Clovis I

Clovis I
Baptism of Clovis, ivory book cover, 9th century
King of the Franks
Reign	509–511
Successor	Clotaire I (Soissons) Childebert I (Paris) Chlodomer (Orléans) Theuderic I (Rheims)
King of the Salian Franks
Reign	481–509
Predecessor	Childeric I
Born	466
Died	November 27, 511 (aged 44 or 45)
Burial	Originally St. Genevieve Church Now Saint-Denis Basilica
Spouse	Clotilde
Issue	Ingomer Chlodomer Childebert I Chlothar I Clotilde Theuderic I
Dynasty	Merovingian
Father	Childeric I
Mother	Basina of Thuringia
Religion	pre-Schism Catholicism

Clovis (Latin: Chlodovechus; reconstructed Frankish: *Hlōdowig;c. 466 – November 27, 511) was the first king of the Franks to unite all of the Frankish tribes under one ruler, changing the form of leadership from a group of royal chieftains to rule by a single king and ensuring that the kingship was passed down to his heirs. He is considered to have been the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries.

Clovis was the son of Childeric I, a Merovingian king of the Salian Franks, and Basina, a Thuringian princess. In 481, at the age of fifteen, Clovis succeeded his father. He conquered the remaining rump state of the Western Roman Empire at the Battle of Soissons (486), and by his death in 511 he had conquered much of the northern and western parts of what had formerly been Roman Gaul.

Clovis is important in the historiography of France as "the first king of what would become France". His name is Germanic, composed of the elements hlod ("fame") and wig ("combat"), and is the origin of the later French given name Louis, borne by 18 kings of France. Dutch, the most closely related modern language to Frankish, reborrowed the name as Lodewijk from German in the 12th century.