Son of Clovis, King of the Franks & his second wife Clothilde of Burgundy (501/502) -Soissons (30 Nov/31 Dec) 561, buried at Soissons, basilique Saint-Médard).

Chlotarius, son of King Clovis and his wife Clotilde, listed after Childebert. “Theodorico, Chlomiro, Hildeberto, Hlodario” are named (in order) as sons of “Chlodoveus” in the Regum Merowingorum Genealogia.

He succeeded his father in 511 as CLOTAIRIUS I King of the Franks, at Soissons, his territory covering Soissons, Laon, Noyon, Arras, Cambrai, Tournai and the lower Meuse, the lands which were later to become the Kingdom of Neustria.

In 524 AD., Chlotarius’ brother Chlodomer died in the battle against the Burgundians. Together with his brother Childebert, Chlotarius caused his two sons and heirs to be murdered and then married their mother Gontheuque so that the Kingdom of Chlodomer could be divided among the three remaining brothers (Theodorik, Childebert and Chlotarius). In 534 AD., the Duke of Burgundy and his vassals were eventually defeated and added to the Frankish Empire. In 537 AD. he made a frantic attempt to conquer Provence and succeeded. However, an attempt to capture the Visigoth Zaragoza in 542 AD. failed. In the winter of 555/556 AD. he carried out another punitive expedition against the Saxons. Since murder and manslaughter – also common in the family sphere – were very common, in 557 AD. his brother Childebert incited the Saxons to a new rebellion against Chlotarius.

While Chlotarius fought against the Saxons, his brother set fire to the area around Reims. After Childebert I died in 558 AD. Chlotarius I annexed his Kingdom with the Capital Paris. 

Radegund was born about 520 to Bertachar, one of the three Kings of the German land Thuringia. Radegund’s uncle, Hermanfrid, killed Bertachar in battle, and took Radegund into his household. After allying with the Frankish King Theuderic, Hermanfrid defeated his other brother Baderic. 

However, having crushed his brothers and seized control of Thuringia, Hermanfrid reneged on his agreement with Theuderic to share sovereignty.

In 531, Theuderic returned to Thuringia with his brother Clotaire I. Together they defeated Hermanfrid and conquered his Kingdom. Clotarius I also took charge of Radegund, taking her back to Merovingian Gaul with him. He sent the child to his villa of Athies in Picardy for several years, before marrying her in 540.

Radegund was one of Clotarius I’s six wives or concubines (the other five being Guntheuca who was the widow of his brother Chlodomer, Chunsina, Ingund, Ingund’s sister Aregund and Wuldetrada the widow of Clotaire’s grand-nephew Theudebald). She had no children with him. Radegund was noted for her almsgiving.

When Queen Radegund could no longer stand by her murderous husband, Chlotarius († 561), she took refuge with Bishop Medard of Noyon in 544, who was the brother of St Gildard, Bishop of Rouen (Both were from a noble Gallo-Roman family). He put the nun’s veil on her, at that time the ritual by which a woman took on the status of a monk. Later Radegund founded in Poitiers the convent Sainte-Croix, which after her death would be called Saint-Radegund.

The poet Venantius Fortunatus and the Bishop, hagiographer, and historian, Gregory of Tours, were close friends with Radegund and wrote extensively about her. She wrote Latin poems to Fortunatus on tablets that have been lost. The three of them seem to have been close and Fortunatus’ relations with Radegund seem to have been based on friendship.

Five English parish churches are dedicated to her, and she had a chapel in Old St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as in Gloucester, Lichfield.

Medard is said to have died of old age. On his deathbed he was visited by King Clotarius. He came to beg his pardon for all the injustices he had done to him in his life.

He inherited the territories of his great-nephew King Theodebert in 555 and those of his brother King Childebert in 558, when he became sole King of the Franks. Gregory of Tours records his death, in the fifty-first year of his reign on the first anniversary of the killing of his son Chramn, at Soissons from a fever caught while hunting in the forest of Cuise, and his burial at Soissons Saint Medard. The Marii Episcopi Aventicensis Chronica records the death in 561 of “Chlothachrius rex”

Gregory of Tours names Guntheuc as widow of King Chlodomer and records her second marriage with his brother Clotarius,

King Clotarius & his third wife had seven children.