The bishops, on breaking up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying
him to give them the sanction of his adhesion, which he did. A few
months afterward, on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died at Paris,
and was buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, nowadays St.
Genevieve, built by his wife, Queen Clotilde, who survived him.
It was but right to make the reader intimately acquainted with that
great barbarian who, with all his vices and all his crimes, brought
about, or rather began, two great matters which have already endured
through fourteen centuries and still endure; for he founded the French
monarchy and Christian France. Such men and such facts have a right to
be closely studied and set in a clear light by history. Nothing similar
will be seen for two centuries, under the descendants of Clovis, the
Merovingians; among them will be encountered none but those personages
whom death reduces to insignificance, whatever may have been their rank
in the world, and of whom Vergil thus speaks to Dante:
"Waste we no words on them: one glance and pass thou on.
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