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History of the Franks
St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927
Book 2, 29. Of Their Firstborn Son and His Death Soon After Baptism
Of Queen Clotild the king had a firstborn son whom the mother wished to be baptized; she therefore persistently urged Clovis to permit it, saying: ‘The gods whom ye worship are naught; they cannot aid either themselves or others, seeing that they are images carved of wood or stone, or metal. Moreover the names which ye have given them are the names of men and not of gods. Saturn was a man, fabled to have escaped by flight from his son to avoid being thrust from his kingdom; Jupiter also, the lewdest practiser of all debaucheries and of unnatural vice, the abuser of the women of his own family, who could not even abstain from intercourse with his own sister, as she herself admitted in the words “sister and spouse of Jove”. What power had Mars and Mercury? They may have been endowed with magical arts; they never had the power of the divine name. But ye should rather serve Him, who at His word created out of nothing the heaven and earth, the sea and all therein; who made the sun to shine and adorned the heaven with stars; who filled the waters with fish, the earth with animals, the air with birds; at whose nod the lands are made fair with fruits, the trees with apples, the vines with grapes; by whose hand the race of man was created; by whose largess every creature was made to render homage and service to the man whom he created.’ Though the queen ever argued thus, the king’s mind was nowise moved towards belief, but he replied: ‘It is by command of our gods that all things are created and come forth; it is manifest that thy god availeth in nothing; nay more, he is not even proven to belong to the race of gods.’ But the queen, true to her faith, presented her son for baptism; she ordered the church to be adorned with hangings and curtains, that the king, whom no preaching could influence, might by this ceremony be persuaded to belief. The boy was baptized and named Ingomer, but died while yet clothed in the white raiment of his regeneration. Thereupon the king was moved to bitter wrath, nor was he slow to reproach the queen, saying: ‘If the child had been dedicated in the name of my gods, surely he would have survived, but now, baptized in the name of thy God, he could not live a day.’ The queen replied: ‘I render thanks to Almighty God, Creator of all things, who hath not judged me all unworthy, and deigneth to take into His kingdom this child born of my womb. My mind is untouched by grief at this event, since I know that they which be called from this world in the white robes of baptism shall be nurtured in the sight of God.’ Afterwards she bore another son, who was baptized with the name of Chlodomer. When he too began to ail, the king said: ‘It cannot but befall that this infant like his brother shall straightway die, being baptized in the name of thy Christ.’ But the mother prayed, and God ordained that the child should recover.