I've earlier discussed the Merovingian kings of the Franks, considered the first French dynasty, who ruled what is now France from the late fifth century to the middle of the eighth, when they were replaced on the throne by the Carolingians. Although French students learn about them just as we learn about Columbus and George Washington, it's probably fair to say that not one person in America who is not a medievalist ever heard of them, or of the baptism of Clovis, considered a great turning point in the Christianization of the Germanic peoples.
But this was not always the case! In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American writers often discussed the Merovingians, as a foil to the new republic just being properly established, or even as a way to understand the French, who had been major allies during the American Revolution and who began their own French Revolution in the same year as the American Constitution was adopted (1789).
Even American school children learned about the Merovingians back then. British accounts of what they called "universal" history (or, more accurately, western history) began their discussion of post-classical history with the "fall of Rome," with Anglo-Saxons invading Britain and Germanic peoples like the Franks becoming established in the old Roman Empire in Continental Europe. These British accounts formed the basis of American history books.
(The mind boggles when one realizes how much more a twelve-year-old was expected to read, understand, and remember of historical events, two centuries ago.)
Writers and political theorists, including President John Adams, had much to say about the Merovingians. Adams himself saw the consecration of Clovis with holy oil, as shown in the ivory carving above (note the dove bringing the ampoule), as an example of what the US had to avoid, in that he didn't want any divine aura hanging around our leaders. Others however saw the mixing of Roman and Germanic in what is now France as a sign that people of different backgrounds and ethnic origins could work together in this new country.
In trying to understand France, some looked at the French Revolution as the final breaking away from tyrannical kingship, that had been holding the French back since the fifth century. Others, on the contrary, saw the violence that grew out of the French Revolution as a sign that the French were just inherently violent, as they had been ever since the days of Clovis. In any event, these writers had a lot to say about the Merovingians.
Merovingian-era documents could even be used to justify slavery. After all, Roman slavery continued under the Franks until the sixth century, and household slavery for several centuries after that, with plenty of legal justification. Slave-holders could try to pass off the relatively recent enslavement of Africans to work in the New World as just the continuation of a thousand-year-old practice.
In all of this, one can see that history is not simply events in the past, that stay where you put them. History is a form of memory, and people are constantly making choices about what to remember and how to interpret past events in light of present concerns.
Gregory I. Halfond has recently published a book on how the Merovingians became a major topic of discussion in the new American republic, Writing about the Merovingians in the Early United States (2023).
© C. Dale Brittain 2024
