she was departing, to
plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of
Clovis, she cried aloud, 'I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see
the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!'"

The majority of the learned have regarded this account of Fredegaire as
a romantic fable, and have declined to give it a place in history. M.
Fauriel, one of the most learned associates of the Academy of
Inscriptions, has given much the same opinion, but he nevertheless
adds: "Whatever may be their authorship, the fables in question are
historic in the sense that they relate to real facts of which they are a
poetical expression, a romantic development, conceived with the idea of
popularizing the Frankish kings among the Gallo-Roman subjects." It
cannot, however, be admitted that a desire to popularize the Frankish
kings is a sufficient and truth-like explanation of these tales of the
Gallo-Roman chroniclers, or that they are no more than "a poetical
expression, a romantic development" of the real facts briefly noted by
Gregory of Tours; the tales have a graver origin and contain more truth
than would be presumed from some of the anecdotes and sayings mixed up
with them. In the condition of minds and parties in Gaul at the end of
the fifth century the marriage of Clovis and Clotilde was, for the
public of the period, for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Romans, a
great matter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans; Gondebaud and the
Burgundians were Christians, but Arians; Clotilde was a Catholic
Christian. To which of the two, Catholics or Arians, would Clovis ally
himself? To whom, Arian, pagan, or Catholic, would Clotilde be married?

Assuredly the bishops, priests, and all the Gallo-Roman clergy, for the
most part Catholics, desired to see Clovis, that young and audacious
Frankish chieftain, take to wife a Catholic rather than an Arian or a
pagan, and hoped to convert the pagan Clovis to Christianity much more
easily than an Arian to orthodoxy. The question between Catholic
orthodoxy and Arianism was, at that time, a vital question for
Christianity in its entirety, and St. Athanasius was not wrong in
attributing to it supreme importance. It may be presumed that the
Catholic clergy, the bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres was no
stranger to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the
Frankish King toward the Burgundian princess, and the idea of their
marriage once set afloat,