It cannot be known whether Clovis ever felt in his soul any scruple or regret for his many acts of ferocity and perfidy, or if he looked as sufficient expiation upon the favor he had bestowed on the churches and their bishops, upon the gifts he lavished on them, and upon the absolutions he demanded of them.  In times of mingled barbarism and faith there are strange cases of credulity in the way of bargains made with divine justice.  We read in the life of St. Eleutherus, bishop of Tournai, the native land of Clovis, that at one of those periods when the conscience of the Frankish King must have been most heavily laden, he presented himself one day at the church.  “My lord King,” said the bishop, “I know wherefore thou art come to me.”  “I have nothing special to say unto thee,” rejoined Clovis, “Say not so, O King,” replied the bishop; “thou hast sinned, and darest not avow it.”  The King was moved, and ended by confessing that he had deeply sinned and had need of large pardon.  St. Eleutherus betook himself to prayer; the King came back the next day, and the bishop gave him a paper on which was written by a divine hand, he said, “the pardon granted to royal offences which might not be revealed.”

Clovis accepted this absolution, and loaded the church of Tournai with his gifts.  In 511, the very year of his death, his last act in life was the convocation at Orleans of a council, which was attended by thirty bishops from the different parts of his kingdom, and at which were adopted thirty-one canons that, while granting to the Church great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favorable to humanity and respect for the rights of individuals, bound the Church closely to the state, and gave to royalty, even in ecclesiastical matters, great power.  The bishops, on breaking up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying him to give them the sanction of his adhesion, which he did.  A few months afterward, on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died at Paris, and was buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, nowadays St. Genevieve, built by his wife, Queen Clotilde, who survived him.

It was but right to make the reader intimately acquainted with that great barbarian who, with all his vices and all his crimes, brought about, or rather began, two great matters which have already endured through fourteen centuries and still endure; for he founded the French monarchy and Christian France.  Such men and such facts have a right to be closely studied and set in a clear light by history.  Nothing similar will be seen for two centuries, under the descendants of Clovis, the Merovingians; among them will be encountered none but those personages whom death reduces to insignificance, whatever may have been their rank in the world, and of whom Vergil thus speaks to Dante: 

    “Waste we no words on them:  one glance and pass thou on.”

PUBLICATION OF THE JUSTINIAN CODE