Clovis was the son of the pagan Frankish king Childeric and the Thuringian queen Basina. He succeeded his father in 481 as the ruler of the Salian Franks and other Frankish groups around Tournai (now in Belgium). Although the chronology of his reign is imprecise, it is certain that by the time of his death in 511 he had consolidated the Franks and expanded his influence and rule to include the Roman province of Belgica Secunda in 486 and the territories of the Alemanni (in 496), the Burgundians (in 500), and the Visigoths (in 507). Clovis’s kingdom began in the region encompassing modern Belgium and northeastern France, expanded south and west, and became the most powerful in Gaul. He was the most important Western ally of the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I. The Pactus Legis Salicae (Law of the Salian Franks), a written code combining customary law, Roman written law, Christian ideals, and royal edicts, likely originated during Clovis’s reign and had a long history of emendation and influence. Clovis married the Catholic Burgundian princess Clotilda and had five children with her. A son, Theuderic, was born prior to the marriage; his mother is unknown.
Clovis, like his father, dealt politically and diplomatically with the Catholic bishops of Gaul. These powerful figures had no qualms about working with Germanic kings, as a letter to Clovis from Bishop Remigius of Reims, written early in the king’s reign, makes clear. The bishops saw themselves as the king’s natural advisers, and, even before his conversion to Catholic Christianity and his baptism at Reims (now in France) by Remigius, Clovis apparently recognized their rights and protected their property. In a letter written to Clovis at the time of his baptism, Avitus of Vienne (now in France) praises his faith, humility, and mercy. Significantly, in the year of his death, Clovis summoned the bishops to a church council at Orléans.
