Chlodio

The wedding was on a hill above a bend in a river, near a village the Romans called Vicus Helena. There was smoke from the cooking fires and the smell of meat, and the wagons stood loaded with the feast. The Franks had come into the land of the Atrebates under a king named Cloio, and they were celebrating as people do who think the country is theirs. Then the Roman cavalry came across the narrow bridge.

A poet, Sidonius Apollinaris, described the fight a few years later in a speech praising one of the officers who was there, the future emperor Majorian. The general in command was Aetius. By the poet’s account the Franks were scattered, the wagons were taken with the pots and the food still in them, and the bride was carried off with the rest. It is the only glimpse of Chlodio written by someone of his own century, and it shows him losing.

He did not keep losing. Gregory of Tours, the bishop who wrote the history of the Franks about a hundred and thirty years later, knew him as Chlogio, a man of high birth and real ability among his people. Gregory places him in a stronghold called Dispargum, somewhere in a district he names Thoringia. Nobody is certain where that was. The best guesses put it west of the Rhine, in what is now Belgium. South of him the Romans still held the country as far as the Loire.

From Dispargum he looked at Cambrai. He did not rush it. He sent men ahead to go quietly through the town and bring back what they saw: the walls, the gates, the number of soldiers. When he knew enough he marched, broke the Roman force, and took the city. Then he went on and occupied everything as far as the Somme. A later book, the *Liber Historiae Francorum*, adds that he came through the Charcoal Forest and took Tournai first. The conquest is usually placed in the 440s.

That is the plain history. It is short. He spied, he fought, he won a strip of northern Gaul, and at some point he lost a wedding party to Roman horsemen.

Who his own father was depends on which book is open. Gregory names no father at all, and only notes, carefully, that some people say Merovech was of Chlodio’s line. The seventh-century chronicle that goes under the name of Fredegar makes Chlodio the son of Theudemer, a Frankish king put to death by the Romans. The *Liber Historiae Francorum*, written about 727, makes him the son of Faramund, a first king of the Franks whom no earlier source mentions, and gives him a reign of twenty years. The neat family tree found in later histories, Faramund to Chlodio to Merovech to Childeric to Clovis, is stitched together from these pieces.

The strange part comes from Fredegar. One summer Chlodio was staying by the sea with his wife. At midday she went down to the water to bathe. The sun was high and the shallows were warm. Something came up out of the sea to her, a beast of Neptune that the chronicler says was like a Quinotaur. Nothing more is said about what it looked like, and the word appears nowhere else. Afterwards she bore a son. The chronicle will not say whether the child was the beast’s or her husband’s. It says only that he was named Merovech, and that the kings of the Franks were called Merovingians after him.

So the legend leaves Chlodio standing on the beach. He is either the father of a dynasty or the husband of the woman who founded it with something else. The chronicle does not record what he thought.

No writer says what Chlodio looked like. What the record does give is hair. Gregory writes that the Franks set over themselves long-haired kings, taken from their first and most noble family, and Chlodio is the earliest of those kings he names in his own territory. In that family the hair was not cut. A king who was shorn stopped being a king. Later French tradition made the point part of his name and called him Clodion the Long-Haired.

His strengths, as the sources tell them, are a soldier’s. He was patient, and he scouted before he struck. He could beat a Roman garrison in the field and hold what he took, which no Frankish leader before him is recorded as doing. The land he seized stayed Frankish, and his descendants, or his wife’s, built a kingdom on it that lasted three hundred years.

His limits are as easy to see. He could be surprised, and at Vicus Helena he was. He never got past the Somme. And in the one story that made his family more than human, the power is not his. It comes out of the sea, it goes to his wife, and it passes to a boy who may not be his son. The dynasty took the boy’s name and not his.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Chlodio?

Chlodio was a king of the Salian Franks in the fifth century. He captured the Roman town of Cambrai and occupied northern Gaul as far as the river Somme. Later tradition made him an ancestor of the Merovingian kings.

What is the legend of Chlodio’s wife and the sea beast?

The Chronicle of Fredegar says that Chlodio’s wife went to bathe in the sea at midday and was approached by a beast of Neptune that resembled a Quinotaur. She later gave birth to Merovech. The chronicle leaves open whether Merovech’s father was the beast or Chlodio.

Was Chlodio a real person?

Yes. Chlodio is named by the Roman poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who wrote within a few years of his lifetime and describes Roman troops under Aetius breaking up a Frankish wedding at Vicus Helena. Gregory of Tours also records his capture of Cambrai. The sea beast story and his descent from Faramund were added by later writers.

Who was Chlodio’s father?

The sources disagree about Chlodio’s father. Gregory of Tours names none. The Chronicle of Fredegar says Chlodio was the son of Theudemer, and the Liber Historiae Francorum says he was the son of Faramund.

Why is Chlodio called the Long-Haired?

Gregory of Tours says the Franks were ruled by long-haired kings from their most noble family, and Chlodio is one of the first he names. The kings of that family did not cut their hair, and a king whose hair was cut lost his rank. French tradition later called him Clodion le Chevelu, Clodion the Long-Haired.

Related Entries

Merovech, Quinotaur, Pharamond, Francus, Priam, Neptune, Minotaur, Melusine