The Life of Clovis I

This mural shows Clovis I fighting the Alemanni at Tolbiac. Clovis was the first king of the Frankish kingdom, the root of what became France. When the Roman Empire split into east and west and the Western Empire collapsed, he seized the opening to unite the Frankish tribes and found a kingdom, then pushed aggressively south to expand its territory. One look at how far his realm stretched tells you what a formidable warrior he was. Even his name fits: it combines the Old Frankish words for "fame" (hlod) and "battle" (wig), meaning "famed in battle." Of all his victories, the most famous is the Battle of Tolbiac, the scene shown here.

In the painting, Clovis is praying with his eyes on the heavens. He had marched out to help a Frankish tribe under attack by the Alemanni, but his army was too small, his remaining soldiers were exhausted, and the enemy had pushed them all the way back to Tolbiac. Even so, he refused to give up hope. According to tradition, he prayed to the God his wife believed in: "God of my wife, if you grant me victory, I will believe in you too." After that prayer, Clovis turned the battle around and won.

To the right of this mural hangs another painting, showing Clovis I being baptized. True to his promise to believe in the God who answered his prayer, he is baptized along with 3,000 of his men. At the time, most people were not Catholic but followed Arianism, which regarded Jesus as a human or a half-human, half-divine being. Clovis's baptism set off a wave of conversions to Catholicism.