Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Saint Clotilda

CLOTILDA, Saint (475-5 io), was the daughter of Chilperic, king of Burgundy, and the wife of Clovis, king of the Franks. Her father, mother, and brothers were put to death by Gundebald, her uncle, but Clotilda was spared and educated. Gundebald opposed her marriage with Clovis, but by the aid of the clergy she escaped to the Frankish court (493), was married, and, having adhered all along to the pure Catholic faith of her mother, effected the conversion of Clovis to Christianity (49G). He lost no time in avenging the murder of his wife's parents; Gundebald was defeated, and became his tributary. After her husband's death Clotilda persuaded her three sons Clodomir, Childebert, and Clotaire to renew the quarrel, and to visit on Sigismund, Guudebald's son, his father's crime. The war which followed resulted in the union of Burgundy to the Frank empire. Clotilda retired to Tours, and practised there the austerities of a devout life till her death. She was buried in the Parisian church of St Genevieve, which Clovis had built, and was canonized a few years afterwards by Pelagius I. Her remains, preserved till the Revolution, were burned at that period by the devout Abbe" Rousselet, who dreaded their desecration; the ashes are now in the little church of St Leu. A statue of her adorns the Luxembourg, and a splendid church has recently been erected in her honour in Paris, not far from the spot where her bones rested during so many centuries. See France.