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family and friendship in the west 429
destined for heaven, whilst brusquely telling the king to turn his mind back
to the matter of government. 121 So, too, Remigius counselled the Frankish
king, Clovis, against excessive grief following the death of a sister, and
reminded him of the necessity of ruling. 122 Perhaps unexpectedly,
Germanic kings of the migration period were genuinely overcome with
grief at the loss of close female relatives. Nor is it only the grief of kings
about their womenfolk that is recorded in the sources: Radegund’s sorrow
at the death of her cousin, Amalfred, in far-away Byzantium is preserved
in a poem of Venantius Fortunatus, 123 while Brunhild’s concerns for her
daughter, Ingund, and her grandson, Athanagild, who also died in
Byzantine territory, are the subject of numerous letters. 124
Clovis’ concern for his family involved more than his immediate kin –
though it did not extend to distant cousins. 125 His attitude towards his
ancestors seems to have been a factor in his initial unwillingness to convert
to Catholicism. Avitus of Vienne congratulated him on abandoning their
beliefs. 126 The bishop’s positive comments suggest that Clovis had reservations
about abandoning his predecessors much as Radbod, king of the
Frisians, is said to have done in the eighth century: on hearing that they
would remain in hell while he would be welcomed to heaven, Radbod opted
for their company, according to a somewhat picaresque story, which cannot
be historically accurate in its current form, but which may reflect a genuine
dilemma for Germanic peoples on the verge of Christianity. 127 Oddly
enough, having abandoned the religion of his father, Childeric, Clovis and
his successors seem quickly to have forgotten the exact whereabouts of
Childeric’s grave 128 – which contrasts rather sharply with Sidonius’ concern
for the burial place of his grandfather. It is all the more remarkable in that
feasts at the graves of the dead were a continuing problem for those intent
on the Christianization of the Germanic peoples – suggesting that the
grave and continuing rituals associated with it were a central focus even for
the non-aristocratic family. 129
Comparison between the Roman and the Germanic family, at least at the
highest level of society, does not suggest a simple contrast between
complex Roman structures and clear-cut, agnatic, Germanic structures.
This is true even if one considers a practice supposedly central to the kinbased
structures of Germanic society and, one might assume, absent from
a society ordered by the rational processes of Roman law: the feud. The
feud could be, as has long been recognized, a force for order rather than
121 Avitus, Ep. 5. 122 Epist. Austras. 1, ed. W. Gundlach, MGH, Epistolae 3 (Berlin 1892).
123 Venantius Fortunatus, Carm. Ad Artachin (Appendix iii).
124 Epist. Austras. 27, 28, 43, 44, 45. 125 Greg. Tur. Hist. ii.42. 126 Avitus, Ep. 46.
127 Vita Vulframni 9, ed. W. Levison, MGH, SRM 5 (Hanover 1910); Lebecq (1994).
128 Wood, Merovingian Kingdoms 44. The fact that a church of St Brice was later built in the neighbourhood
may, however, indicate that some tradition of Merovingian association with the cemetery
remained. 129 Concilium Germanicum 5, ed. A. Werminghoff, MGH, Concilia 2 (Hanover 1906–8).
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