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East Germany Medieval Germany
Merovingian Dynasty, ca. 500-751
In Gaul there was a fusion of Roman and Germanic societies.
Clovis, a Salian Frank of the family of Meroveus, became the
absolute ruler of a Germanic kingdom of mixed Roman-Germanic
population in 486. He consolidated his rule by victories over the
Gallo-Romans and all the Frankish tribes, and his successors made
other Germanic tribes tributaries of the Merovingian Dynasty. The
remaining two and one-half centuries of the dynasty, however,
were marked by internecine struggles and a state of decline.
During the dynasty, the Franks, following the baptism of Clovis,
which inaugurated the alliance between the Frankish kingdom and
the Roman Catholic Church, reluctantly began to adopt
Christianity.
Data as of July 1987
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