Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/142

120 The royal domains of Syagrius perhaps were large enough to satisfy the cupidity of the victors.

Clovis was now king of Gallo-Romans as well as Salian Franks. Thus strengthened he could fight other Franks with success, and carry on a great war against the Alemanni to the south-east. At the "battle of Tolbiac," in which he finally overthrew these people, the heathen Frank invoked the Christian God (so tells Gregory of Tours), and vowed to accept the Faith if Christ gave him the victory. This is like the legend of Constantine at the battle of the Malvern Bridge, nor is the probability of its essential truth lessened because of this resemblance. Both Roman emperor and Frankish king turned from heathenism to Christianity as to the stronger supernatural support. And if ever man received tenfold reward in this world from his faith it was this treacherous and bloody Frank.

Hitherto the Teuton tribes, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians who had accepted Christianity, were Arians by reason of the circumstances of their "conversion." On the other hand, the Romanized inhabitants of Italy, Spain, and Gaul were Catholics, and the influence of their Arian-hating clergy was enormous. Evidently when Clovis, under the influence of Catholic bishops and a Catholic wife, became a Catholic, the power of the Church and the sympathy of the laity would make his power irresistible. For the Catholic population was greatly in the majority, even in the countries held by Burgundian or Visigothic kings. The Burgundian rulers had half turned to Catholicism, and the Visigothic monarchy treated it with respect. Yet the Burgundian kings did not win the Church's confidence, nor did the Visigoths disarm its active hostility. With such ability as Clovis and his sons possessed, their conversion to Catholicism ensured victory over their rivals, and made a bond of friendship between them and their Gallo-Roman subjects.

The extension of Clevis's kingdom, his overthrow of the Visigothic power, his partial conquest of the Burgundians, would have been even more rapid and decisive but for the opposing diplomacy of the great Arian ruler, Theodoric the