Frank summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Frank.

Frank, Member of a Germanic-speaking people who invaded the western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The Franks lived east of the Rhine River in the 3rd century and came under Roman influence. They gained control of northern Gaul by 494 and southern Gaul by 507, and the conversion of their leader Clovis I to Catholic Christianity won them the support of the clergy and the Gallo-Roman population in Gaul. The Franks established one of the most powerful kingdoms of the early Middle Ages, ruling lands in present-day France (to which they gave their name), Belgium, and western Germany. The Merovingian dynasty to which Clovis belonged was succeeded by the Carolingian dynasty, whose most notable ruler, Charlemagne, created a great empire across Christian Europe. The division of the realm in the 9th century and the subsequent dissolution of a unified Frankish empire foreshadowed the formation of the modern countries of western Europe.

Austrasia Summary

Austrasia, the eastern Frankish kingdom in the Merovingian period (6th–8th century ad) of early medieval Europe, as distinct from Neustria, the western kingdom. Its mayors of the palace, leading household and government officials under the king, were ancestors of the Carolingian dynasty. Covering

St. Gregory of Tours Summary

St. Gregory of Tours ; feast day November 17) was a bishop and writer whose Ten Books of Histories (often wrongly called The History of the Franks) is the major 6th-century source for studying the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks. Gregory’s Gallo-Roman family was prominent in both religious and