Practice question · Multiple choice
Clovis converted to Nicene rather than Arian Christianity, unlike almost every other Germanic king of his generation. How did that choice strengthen the Frankish monarchy?
Hints
- Consider who held real local authority in Gaulish cities after the imperial administration thinned out.
- The bishops were the surviving administrative class, and they were Nicene.
Show the answer
A. It turned Gallo-Roman bishops into key allies rather than hostile rivals.
Why
Bishops were the effective governors of Gaulish cities and were Nicene to a man. An Arian king faced them as a heretic ruling over the orthodox; Clovis faced them as a patron. Every other Germanic kingdom carried that religious fault line, and every other one was eventually destroyed or converted away from Arianism.
Practise Late Antiquity and the Germanic Kingdoms
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History II is free to start.
More questions on Late Antiquity and the Germanic Kingdoms
- Arrange these turning points in the western empire’s dissolution, earliest first.
- Odoacer deposed the last western emperor in 476 and sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople rather than…
- Germanic settlements arose through negotiated accommodation rather than wholesale external destruction. What…
- The Germanic successor kingdoms discarded Roman law and Roman administration and governed by custom alone.
- Sort each piece of evidence by whether it supports CONTINUITY across the fifth century or a genuine material…
- Complete the account of the religious division between the Germanic kingdoms and their subjects.
- In which year was Romulus Augustulus deposed, the date conventionally given for the fall of the western Roman…
- Which claims about the "fall versus transformation" debate are defensible on the evidence?
- Match each Germanic kingdom to the territory it came to hold.
- At Adrianople in 378 the eastern emperor Valens was killed by Gothic forces the empire had itself admitted…
- Arrange the stages by which a Germanic war-band typically became a territorial kingdom.