century, but she arrived at grace through humility”. She gave so much that when she died, she was said to have nothing left to distribute.

Cruelly struck by the loss of her eldest son Clodomir in the war against the Burgundians, she took in his three young children in Tours. When her two other sons, Clotaire and Childebert, asked her to send the orphans to Paris to raise them to the throne, she complied without suspicion, but soon after she learned with horror that they had been cruelly murdered by their uncles, only one of them having managed to take refuge in a monastery. At the same time, she also lost her daughter, who had been given in marriage to the cruel and violent king of the Visigoths, Amalaric. After King Amalaric killed their sister, he sent to her brothers the bloodied veil, causing his own death by their hands.

Fluer-De-Lys French Arms

Deprived from then on of any earthly consolation, Clotilde dedicated her entire life to the veneration of Saint Martin. When her two sons entered the war in 534, she rushed to the saint’s tomb to implore his intercession, and a storm miraculously separated the two armies, encouraging the two brothers to reconcile. Sensing her imminent end, Saint Clotilde summoned Clotaire and Childebert to her, and she exhorted them to lead a life consistent with

        Clovis receives the Fluer-de-Lys, representing the Trinity from an Angel 

Christian charity, then, having predicted to them events to come, she placed her soul in peace with God on June 3, 545, by confessing the Holy Trinity.

A model of widows and Christian sovereigns, Saint Clotilde is venerated as the founder and protector of the French monarchy. According to a legend, from the revelation of an angel, she armed Clovis for the fight with a shield decorated with three fleur-de-lis –symbol of the Holy Trinity – which became the emblem of the kings of France.”