Childeric I OF THE SALIAN FRANKS (440-481)

	Signet ring of Childeric I. Inscription CHILDERICI REGIS ("of Childeric the king"). Found in his tomb at Tournai, now in the Monnaie de Paris

Individual Events and Attributes

Marriage

	13th century depiction of Basina and Childeric I		Tomb of Clovis I at the Basilica of St Denis in Saint Denis		Clovis statue at the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis		Statue depicting the baptism of Clovis by Saint Remigius.

Individual Note 1

Childeric I (c. 440– c. 481) was the Merovingian king of the Salian Franks from 457 until his death, and the father of Clovis.

He succeeded his father Merovech as king, traditionally in 457 or 458. With his Frankish warband he was established with his capital at Tournai, on lands which he had received as a foederatus of the Romans, and for some time he kept the peace with his allies.

In about 463 in Orléans, in conjunction with the Roman General Aegidius, who was based in Soissons, he defeated the Visigoths, who hoped to extend their dominion along the banks of the Loire River. After the death of Aegidius, he first assisted Comes ("count") Paul of Angers, together with a mixed band of Gallo-Romans and Franks, in defeating the Goths and taking booty. Odoacer reached Angers but Childeric arrived the next day and a battle ensued. Count Paul was killed and Childeric took the city. Childeric, having delivered Angers, followed a Saxon warband to the islands on the Atlantic mouth of the Loire, and massacred them there. In a change of alliances, he also joined forces with Odoacer, according to Gregory of Tours, to stop a band of the Alamanni who wished to invade Italy.

Childeric's tomb was discovered in 1653 (May 27) by a mason doing repairs in the church of Saint-Brice in Tournai, a city in modern Belgium, where numerous precious objects were found, including a richly ornamented sword, a torse-like bracelet, jewels of gold and garnet cloisonné, gold coins, a gold bull's head and a ring with the inscription CHILDERICI REGIS ("of Childeric the king"), which identified the tomb. Some 300 golden bees were also found. Archduke Leopold William, governor of the Southern Netherlands (today's Belgium), had the find published in Latin, and the treasure went first to the Habsburgs in Vienna, then as a gift to Louis XIV, who was not impressed with them and stored them in the royal library, which became the Bibliothèque Nationale de France during the Revolution. Napoleon was more impressed with Childeric's bees when he was looking for a heraldic symbol to trump the Bourbon fleur-de-lys. He settled on Childeric's bees as symbols of the French Empire.

On the night of November 5–6, 1831, the treasure of Childeric was among 80 kilos of treasure stolen from the Library and melted down for the gold. A few pieces were retrieved where they had been hidden in the Seine, including two of the bees. The record of the treasure, however, now exists only in the fine engravings made at the time of its discovery, and in some reproductions made for the Habsburgs.

The stories of his expulsion by the Franks, whose women he was taking; of his eight-year stay in Thuringia with King Basin and his wife Basina; of his return when a faithful servant advised him that he could safely do so by sending to him half of a piece of gold which he had broken with him; and of the arrival in Tournai of Queen Basina, whom he married, come from Gregory of Tours' Libri Historiarum (Book ii.12).

He died in 481 and was buried in Tournai, leaving a son Clovis, afterwards king of the Franks.

SOURCES:

Edward James: The Franks. Oxford, 1988¹

Individual Note 2

From website: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/hydrionoframes/bees.html

On May 27, 1653 a mason, Adrien Quinquin, working on the reconstruction of the church of Saint-Brice in Tournai, discovered a Merovingian tomb containing various articles, including a leather purse containing gold coins, a gold bracelet, some pieces of iron, and numerous pieces of gold cloisonnéed with garnets, among these the 300 bees. One of the pieces was a ring with the inscription CHILDERIC REGIS, identifying the tomb as that of Childeric I, father of Clovis. The discovery excited great interest in Tournai and Brussels. Archduke Leopold William, Spanish governor of the Netherlands, put his personal physician, Jean-Jacques Chifflet, in charge of studying and publishing the finds. In 1655 he published his work, Anastasis Childerici I Francorum regis, sive thesaurus sepulchralis Tornaci Neviorum effossus et commentario illustratus.

Leopold William took the treasure to Vienna when he left the Netherlands in 1656. On his death, the treasure became the property of the Emperor of Austria, Leopold I. In 1665 Leopold gave the treasure to Louis XIV as a gift in recognition of the help of the French against the Turks and against a revolt of Austrian subjects in Hungary.

The French monarch had considerably less interest in the treasure than had the Austrians. The relics were first placed in the royal collections of the Louvre, then transferred to the Bibliothèque royale, (later the Bibliothèque national), where they were apparently little regarded and somewhat difficult of access. They were stolen in the night of November 5-6, 1831. The records of the police search and the trial that followed were unfortunately destroyed during the Commune, but it is clear that the thieves melted the larger gold pieces and hid the smaller, less easily melted pieces (like cloisonné) in the Seine, from which they were retrieved in August of 1832. While about 75 of about 80 kg of stolen artifacts were recovered, the missing pieces included much of the treasure of Childeric. It seems that only two of the bees were recovered. Fortunately, the work of Chifflet was extremely thorough, so that we have very good descriptions and engravings of the missing pieces. In addition, copies were made by Emperor Leopold before the originals were given to Louis XIV; some of these have been recovered in Innsbruck.²

Sources