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Childeric I (died 481 AD) was a Frankish leader in the northern part of imperial Roman Gaul, and an ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty. He is described as a king (rex), both on his Roman-style seal ring, which was buried with him, and in fragmentary later records of his life. Childeric served as a military leader of Frankish forces under the Roman emperor Majorian, and after his fall, also under the Gallo-Roman military leader Aegidius. He was the father of Clovis I, who acquired effective control over all or most Frankish kingdoms, and a significant part of Roman Gaul.^[3]

Most of early Merovingian history is based on the account of the 6th-century Gregory of Tours. The date of Childeric’s accession is not given in the text, but it was after emperor Avitus‘s death in December 456 (II. 11). The only certain date is the Battle of Vouillé in 507 in the Franco–Gothic War; most of Gregory’s other statements are contradictory.^[4]

Childeric’s father is recorded by several sources to have been Merovech, after whom the dynasty is named.^[5] Gregory (II.9) says that Merovech was reputed by some to be a descendant of Chlodio, an earlier Frankish king who had conquered Gaulish areas first in the Silva Carbonaria, then in Tournai, Cambrai, and as far south as the Somme. This is roughly the definition of the Roman province of Belgica Secunda, and later a letter of Saint Remigius to Childeric’s son Clovis I implies that Childeric (or at least the ancestors of Clovis) had administered the regions’ Romans.

Records of Childeric himself are mainly associated with Roman military actions around the Loire River involving the Gallo-Roman general Aegidius. According to Gregory (II.12), Childeric was also exiled to “Thuringia” for eight years due to Frankish distaste for his debauchery and his seduction of his subjects’ daughters.^[6] In the meantime, according to Gregory, Aegidius himself took up the title of king of the Franks. When he returned from exile, Childeric was married to Basina, apparently the wife of the king of Thuringia, who bore their son Clovis.^[7]

Guy Halsall connects the story to Roman politics, Aegidius being an appointee of Majorian:

Although this is only one interpretation of the fragmentary sources, an eight-year period ending with Aegidius’ death would allow us to associate Childeric’s expulsion with Majorian‘s accession and appointment of Aegidius.^[8] … Majorian’s commander on the Loire, Aegidius, refused to accept Severus as emperor. It is possible that, to legitimise his position, he took the title king of the Franks.^[9]

Halsall (p. 269) speculates that Childeric probably began a Roman military career in the service of Flavius Aetius who defeated Attila in Gaul, and he points out that much of his military career appears to have played out far from the Frankish homelands. Ulrich Nonn (map p. 37, and pp. 99–100), following his teacher Eugen Ewig, believes that the exile story reflects a real sequence of events whereby Childeric was a leader of “Salian” or “Belgian” Franks based in the Romanized areas conquered by Chlodio, who were allies under the lordship of Aegidius, but was eventually able to take over when Chlodio and his imperial patron died. (Childeric’s son Clovis I later fought Aegidius’s son Syagrius, who was remembered as a King of the Romans, and who had control of Soissons in the south of Belgica Secunda.)

In a passage normally considered to have come from a lost collection of annals, Gregory (II.18-19) gave a sequence of events which are very difficult to interpret. Based on this passage, Childeric is believed to have been with Aegidius at the Battle in Orleans in 463. In the Gothic war against Aegidius, Aegidius successfully repelled the Aquitanian Goths of Theodoric II from Orléans on the Loire.^[10] After the death of Aegidius Childeric and Count Paul (unknown from any other record) defended the Loire region from both Saxons in Angers, and Goths now under Euric near Bourges, who were possibly coordinating with each other. Count Paul attacked the Gothic forces together with Romans and Franks, and took booty. Then, says Gregory: Adovacrius came to Angers, and King Childeric arrived on the following day; Count Paul having been killed, he [Childeric] took possession of the city. After these events, war was waged between the Saxons and the Romans. But the Saxons turned their backs in flight, and, as the Romans pursued them, left many of their own men behind to the sword. Their islands were captured by the Franks and destroyed, with a large number of people killed.

The Saxons were under a leader named “Adovacrius“, sometimes given by modern authors in an Anglo-Saxon spelling form, Eadwacer, or in a spelling the same as used for his contemporary the future King of Italy Odoacer, with whom he is sometimes equated. The origin of these “Saxons” is, however, unclear, and before this conflict they are described as being based upon islands somewhere in the Loire region.

In the following line, Gregory of Tours (II.19) reports that Odoacer entered into an alliance with Childeric, and they subdued the Alamanni, who had overrun part of Italy. While some scholars see this as a record of an alliance with Odoacer after 476, when he became the ruler of Italy, others think there must be an error, and interpret these Alemanni to be Alans, a people established in the Loire region in this period, despite the mention of Italy.^{[citation needed]}

Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, mentions several siblings of Clovis within his narrative, apparently thus children of Childeric:

1. Clovis I (died 511), whose mother was Basina.
2. Audofleda, Queen of the Ostrogoths, wife of Theodoric the Great. Gregory III.31 also mentions their daughter Amalasuntha.
3. Lanthechild. Gregory II.31 mentions she had been an Arian but converted to Catholicism with Clovis.
4. Albofleda (died approximately 500). Gregory II.31 mentions that she died soon after being baptized with Clovis.

Childeric is generally considered to have died in 481 or 482 based on Gregory’s reports that his son Clovis died in 511 and had ruled 30 years.^[11]

Childeric’s tomb was discovered in 1653^[12] not far from the 12th-century church of Saint-Brice in Tournai, now in Belgium.^[13] Numerous precious objects were found, including jewels of gold and garnet cloisonné, gold coins, a gold bull’s head, and a ring with the king’s name inscribed. Also present were some 300 golden winged insects (usually viewed as bees or cicadas), which had been placed on the king’s cloak.^[12] Archduke Leopold William, governor of the Southern Netherlands (today’s Belgium), had the find published in Latin. The treasure went first to the Habsburgs in Vienna, then as a gift to King Louis XIV, who was not impressed with the treasure and stored it in the royal library, which became the Bibliothèque Nationale de France during the Revolution.

On the night of 5–6 November 1831, the treasure of Childeric was among 80 kg of treasure stolen from the Library and melted down for the gold. A few pieces were retrieved from 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.^[14]

When Napoleon was looking for a heraldic symbol to trump the Capetian fleur-de-lys, he settled on Childeric’s bees as symbols of the French Empire. The minutes of a meeting of the Conseil d’État held at Saint-Cloud in June 1804 suggest that it approved the symbolism of the bees on a suggestion by Cambacérès. The design was made by Vivant Denon, Director of the Louvre.^[15]

• Gregory of Tours (6th century), Histoire des Franks
• Cameron, Alan (1988). “Flavius: a Nicety of Protocol”. Latomus. 47 (1): 26–33. JSTOR 41540754.
• Collins, Roger (1999). Early Medieval Europe: 300–1000 (Second ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-21886-9.
• Halsall, Guy (2007). Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West 376-568. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-43543-7.
• Heather, Peter (2006). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532541-6.
• James, Edward (1988). The Franks. Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-17936-4.
• Murray, Alexander Callandar (2000). From Romans to Merovingian Gaul. Higher Education University of Toronto Press.
• Nonn, Ulrich (2010). Die Franken. Kohlhammer Verlag. ISBN 978-3-17-017814-4.
• Previté-Orton, C. W. (1952). The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 1.
• Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (1982). The Long-Haired Kings. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6500-7.
• Wickham, Chris (2009). The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400–1000. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-311742-1.
• Wood, Ian (1994). The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-582-49372-8.

• Livius.org on Childeric
• Photo: Merovingian sword and scabbard mounts from the tomb of King Childeric featuring silver-gilt and cloisonné garnets
• “A note on Childeric’s bees”: the discovery of his tomb: follow the links for the engravings of Childeric’s treasure and the two remaining gold bees.
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). “Childeric” . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 137.