A collection of one ...

The blog's been pretty limp for a long time - unfortunately not the kind of infrequency that keeps a reader wanting more. I follow several others like that, but even my following of other blogs has been pretty poor of late. I don't read like I used to, don't write at all, really haven't blogged either. And am not even really thinking about "maybe I'll write again" and so on.

That said ... please go visit one of those I follow! Jeff Sypeck is such a good writer, and his observations about anything he uses *his* blog to point to are worth the stopover every time. In this case, too, the way he's pointing has me fascinated AND my mind is blown. Spoiler alert: Mike Tyson is fascinated by Clovis, the Merovingians, the Franks???? I mean ... Huh. It doesn't take me back, ahem, but does provide the unexpected imaginary mindpic of Mike Tyson reading my novel (had it ever seen the light of day). Huh.

Collection

If I have learned nothing else from my regular blog rounds, it is that The Duchess of Richmond's ball is worthy of our attention this week; here, at one post from Two Nerdy History Girls, and then an excerpt from Burke at Waterloo, at Tom Williams' blog, Writing about Writing. As famous balls go, there is perhaps some irony in this piece of history taking precedence over the very last link you will see below ...

Ahem.

My fellow Reiders may be the best-informed target audience for this point in today's collection post, but anyone who clicks will get the point. Because Colin Smith's latest post has a photo at the top which keeps not-completely-failing to remind me a little of Brian Schwartz - whom I hope will not find the comparison insulting; it is not meant to be. :) This has been making my usual blog rounds double-take-stuf for a few days now, so I had to share it and spread the deja vu.

American Duchess takes a look at the question: to silk, or not to silk? In defense of faux silks - and a trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

Jeff Sypeck is taking an interesting look at the de-scholarization of our times; something I've looked at recently myself, but his post is much more specific, concrete, is SOURCED, and far more intelligent than (snarky) mine!

[I]ntentions still matter: there’s more pleasure and solace in writing and art when you believe what you’re doing is true.

When random conversations with your mother become fruitful: last week, I heard something on NPR on my way home from work, and I thought "that is NEAT, I want to blog about that" - and, of course, promptly forgot what the heck the story was. Welp, thanks to mom, we can now have our first Trek reference here in some time now. Ladies and germs, I give you: The SOLAR SAIL! (And - count 'em: three, three, THREE stories for your edification!) Which is so much like a certain DS9 episode I can't contain my geekly glee. (For those as obsessed as I - this is the one where Sisko brings on the beard AND just about the first bromantic scene between O'Brien and Bashir. "Hammock time!")

Clovis may be lying fallow at my house, but (with inevitable thanks once again to The History Blog) the Merovingians' world is alive in archaeology. Take a look at a wine-jug the like of which might have graced his table (though found in Denmark, actually). Mmm, turntable pottery! Dig it! Link comes complete with a pic of an actual archaeologist in an actual archaeologist's hat. Bonus.

The HB takes us also on a tour of preserved tattoos - an article not for the squeamish, though the only really surprising picture included is the full-frontal one at the very bottom, of a fella wearing nothing but his ink. To me, the taxonomy of tattoos - or "speaking scars" which is a pretty evocative subset of the kind - is extremely interesting. There's even one (19th century!) that looks a tad like Bettie Page. Huh!

Then There Was the Merovingian *Controversy*

I got into an argument one time with one of my early readers, when we were with our writing group and discussing my query or pitch or synopsis. In the document at hand, the name of the dynasty Clovis founded, the Merovingian, was prominent; and somehow it came out that I never use the word once in the manuscript itself (this was a draft and a half ago, and the word never has appeared in any version), and this reader was irritated. “Well, I’d be annoyed if you told me a book was about the Merovingian dynasty and you never used the word Merovingian even once in the novel! I’d feel you lied to me in the description – I would be looking for it!”

Putting the name of a dynasty still taking its position on the starting blocks – not an assured future, at the time Clovis recounts his tale in first-person – seems a difficult proposition, to me. For one, people in any given period are not prone to saying such things as “hey, we live in the Tudor Dynasty!” or “the Dark Ages” or “the Medieval period, which is going to be defined for us in just a few centuries”  and so on. I once lived in The Reagan Era, but I didn’t really discuss it in those terms at the time. Jesus never knew the word Christian.

So many of the ways we define ourselves, and especially our times, are labels applied by those outside the moment. Most of history is described in terms that didn’t exist contemporary to any given period, of course; but, as above, we just don’t live our lives by these contexts most of the time. I’ll cop to living in the twenty-first century, and having been born in The Sixties, but whatever the general-use term is going to be for the periods and places my life happens to coincide with, coined perhaps fifty or perhaps three hundred years from now, I am not privy to and can’t concern myself with.

Clovis, to be sure, was highly concerned with dynasty – and THAT word appears clearly enough in the novel. He sired four surviving princes, and spends not a little of the first act concerning himself with one son who appears sickly, and enthusiastically ensuring brothers when he marries Clotilde. In this theme, I did include much which is apocryphal.

But to put in Clovis’ mouth, “I am the Founder of the Merovingian Dynasty” is just not tenable.

Am I a liar?

Well … I’m a novelist, the whole *point* is fabrication. But another point is authenticity, and that both demands some story where facts are scarce – and forbids foolishness where character is clear. I can’t shoehorn words into a mouth ill-suited to say them, and that is important.

Too, the novel is told first person. This creates a forced perspective it isn’t possible to open up; indeed, I’d tell anyone who ever read it, The Ax and the Vase is told by an unreliable narrator. Perhaps this gives me the excuse for my own fiction; I didn’t think about it when I began writing (indeed, I tried to resist first-person for a long time), but the use of things I as author know are not history has made a good story. It both freed and limited me – I couldn’t very well sit an ancient Frankish king in front of a mirror to gaze upon and lovingly describe his handsome (or not) features, and I had no rose-colored glasses to dote long on the pretty romance with his wife … but I was also free to skip over judgment, negativity, and expectations outside the king’s perspective.

This forced me into the homophobia that kills off a major character by inches, over years.

It also freed me from the fetters of historical perspective. It gave me the unapologetic authority of the king himself, to do as we know he did, and to believe it all correct. It gave me one of the great jokes of the book, in fact. Where history provides Clovis, in his final years, a lament: “Woe am I, that I have no kinsmen” – I have a king chiding his eldest son in sarcasm, following up the plaint with “does victory tickle your scruples, boy?”

It may be I’m the sort of author who’ll tick off some readers, turning things on their heads and playing with history. Certainly (despite repeated attempts by a certain archaeologist to persuade me otherwise) I’m no historian. (This frees me from those niggling rules of the discipline.) I just want to tell a good story, even if that means including legends just because I like them. I do want to tell it correctly, but a thinly-sourced period does have its advantages – especially as I don’t read French, and therefore can say that much scholarship on my subject was unavailable to me.

I may be a cavalier, prevaricating American … but I’m also a pretty good novelist, at that.

The Thing About Salic Law

One of the little excitements people indulged for a little while before a certain little British George was born just over one year ago was the idea that a female child would become heir to the throne.  Murmers have arisen in Europe, over time, about royal inheritance along feminine lines, and many contemporary stories and essays on the topic recall Salic Law.

The lex salica laid down by Clovis between 507-511 CE is NOT the law referred to, not honestly.  For one, the original code is lost to us, the earliest translations dating over two centuries later (indeed, possibly nearly three).  For two, even the earliest transcriptions to which we can look display enough differentiation to indicate a departure from original texts, if not outright error or scholastic – or even possibly individual - interpretation.

The tenet most often invoked by the modern phrase Salic Law is that no inheritance is for a woman, and even this title is not available in its original form.  And even if it were, law is not definitive.  This is why we have the term “interpretation” so closely associated with the term “law” – fortunately or not.  The one essential understanding we can glean from what remnants DO exist of the lex salica is that a woman was barred from the inheritance of land.

In England, this issue (though, to be clear, *not* this particular law) came to a head during The Anarchy of the twelfth century, when Henry I’s daughter Maud was in hopes to reign, and found herself double-crossed by her good cousin Stephen.  This led to damned near two decades of family quarrel on the scale of civil war – and, thanks to at least one certain convenient death, the reign of Henry II.  Let this be a warning:  Don’t drink and boat.  (If you don’t get the reference, look up “White Ship.”)

It took until the fourteenth century for England and France to really get the ball rolling and come up with what many now think of when they hear “Salic Law” – when, oft-intermarried across the Channel as each royal party had been for so long, the French had to come up with a reason to keep their throne out of the hands of the English king.  And thus they barred inheritance even through the female line - a neat trick intended to rebuff Edward III, and resulting in The Hundred Years’ War.

All this is to say, the codification of traditional tribal custom as laid down by the “Barbarian” Clovis bore little to no concern over swatting crowns off of girls’ heads.  To be frank (har), the idea of a queen regnant was likely illusory to the man himself and to the rather smaller society of his time.  Kings were still elected, at least in name – and by the time Clovis’ abundance of boys came to inherit, the substantial kingdom amassed by their father was their patrimony – in essence a single domain, but subject to joint kingship … and we all know how that went for the Merovingians, over time.  (Okay - for those new readers who actually don’t:  well, it lasted nearly 300 years, but involved rather a lot of betrayal and sibling rivalry at the point of many swords.)  Kings were also bound to their thrones by military success and the charisma of the blood.  A Frankish woman might indeed have charisma, and to spare (and, at that, one or two have been said to have wielded a blade, at least for legendary purposes) – but none has been recorded as a war leader, and even Clovis’ niece, who became queen regnant over the Ostrogoths, did not do so in Gaul, and didn’t do so with what could be called the overwhelming support of the male nobility surrounding her.  She was murdered in her bath in 535.

So, so much for even the idea of a woman as king – and yet, still, Clovis’ law was not laid down to make sure no occupant of the throne ever had matching chromosomes.  For that to come about, the code disappeared, morphed, and waited 80% of a millennium, for the occupants on either side of the Channel to get good and intermingled – and nicely paranoid about each other and the very inextricability of their links.

It is (not) a funny thing about humanity, that where we forge the tightest bonds, we also foster the greatest of our fears.  The major problem with power, and money (if we consider these different things; and I for one must, to remain sane), is that in gaining them pretty much everyone so “blessed” spends all their time concerned with losing them again.  And those who can use the law to defend themselves, if not as flat-out offense against even those who may or may not even wish to make incursions against them.

I wonder whether anyone reading might recognize *that* scenario.

Author's Notes - This Is the End

The final entries in the gloss:  starting points, sites of conquest, and money money money money.



TOXANDRIA
The realm of Childeric I, foederatus and King of the Franks (childerici regis).  Located within the area referred to by Rome as belgica, modern Belgium, it was ceded to the Franks by the Roman emperor Julian in 358 CE

Childeric held Arras, Boulougne (Bononia), and Tournai, the city representing here Clovis’ first capital.  The domain was not the backwater I have presented it as being; Childeric appears to have been extremely wealthy and perhaps not only in thanks to his position as an ally of the Empire.  Trade and travel throve here, and the art and fine craftsmanship of both Roman and Frankish entrepreneurs were all to be found within the area.


VINDINIUM
The city now known as Le Mans, mentioned by Gregory of Tours as having been ruled by Rigomer.  It did indeed have an amphitheater, which is still visible today; but the thermae, or baths, were demolished in the Imperial Crisis of the third century CE.  The city’s walls may be among the most complete surviving Gallo-Roman town fortifications.


VOUILLE'
The Battle of Vouille’, 507, was one of the greatest gains of actual territory in Clovis’ career, after Soissons.  With this fight, he subdued the Visigoths and likely completed an estrangement from Theodoric and the Ostragoths, and amassed Aquitainia and the major southern expanses of the sum of his consolidated territories, roughing out the outlines of what eventually we came to know as France.


WERGILD
Reparation money exacted for the murder of a member of one’s community:  the literal cost of taking someone’s life, or irrevocably compromising it.  Wergild might also be assigned for crimes other than murder, as in the rape of Tetrada, or for the death of livestock or catastrophic loss of property.  Interestingly, the wergild for a woman of childbearing age was extremely high; though women might not have held a position the modern mind would think of as powerful, their value to a community was undeniable, and their treatment was not strictly that of chattel.

The system of wergild valuation was formalized, and laws in existence at the time, as well as the lex salica set down in the final year of Clovis’ life and reign, address specific situations/personages in some detail.  The concept originally saved those in government—and many families—from having to deal with the alternative of blood-for-blood, thereby acting to control feuds and civil strife.  Where we might find the literal pricing of a person’s value … “barbaric” … the function of these laws was actually meant to reduce violence and provide deterrent to crime.  The hierarchy of wergild values provides an anthropological window into the society as a whole, and once again underscores the ultimate values in the Frankish system:  freedom and family.

Tetrada’s wergild would be thrice that of a male under twelve or over forty, or anyone else not a soldier in his prime.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Collection

In a stunning turn of events, I found two history/archaeology links *not* via the History Blog.

First, Mojourner sent me a look into a Merovingian grave.  Ahh, I do love a good grave good.

Next, courtesy of a link at Gary Corby's blog, we have ... a cup from which Periclese himself may have quaffed?

Two Nerdy History Girls look at western/caucasian haircare of the early nineteenth century.  Makes me think about the No 'Poo movement.  (Yes.  I see the joke in those last three words.  Settle down, kids.)

And finally Tom Williams has some interesting observations about his audience's thoughts on sex in his novels.

Edited to add:  The History Blog did catch up to Mojourner today!

Author's Notes

As we near the end of the Author's Notes series, it's interesting to observe how the glossary sort of fell out in an order that lent itself to this format in terms of theme and content.  Today's subjects:  places, places, and more places!



THURINGIA
One of the territories known to have been gained by Clovis, but not always firmly under his control, Thuringia was the font of allies and family for the king.  It was his close relation to the people of this region which both justified his claim upon it, and horrified because of the manner of his staking that claim.  Basina, Clovis’ mother, was a Thuringian queen before she scandalized the Franks by leaving her husband Bisinus (who had provided refuge for the exiled Frankish king) to marry Childeric.  Thuringian land occupied the eastern borders of those domains making up a part of Clovis’ story, situated north of Odovakar’s realm.



TOLBIAC
The Battle of Tolbiac, 496—site of Clovis’ conversion (most widely reported/accepted date).  Called Zulpich in many sources.  The “place-name problem” often prevalent for a British writer was a lesser issue for European/Roman geography in Late Antiquity.  For no reason better than accessibility for the unfamiliar reader, I’ve chosen Latinized forms of both personal and place names almost universally.


TONGEREN
Tongeren is one of the oldest cities in Belgium, predating even the advent of Julius Caesar.  The city was a Roman administrative center, and housed one of the first Catholic dioceses in the area, but was likely sacked in 451 by the Huns.  Chararic’s placement at Tongeren is a fiction, but the area is a likely one for someone associated with Clovis as early as the victory at Soissons, and places him in proximity with the smaller world of Clovis’ Belgic origins, as well as in a believable kin-geography.


TOURNAI
Clovis’ first capital, and the main of three cities held by Childeric in the province of belgica secunda, Tournai is also one of the oldest towns in Belgium.  Tournai lay east and slightly south of Bononia, with Arras between the two, farther to the south.  Tournai was and is situated on the Scheldt river, a conduit for trade and sustenance dating at least to the Roman period.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today, a look at princes and non-primogenitive inheritance.


SUCCESSION
Much has been made, over the centuries, of Salic Law, not least Title LIX, Concerning Private Property, which addressed the prohibition of feminine inheritance:  of Salic land no portion of the inheritance shall come to a woman: but the whole inheritance of the land shall come to the male sex.  Looming far larger at the time of the Merovingian dynasty, however, was the division of inheritance—a habit, at the royal level, which led to the perceived degeneration of Clovis’ descendants and their power.

Clovis’ decision to divide his kingdom in the manner of a patrimony, rather than to enact the now-familiar practice of primogeniture, has fascinated and frustrated historians and scholars for generations.  However, at the time, such an action was commonplace and unexceptional—and, of course, led to the notorious wars and factions so much a part of the dynastic history of the time.  The problem is another more applied by modern perspective than one which would have been recognized at the time.  As the sun comes up in the east, so the tradition was the tradition, and if it contained inconveniences, and even the seeds of strife, that was not the matter for a father (nor even a king) to presume to rectify.  Primogeniture was not merely foreign, it would have been inconceivable, in the sense of not occurring to those with estates.  If it obviously became conceivable to those inheriting, then the actions were as they were, and were as much accepted consequences as the tradition itself was accepted.


THEODORIC
454-526; King of the Ostrogoths (488-526), ruler of Italy (493-526), and regent of the Visigoths (511-526).  The name means king of the people (theud), and may be tied to a form of rulership referred to in ancient Germanic nations as Thiudans, a spiritual level of authority in contrast with reiks, the military or blood ruler.  This name, of course, unites those aspects.
Theodoric made much of his (possibly fictional) descent from the venerated Amal line, and varied his approach to Clovis and others with their value or threat to his position.  His queen, Audofleda, was Clovis’ sister; though the alliance forged by this marriage was not made of stern stuff.  Theodoric and Clovis, though they never warred directly, remained wary and at times antagonistic regardless of the relation.


THEUDERIC
484-533/534(?); inherited Austrasia, Rheims, and Metz.  First son of Clovis, whose mother was unrecorded but seems likely to have been a concubine/friedelehe.  Little is recorded of him before his father’s death, and there is no indication whatever that he was in any way  unhealthy.  His “palsy” in this story serves both as story arc for his character and also as the physical manifestation of unspoken conflict between Clovis and himself.  Much of what I have created for Theuderic’s character is utter fiction.
Early in his own reign, Theuderic sent his son Theudebert to battle the Scandinavian King Chlochilaich (better known, from the poem Beowulf, as Hygelac) who had invaded his realm. Theudebert defeated and killed Chlochilaich.  See the note on Theodoric for etymology of the name.    (Variations:  Thierry, Deitrich)



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today's edition will cover everything from Romanization to the archaic name Romans used to designate the Franks:


ROMANIZATION
Though there are historians and students whose misgivings regarding the Franks’ Romanitas may validly put it in question, the overwhelming slant of early sources and commentary on Clovis and his world in general indicates a high level of Roman assimilation among the Franks generally, especially at the level of government and nobility.  Of all the barbarian peoples, the Franks appear to have been singular in both their approach to Rome itself, but in their assimilation of culture, belief, social structure—and the preservation of their own extremely-difficult-to-define, from a modern perspective, identity (*).  There is reason to wonder  why Clotilde is said to have converted Clovis from Roman gods, but source material displays a strong identification of the Frankish people with the Roman—and Greek—culture, even in the absence of overall conformist points of reference, law, and hierarchy.  This is to say, the Franks appear to have appropriated Roman history and culture, recognizing it as prestigious, but maintained at the same time a strong cohesion at the same time.  Thus, Clovis was a “long-haired king”, a Frank, an independent entity capable of destroying Rome in the person of Syagrius—and also fully capable of recognizing that power might be had in Roman forms, and that, for instance, Catholics represented a strong force with which it was worthwhile to align himself.  His inheritance of Roman administrative and cultural structures was no more antithetical to his identity than his adoption of the Christian faith was entirely a betrayal of it.  The Franks being a pragmatic people, and Clovis a pragmatic king, the nonconformity he and they displayed among peer tribes and kingdoms in the barbarian world of Late Antiquity was a matter of decision and practicality as much as it was the manifestation of faith, religious manifest destiny, or advantage-making.
(*This may also illuminate the question of Clovis’ conversion to Catholic, rather than Arian, Christianity; see notes on Catholicism and Arianism for further discussion.)


SERVI
The Latin term for a servant bound to the land—to an estate, specifically—these were not slaves, but not fully free in the Frankish sense either.  Forerunner of the term serfs, which would become so familiar in later medieval times.  This term exists minimally in this work, as a hat-tip to medievalism and a necessary allusion to Romanization as well as societal stratification—but it is kept fairly unobtrusive as well, in light of the preconceptions attached to both the Roman and medieval associations.


SIBLINGS
Clovis is known to have had two siblings other than Audofleda – another like-named sister, Abdofled/Abofled, the youngest, and Lanthechild, who along with the other siblings is largely known for having converted from Arian to Catholic Christianity with Clovis.  There was, in a previous draft of this work, a storyline for Lanthechild.  However, in the interest of avoiding confusion, the character was entirely excised during the most extensive revision.  Abdofled does not appear in all sources, and was never included in any draft, for reasons which may be obvious.  I have wondered whether the vagaries of spelling simply created this sibling in duplication of the clearly-historical sister, Audofleda, but will confess to having put no research into this question.


SICAMBRIAN
This term appears most prominently in the legend of the baptism of Clovis, by some depicted as having occured concurrent with his conversion.  The name refers to the Romans’ poetic designation for the Franks.  It is derived from the name of the tribe Sicambri, a tribe first appearing in Roman histories just before the last half of the first century BCE.  The Sicambri were said to live at the mouth of the Rhine at that time, and Clovis’ Salian Franks would have been considered their descendants.  To use archaic names for tribes was a Latin poetic convention; thus Bishop Remigius’ reference to Clovis as “O Sicambrian” at the iconic moment of his baptism.  Other references to Franks as Sicambrians can be found in the panegyrics of the time.  Because it seems unlikely, outside such contexts as the rarefied rules of Roman literary usage, that the Franks would have referred to themselves by this name, I’ve maintained the famous line from Remigius, but eschewed this usage anywhere else.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today will be brief and miscellaneous.  Stay tuned tomorrow, for a look at ROMANIZATION!



RICCHAR
Not noted by sources as a king, Ricchar was brother to Ragnachar, and little discussed except as one of many minor rulers whose domains were usurped during Clovis’ career.  He is variously described as having been killed with Ragnachar at Cambrai, or with their other brother, Rigomer, at Vindinium, during Clovis’ unification of Frankish territories.


RIGOMER
Like Ricchar, a brother of Ragnachar and not noted as a king; likewise little discussed by sources.  However, Rigomer is noted in relation to Vindinium, so it is possible that as a Frankish prince he had some governance over the city.  He was killed between 508-511 in Clovis’ Frankish unification campaigns.


RIPUARIAN/SALIAN
The distinction often employed by historians to discuss Ripuarian (river-dwelling) and Salian (sea-dwelling) Franks was not employed during the period of Clovis’ rule, though the latter term can be found in ancient histories—outside the context generally understood today.  The designation “Frankish” appears to be a later development as well, though francia and francisca may have been in use, and have long been connected with the people of Clovis as, respectively, designations for their land and their totemic weapons, the battle-axes which figure so prominently in this tale.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today, Clovis' two comes come in at the top, followed by a look at the type of king he was (literally, literally), and I thought we should round off this post with the Saint who baptized the King.


PHARAMOND
FICTIONAL; originally called Merovech, I changed this character’s name the moment someone fist asked me about Dan Brown.  Pharamond’s name does belong to another semi-historical/legendary king of the Franks.


RAGNACHAR
Ragnachar is a historical king, seated at Cambrai, and known to have fought beside his kinsman, Clovis.  Tales of him dating from Gregory of Tours’ day depict a dissolute, villain enough to make even Childeric’s early dissipations mild by comparison.  Though there is always room for the possibility of bias and propaganda in primary sources, rehabilitation/revisionism would do away with too many good stories in this case, and so we have the older, less-powerful cousin who both envies and ties himself—for a time, loyally—to the arc of Clovis’ much brighter star.  The tales of “my Farro” come largely as recorded in sources; and, of course, one can take the particular type of sexual slurs against Ragnachar with all the veracity that belongs to Clotilde’s bloodthirsty family and some of the more magical legends attached to Clovis himself.


REGES CRINITI
“Long-haired kings”; Franks of the period attached symbolic importance to hair, and their kings wore long hair as a badge both of power and position.  Stories abound of those who were shorn or tonsured like monks in a metaphorical display of their loss of authority.  As is illustrated in Clotilde’s threats to the young son of Chararic and the aftermath, for a victim of being shorn thus to even speak of growing his hair back was a clear threat to any king who wanted to see him stripped of power.
Tangentially related to this is the reference to Basina’s scalping, after her adultery.  This was intended to echo as much the fate of Morgause at her son Gaheris’ hand, as to reflect the connection to the archetypal power of long hair for Frankish royalty.


REMIGIUS
Bishop Remigius of Rheims, born 437, lived to the year 533.  By the time of Clovis’ baptism (as calculated from 508, rather than 496), he had already attained seventy-one years, and he eventually far outlived Clovis himself, surviving to the impressive age of nearly ninety-six.  This alone would have lent him a literal venerability, and his character certainly lent Remi a fame at least as great, if not even greater, than Clovis’ own.





As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Laws and characters - today, supporting roles, fictional and non:


LEX SALICA
Salic Law, the sixth century codification of law first set down by Clovis I.  Alaric II of the Visigoths, much maligned in these pages, was known definitively to have compiled his own code of Roman laws, the Breviary of Alaric, or brevarium.  The sixty-five chapers of Clovis’ pactus legis salicae represent traditions and punishments far predating his own rule, but synthesized to bring Franks and Gallo Romans under one system (though not equally; they are not treated precisely alike).  There is little Christian influence or input in the codification, and it demonstrates the priorities of Frankish society—with family above all other concerns, and loss of freedom or financial stability being the worst possible punishments.  The clearest thrust of these statutes is to minimize feuding, outlining tariffs and penalties clearly reflecting the specific value of relationships, and each member of a community’s worth within it.


MAGNERIC
FICTIONAL.  Both a bridge to the generation mostly destroyed in my version of Clovis’ accession, and an example of the nature of Frankish society in Roman Gaul, Magneric allowed me to represent both the newness of Catholicism and the old-guard of those more insular nobles who came before Clovis’ rule.


ODOVAKAR
Patrician of Rome whose ethnicity varies wildly across the sources, Odovakar deposed Romulus Augustulus and ruled during the ‘reign’ of Julius Nepos, the final Emperor in the West.  Already nearing fifty by the time Clovis came to his throne, he was nonetheless a staggering power in Italy and beyond.  His protracted standoff with Theodoric the Ostrogoth in northern Italy did end over a dining table, though some of the dramatic legends about this event are here omitted.  Variants:  Odoacer, Odovacer, Odoaker, possibly Adovacrius.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today we have two uncles and a sword.  Stay tuned tomorrow, when we'll go all lex salica up in here!


GUNDOBALD
King of Burgundy 473-516, uncle of Clotilde.  Gregory of Tours condemns Gundobald for the murder and the usurpation of his three brothers’ inheritances in a bid for their father Gundioc’s kingdom.  Clotilde was said to have been exiled, but was able to escape into marriage with Clovis as Gundobald feared the Frankish ruler’s strength.  Gundobald maintained a state of war with his last brother, Godegesil, for years, and each of them prevailed upon Clovis not knowing that the other had, begging for assistance against one another.  In the end, having promised tribute to Clovis, Gundobald is said to have broken this promise, and besieged Godegesil at Vienne, finally defeating the latter with the help of a traitor within the city.  Late in his life, he converted to Catholicism, and was succeeded on the throne of Burgundy by his son Sigismund.


GODEGESIL
Uncle and guardian of Clotilde, Godegesil quartered his niece at his capital in Geneva, where she was educated in the Catholic church.  Godegesil engaged with his brother Gundobald in conflicts over their inheritance for many years.  Though relieved by the support of Clovis for some time, he was finally destroyed in 501 during Gundobald’s siege of Vienne, after Clovis’ withdrawal and the betrayal of an artisan who helped Gundobald past the defenses after Godegesil expelled commoners from the protection of the city.


HEREBRAND
Accurately or not, as a kid who grew up reading Arthurian stories, I confess to an affection for the idea of naming a king’s sword.  This name is made up of two authentic naming-elements:  hari/here, meaning army; and brand, meaning blade or sword.  Pattern-welded swords exist among the artifacts of the period, and represent an extremely prized symbol and treasure for any warrior or king.  In Clovis’ early career, Herebrand would have represented an almost unattainably precious treasure; even with his increased prosperity and power over the years, it would have been a symbol of great potency and value.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today - the people and their institutions.


THE FRANKS
The name of the Frankish empire, of France, of the French themselves, is thought to have come from the word francisca, most often translated as the name of the small throwing axe unique to the people who carried them, and who were themselves unique among the “barbarian” tribes of Late Antiquity.  These people valued their individual and their tribal independence to such a degree that freedom, itself, has at times been ascribed as the meaning of the term francisca, either in combination with, or actually instead of, its definition as an ax.

The term Frank was not clearly in use as early as in Clovis’ time, though some sources do appear to refer to francia as a place name.  I have used the name for the land (francia) and the name for the people sparingly if at all, due to some of these ambiguities, but also in keeping with the fact that nationalism of the sort recognized by a modern reader would have been outside the experience of the people represented here.


FRIEDELEHE
This concept of marriage (often called concubinage) may be the artifact of historical research, rather than an actual institution of the Franks and/or the period.  Most sources referring to it did so from the outside, and centuries after the fact.  However, the institution is enough accepted, particularly within the general audiences for historical fiction, that I preserved it as authentic and used it for the relationship with Evochilde.

Given Clovis’ apparent continence with women, and particularly given the prince’s status, it seemed appropriate to bestow on Theuderic’s mother a form of legitimacy and inheritance rights which is understandable to most readers.  For the record, the general definition is:

The term is thought to mean “love-marriage”, though this simplifies a more complex arrangement.  Its key defining quality is mutual consent – both man and woman voluntarily entered this relationship.  The friedelehe is thus defined as a concubine with acknowledged status—lacking the full rights of a wife, but holding a legally defined position both with the man to whom she voluntarily bound herself thus, and in his household.  Her children would have been legitimate, able to inherit, and would have been viable heirs.

Clovis is frequently alluded to, in much-later historical analysis, as having fathered Theuderic with a mistress or concubine, but sources fail to record specifics on the matter one way or another.  These presumptions may be easy simplifications.  See “Evochilde” note for particulars relating to this work.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes - Latin, Lover

Today we have a couple of the Latin terms used in The Ax and the Vase most frequently ... and a look at Clovis' friedelehe, lover, first wife - the fictional mother of his first son, Theuderic.

COMES
Companion, comrade (plural:  comites).  The Germanic concept of comitatus, described in Latin by Tacitus, describes a wider relationship with the special connotation that comrades in this relationship would never desert one another on the field of battle.  A king’s comites were the most trusted companions, but as seen here this is not a hereditary/noble title.

This sense of the title illuminates the extent of betrayal and cowardice in Chararic’s failure to support Clovis on the field; as well, perhaps, as the extent of punishment it was for Clovis to renounce his kinsman and comes, Ragnachar, for all to see.  The term evolved into the modern title, comte’, or Count.  It shares a root with the words committee and constable.


DOMINE
“My lord.”  I wanted to use a title clearly illustrating subjection, in the sense of a kings’ subject, without evoking too-medieval a tone.  Here again, as I adopted the theory (oft questioned) that the Franks of Late Antiquity, and Clovis himself, were heavily Romanized, I borrowed from Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, and adopted this address.  It is intended to both evoke a certain tone, but also stand apart from terms used in much fiction of this genre and period.  It has been perhaps the greatest asset in my attempt to avoid too much “antique-speak” in the tone of the manuscript, while still contributing to the world-building of this alien time and place.


EVOCHILDE
FICTIONAL.  Though it is known that Theuderic I is not the son of Clovis’ queen, Clotilde, not a breath of evidence testifies to the nature of Clovis’ relationship with Theuderic’s mother, nor who she might have been.  The name Evochildis does appear fleetingly in some sources, but even this is unreliable.

After the cautionary example of his voluptuous father, Clovis’ sexual behavior is notably unremarked by sources.  It seemed correct to simplify the king’s amatory adventures in the form of strongly bonded relationships and, to some extent, silence.  Theuderic’s birth is recorded as having occurred in 484, well before the advent of Clotilde.  I saw no reason to complicate matters with towering romance, nor to dismiss the emotional importance of a first love either.  A friedelehe who dies in childbirth fits the timeline.  It also explains Theuderic’s clearly estimable position with his father, explains the absence of any other documented concubine or lover alongside the queen, aligns with the position Clotilde herself eventually seems to have held with the king, and finally, simply, reflects the realities of the time.  For a man to love a woman might easily have meant, in this age and for many thousands of years before and since, to kill her.  As, “to be the queen, she agreed to be the widow”, so both parties in sex, for centuries before our time, always knew:  to be a lover might be a bargain with mortality.



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes - MC Edition!

Yes, we are here at last - and, as luck would have it, the king and queen are right next to each other in The Ax and the Vase's Author's Note.  Enjoy!


CLOTILDE
475-544/545.  “Illustrious battle”, from hludo (fame, illustrious—the root also gives us the descendant “loud”) and tild (battle).  Much of the legend of St. Clotilde relates to the Burgundian wars, romanticized for centuries in songs of betrayal and blood.  A significant portion of these appear to be only that—legend—but the saint would have almost certainly have been a woman of some will, and records of Frankish royal womanhood are vivid; the tale of “choose your blade” is taken from real sources, though not attached to Clotilde.

Clotilde’s greatest accomplishment according to history was the conversion of her husband; certainly a significant event.  I felt the relationship here had to be contentious (the tale of the arguments surrounding baptism of the children, before Clovis’ own conversion, is taken from sources), but definitely loving.  I worked from the background of Clovis’ apparently profligate father to build the portrait of a marriage both befitting her sanctified repute and suitable to partner a monarch and a man as overwhelming as Clovis.  (Variants:  Clotilda, Clotildis, Clothilde, Chrodchild, Chrodegilde, Chlothilde von Burgund)


CLOVIS
466-511.  The name derives from the roots hludo (fame, illustrious—the root also gives us the cognate descendant “loud”) and wig/viga (war, warrior, battle).  Clovis’ exploits may have rested on a greater legacy from his own father than is sometimes assumed, and many of his timelines, motivations, actions, and legends are disputed.  Regardless of his real history, he makes for an irresistible story, and quite a subject in himself.  I was blessed to bump into him via the etymology of my own middle name, and overjoyed to encounter him at a time when productivity as a writer had become more than something to put off for later.  His legend has remained either wonderfully (for me as a writer) or sadly (for the millions who’ve never heard of him) untrodden in English, and has been an exciting tale to relate.

The sarcophagus of Clovis, interred at his church of St. Peter and Paul—later rededicated to St. Geneviéve—is said to have remained intact until the French Revolution, when revolutionaries broke into the church and desecrated his remains.  An interesting end for the king who was a kind of French beginning.  (Variants:  Chlodovech, Chlodovechus, Chlodovacar, Chlovis, Chlodwig, Hludowig, Hlodowig.  Gave rise to Hludowicus, Hludovicus, Ludovicus, Louis, Ludwig, Lewis, and, of course … Louise.)



As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

CLIMACTERIC
Roman tradition counted the turning points of a man’s life at seven-year intervals, the climacteric years.  After a child’s seventh year, the survival of infancy might be celebrated.  At fourteen, passage to maturity was observed.  During a climacteric year, portents were strong, but danger was also at its greatest; a person was considered to be weakest during the marker years, and one’s health was most imperiled.  The sixty-third year would be the Grand Climacteric, when death and danger most imminent—and, of course, few people reached this particular marker.

Here again we have a rite observed by Romans, which may or may not have been part of Clovis’ real history.  However, given the Romanization of his people, and, fankly, the handiness of a sort of timekeeping device, I found this a good marker to use.  Certainly, rites of age remain with us today—though perhaps at altered points in time—in Bat and Bar Mitvahs, Quinceañera, legal ages for driving or other adult privileges, and even in observance of retirement ages and marital anniversaries.  Humans love a good anniversary; I just happened to choose a Roman convention for this work.


CLOTAIRE
497-561; inherited Soissons.  Clotilde and Clovis’ youngest son; ambitious and unfilial, he murdered Clodomer’s children in 524 and took Tours and Poitiers.  Campaigned against his mother’s former country of Burgundy, and in 534, won Grenoble, Die and other territories.  Fought beside Theuderic’s son, Theudebert, and his own brother Childebert.  Much-married and bloodthirsty, by 558, he was the sole King of the Franks.  After one too many rebellious forays by his own son, Chram, he imprisoned Chram in a cottage in Brittany and burnt him, along with his wife and Clotaire’s own grandchildren, alive.  In apparent remorse, Clotaire is said to have made pilgrimage to St. Martin’s tomb in Tours to beg forgiveness, dying not long after.  (Variants:  Chlothachar, Chlotar, Clothar, Clotaire, Chlotochar, or Hlothar.)


As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

CHLPERIC II
Clotilde’s father, son of King Gundioc, thought to have lived 443-480.  Gundioc’s sons, Gundobald, Godegesil, Gundomar, and Chilperic, inherited a divided kingdom, and Gregory of Tours condemns Gundobald for murder and usurpation in a bid for Gundioc’s entire inheritance.  Chilperic’s daughter Chrona was said to have taken the veil and later founded the church of Saint-Victor, and Clotilde was exiled, eventually marrying Clovis (and supposedly setting her husband and even her sons against the traitorous Gundobald and his son Sigismund).


CHLODERIC
King of the river-dwelling Franks, killed by Clovis in 509.  Chloderic was the son of Sigibert, and called The Parricide, I saw in one source an undoubted typo referring to him as “the parasite”.  This was just appealing enough to use anyway, and informs what character he’s allowed to display in these pages (little enough, as it happens).  Clovis used Chloderic to achieve the murder of Sigibert, who had fought beside him in multiple battles—and then used Chloderic’s crime of betrayal to then remove him also from the picture.


CHLODOMER
495-524; inherited Orléans (Poitiers, Orléans—Aureliani, the city of Aurelius—Tours).  Eldest surviving son of Clovis and Clotilde, he is most closely involved in the legends of Clotilde’s (likely fictitious) lust for revenge against her own family in Burgundy.  He was killed at the Battle of Vézeronce in Burgundy, having assassinated Sigismund of Burgundy and both of Sigismund’s sons.  His widow was married, possibly without her consent, by Clotaire, who then murdered Chlodomer’s children, excepting the youngest, Clodoald, who escaped and gave up his long hair, emblem of his royalty.  Clodoald was canonized Saint Cloud.  (Clodomir, Clodomer)


CHOLWIG
FICTIONAL.  As with Pharamond, Cholwig is a piece of imagination.  He fills the role of sage elder for Clovis—indeed, he is almost the only member of the preceding generation who makes up Clovis’ court from the beginning.  He represents the sole tie to the old ways, to Clovis’ ancestors, and takes on the literary position of surrogate father to the king.  He is Merlin and Mr. Miyagi, Spock and Mickey Goldmill.  Completely imaginary, but for the way I found this novel developing, completely necessary.


CHROTILDA
Sole daughter of Clovis and Clotilde, born 506, between his conversion and eventual baptism.  The name Chrotilda is cognate with Clotilde; she was named for her mother.

In the years after Clovis’ death, given in marriage to Amalaric, she was “rescued” by her brothers after, according to legend, she sent a towel stained with her own blood to her brother Childebert, who brought an army to defeat the Visigoths and retrieved his sister, only for her to die on the journey homeward of unrecorded causes.


As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

Today's edition:  a mother, a mother, and Mother Church!


BASINA
Wife of Childeric, mother of Clovis, she left another king, her husband, Bisinus (and, according to many sources, a son, Baderic), to become the wife of the Frankish king.  Certain legends depict her as asking for Childeric’s hand herself, saying, “I want to have the most powerful man in the world, even if I have to cross the ocean for him.”  She is credited with naming their son, Chlodwig/Hlodowig/Chlodowech/ Chlodovechus—not after an ancestor of the line, but in honor of her hopes for his legacy.

Basina’s fornication depicted in this work, after Clovis’ coronation, is complete fiction, serving the expedient of rendering our protagonist essentially orphaned (and unencumbered by women) and underscoring her shocking character.  This fiction also consciously echoes the Arthurian tale of Morgause, whose son Gaheris cuts off more than his mother’s hair when he finds her with a lover.


CARETENA
Mother of Clotilde, little is recorded of her but adventurous and significantly posthumous legends from Gregory of Tours, whose bloody chronicle of her drowning, and the murder of her husband Chilperic by Gundobald, Clotilde’s uncle, are late romantic inventions which appear to have little basis in fact or even good speculation.  It’s possible that Caretena was the Burgundian queen whose epitaph, discovered at Lyons, indicates she lived until 506; this would give the lie to Gregory’s exciting array of betrayals and murders, and allowed me the excuse to omit at least some of the myriad stories which cling to Clovis and his family in such profusion.  Even so, to include her in this extensive a cast of characters seemed unnecessary, so I have opted for omitting the lady herself, as well as her “blood-spattered” demise.


CATHOLICISM
Clovis was first described by Gregory of Tours as converting to Catholicism under the influence of his wife, Clotilde, a Burgundian princess.  Those princes in Gaul and central Europe who had adopted Christianity at all, at the time of Clovis’ rule, had chosen to subscribe to Arianism; so his acceptance of the Catholic faith of his wife has been alternately seen as either a political move based on the growing wealth and power of that Church, or a genuine reflection of her influence upon him.  The depth of his spiritual conviction is impossible to gauge, but I have chosen to give it some real power.  Apart from making for a good story line, it seems likely that a man of that era (and a man of the unique power Clovis both inherited and forged) would not have altered his spiritual status without some true inspiration.  I have made his spiritual choices difficult and troublesome, politically, personally, and for his people, in the ways many scholars have posited, but kept “faith” as the final consideration—as it has been for so many men and women throughout time.

Clovis’ conversion remains a seminal event in history.  Not least because of his religious pioneering, he is considered the first King of France, and it is in homage to his trailblazing faith as much as his power that his name was kept on the throne for over one thousand years.  Clotilde’s canonization has this at its root.

It’s impossible not to wonder what the face of European and Christian history might have been had Clovis followed his peers’ acceptance of Arianism (he is believed to have flirted with the faith at least in his youth), or perhaps never converted from paganism at all.

As to that paganism itself, it is often described as having been Roman, and the question of why a Frank would subscribe to Mars or Mithras has received ink for generations.  It seems to me a culture which yields the Frankish epitaph, Francus ego cives, miles romanus in armis (“I am a Frank by nationality, but a Roman soldier under arms”—a statement rendered in Latin, and a real artifact found at a Frankish burial), could easily have fostered cross-cultural spirituality, just as Clovis’ position itself, on the point between foederatus ally to Rome, and rex in his own right, would have been transitional.  Here is a man who on the one hand ousted Rome, in the form of its last governor in Gaul, Syagrius; and also embraced it, in the form of his chosen Church.  Clovis’ career is undeniably one of radical growth and change, and his conversion—and consecration—are the backbone of his contradictions, his fascinations, and his life’s story.


As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.

Author's Notes

AUDOFLEDA
Sister of Clovis, queen of Theodoric the Great.  Her birth date is unrecorded, and little of her history is preserved, but her position as the sister and then wife of two of the most remembered kings in European history begs a memorable character.  She is somewhat minor in this work, but has indelible cameo appearances, and she is also the first of three matrilineal subjects of another manuscript currently in progress.

BONONIA
Today, the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, in northern France.  Bononia in Latin meant “good city”.  The settlement and its port, serving as a trade connection to Britain, dates to at least the first century CE; it was called by this name by the fourth.  Bononia is closest to the coast of Chararic’s three cities, on the Channel southeast of London and Canterbury.


As always, Author's Notes excerpts are excerpted from the MS, which means they are written "in-universe."  These posts should not be taken as historical resources.