Clotilde
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| Clotilde | |
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| Born | 475, Lyon, France |
| Died | 545, Tours, France |
| Feast | 3 June |
| Patronage | brides, adopted children, parents, exiles, widows |
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Saint Clotilde (475 – 545), also known as Clotilda or simply Clotild, was the daughter of Chilperic II of Burgundy and Caretena, and wife of the Frankish king Clovis I. Venerated as a saint, she was instrumental to her husband's famous conversion to Catholic Christianity and, in her later years, was known for her almsgiving and penitential works of mercy.
On the death of Gundioc, king of the Burgundians, in 473, his sons Gundobad, Godegisel and Chilperic divided his heritage between them; Chilperic apparently reigning at Lyon, Gundobald at Vienne and Godegesil at Geneva.
According to Gregory of Tours, Chilperic was slain by Gundobad, his wife drowned, and of his two daughters, Chrona took the veil and Clotilde was exiled. This account, however, seems to have been a later invention, since an epitaph discovered at Lyons speaks of a Burgundian queen who died in 506. This was most probably the mother of Clotilde.
In 493 Clotilde married Clovis, King of the Franks, who had just conquered northern Gaul. She was brought up in the Catholic faith and did not rest until her husband had abjured paganism and embraced the Catholic faith in 496. With him she built at Paris the church of the Holy Apostles, afterwards known as Sainte Geneviève. After the death of Clovis in 511 she retired to the abbey of St Martin at Tours.
In 523 she incited her sons against her cousin Sigismund, the son of Gundobad and provoked the Burgundian war. In the following year she tried in vain to protect the rights of her grandsons, the children of Clodomer, against the claims of her sons Childebert I and Clotaire I, and was equally unsuccessful in her efforts to prevent the civil discords between her children. She died in 544 or 545, and was buried at her husband's side in the church of the Holy Apostles.
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
