Salian Franks

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The Salian Franks were a subgroup of the Franks who had been living North and East of the limes in the Dutch coastal area. From the 5th century they migrated throughout Belgium and to northern France, then formed a kingdom in northern France and on coasts north of it. This kingdom was the nucleus of the future Kingdom of France.

They are distinguished from the Ripuarian Franks. The name Ripuarian is believed to mean 'river-dwelling'. The name Salian may refer to salt and, by extension, the sea, i.e. 'sea-dwelling'. Alternatively, it may be derived from the Roman name for a river in The Netherlands: Isala, a branch of the Rhine currently named IJssel in Dutch. In the third century A.D., the Romans may have named the Germanic tribe living in this area after this river. Even nowadays, this area is called Salland.

From this area, the Salian Franks occupied the Rhine delta in the fourth and the fifth centuries and moved further south, with the Belgian city of Tournai becoming the center of their domain. Later still, they again moved south and gained control over Roman Gaul, i.e. France, which bears its current name after them.

The Salian Franks formed the foundation for early Dutch culture and society.

The adjective Salian as applied to the Frankish people is the origin of the name of the Salic Law.

By the 9th century, if not earlier, the division between Salian and Ripuarian Franks had in practice become virtually non-existent, but continued for some time to have implications for the legal system under which a person could go on trial.

In 451, Flavius Aëtius , de facto ruler of the Western Roman Empire, called upon his Germanic allies on Roman soil to help fight off an invasion by Attila's Huns. The Salian Franks answered the call.

In Gaul a fusion of Roman and Germanic societies was occurring. During the period of Merovingian rule, the Franks reluctantly began to adopt Christianity following the baptism of Clovis I, an event that inaugurated the alliance between the Frankish kingdom and the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike their Goth and Lombard counterparts the Salians adopted Catholic Christianity early on; they had an intimate relationship with their ecclesiastical hierarchy, subjects, and conquered territories.

Clovis, a Salian Frank belonging to a family supposedly descended from a mythical hero named Merovech, became the absolute ruler of a Germanic kingdom of mixed Roman-Germanic population in 486. He consolidated his rule with victories over the Gallo-Romans and all the Frankish tribes and established his capital in Paris. His successors drove the Visigoths from southern France and conquered the Alemanni, Burgundians, and Thuringians. The remaining 250 years of the dynasty, however, were marked by internecine struggles and a gradual decline.

Since after the conversion there was no applicable custom for ordering the succession, Frankish society no longer hinged on the religious cult of the royal lineage. Royal succession became more of matter of customary law and the monarchy was henceforth sustained by the church hierarchy instead of by the people at large. This change in society kickstarted the system of European Monarchies.

The division of the Frankish kingdom among Clovis’s four sons (511) was an unfortunate precedent that would influence Frankish history for more than three centuries, and it appears like an exercise in interpretation, rather than simple implementation of a new model of succession. No trace of an established practice of territorial division can in fact be discovered among Germanic peoples other than the Franks.