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Spotlight: Saint Clotilde, Queen of the Franks
Saint Clotilde at prayer, illumination from the 14th or 15th century.
Born a Burgundian princess in 475 A.D., Clotilde was the daughter of Chilperic II and grew up in a Nicene Catholic household at a time when many Germanic rulers were Arians. Her father was killed during dynastic struggles, and Clotilde grew up amidst political uncertainty, yet she remained deeply devoted to her faith and became known for her piety, intelligence, and determination.
Around 493 A.D., Clotilde married Clovis I, a powerful pagan ruler who was uniting the Frankish tribes in Gaul. From the beginning of their marriage, she sought to convert him to Christianity. Her efforts were patient and persistent. She had their children baptised despite Clovis’s objections, and she continually encouraged him to embrace her Christian faith. Initially, Clovis resisted, particularly after one of their baptised sons died in infancy, which he interpreted as a sign against Christianity.
The turning point came during the Battle of Tolbiac, traditionally dated around 496. Faced with defeat, Clovis purportedly prayed to the God whom Clotilde worshipped, promising to convert if granted victory. He did win, and after the battle, fulfilled his vow. He was baptised at Reims, together with thousands of his warriors.
Clovis’s conversion was a watershed moment in the history of the West. Because the Franks followed their king’s example, Clotilde’s influence directly led to the conversion of much of the Frankish people and helped establish Catholic Christianity as the faith of the emerging Frankish kingdom.
After Clovis’s death in 511, Clotilde devoted herself to prayer, charity, and the founding of churches and monasteries. Later canonised as a saint, she became a model of Christian queenship.
Clotilde’s legacy echoed down through the centuries. Her role in Clovis’s conversion linked the Frankish monarchy with the Catholic Church, a connection which hugely shaped the future of medieval France. Her influence may have only directly led to one royal conversion, but indirectly, Clotilde affected the religious and political identity of Europe for generations, earning her recognition as a pivotal figure in the story of the West.
Verse: 'If’ by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
‘If’ is one of Kipling’s most famous poems, and captures something of the spirit of Victorian Britain, which encouraged men to be virtuous, daring, and to keep a stiff upper lip in times of distress. Published in 1910, it was apparently inspired by the leader of the ill-fated Jameson Raid, which took place between the first and second Boer War.
Pensées
‘It is one of the commonest beliefs of the day that the human race collectively has before it splendid destinies of various kinds, and that the road to them is to be found in the removal of all restraints on human conduct…I do not believe it.’
— Liberty, Equality, Fraternity by James Fitzjames Stephen, c. 1873
Q: Since the British jurist J.F. Stephen wrote these words in 1873, we have succeeded in throwing off many (indeed, most) of the restraints on human conduct that were present in his time. Today, people are free to do much as they please. And yet: Has the result been entirely favourable?
Diversions
A breakdown of Dutch painter Peter Claesz’s ‘Still Life with Pie, Pewter Jug, and Berkemeyer’ (c. 1628) from the National Gallery.
From quarry to castle: How medieval stones were cut to make fabulous buildings.
Long read: ‘Why music is an essential liberal art’
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