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The Franks or the Frankish peoples were mainly proto-German speaking peoples such as the Salians, Sicambri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chattuarii, Bructeri, Usipetes, Ampsivarii. These peoples formed one of several ever changing west Germanic federations and first appeared in history around 260. Sometimes they allied with non-Dutch, or Old Frankish speaking tribes as the Frisians and Chatti and occasionally with Saxons. They were not originally grouped into one official tribe, but "as with the other barbarians, they belonged to much smaller groups that would join constantly changing confederations."[1] Most of those peoples were living at the northern borders of the Rhine in, and opposite to the Insula Batavorum in a region then called "Francia" in the Panegyrici Latini. They formed a constant pressure on the Roman borders but also took active service in the Roman army, climbing up the ranks to dominating positions, such as at the time of Arbogastes. They slowly replaced the Batavians in their native domains and according to Ammianus Marcellinus expanded their territory on Roman soil to the delta of the Scheldt, where the Salians blocked grain supplies for the Roman Army. With later invasions of the Salians Chlodio and Childeric they moved up the Scheldt and homed around Tournai, from where those Salians finally conquered the Roman army, that was supported by other Franks.
The Merovingian family of Childeric united all Franks in Gaul and slowly expanded their influence to other territories untill a new dynastie called the Carolingians took over and conquered a major part of western Europe. The location of Francia moved with the Franks untill finally around the year 1000 it became to be known as France.
Some histories asserted that the Merovingian kings were descended from the Sicambri, a Germanic tribe, asserting that this tribe had changed their name to "Franks" in 11 BC, following their defeat and relocation by Drusus, under the leadership of a certain chieftain called Francio. The Chronicle of Fredegar is the earliest source for this chieftain, and it is widely agreed among historians (including A. C. Murray, Ian Woods, Rosamund McKitterick, and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill) that "Francio" is a Fredegarian invention.
The ethnonym has also been traced to *frankon (Old English franca), meaning "javelin, lance." This would compare to the seax (knife) after which the Saxons were named or the halberd (battle-axe) after which the Lombards may have been named. The throwing axe of the Franks is known as the francisca) but, conversely, the weapon may have been named after the tribe. A. C. Murray says, "The etymology of 'Franci' is uncertain ('the fierce ones' is the favourite explanation), but the name is undoubtedly of Germanic origin."[2]
The meaning of "free" (e.g. English frank, frankly, franklin) arose because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks had the status of freemen.
The earliest Frankish history remains relatively unclear. Our main source, the Gallo-Roman chronicler Gregory of Tours, whose Historia Francorum (History of the Franks) covers the period up to 594, quotes from otherwise lost sources like Sulpicius Alexander and Frigeridus, and profits from Gregory's personal contact with many Frankish notables. Apart from Gregory's History, some surviving earlier Roman sources such as Ammianus and Sidonius Apollinaris mention the Franks.
Gregory states that the Franks originally lived in Pannonia, but later settled on the banks of the Rhine. Additional sources beginning with the 7th century Chronicle of Fredegar and the anonymous work called Gesta regnum Francorum (completed 727) likewise relate that a Cimmerian or Scythian tribe called the Sicambri migrated in prehistoric times from the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea to the Rhine, where they took the name "Franks." This legend of a Scythian or Cimmerian background is not unique to the Franks; it is similar to the origin legends of many other European nations as well.
Modern scholars of the Völkerwanderung are in agreement that the Frankish confederacy emerged at the beginning of the third century out of the unification of various earlier, smaller groups, including the Sicambri, Usipetes, Tencterii, and Bructerii, who inhabited the lower Rhine valley and lands immediately to the east. The confederacy was a social development perhaps accelerated by increasing upheaval in the area arising from the war between Rome and the Marcomanni beginning in 166 and subsequent conflicts of the late second and the third centuries. A region in the northeast of today's Netherlands — north of the erstwhile Roman border — still bears the name Salland, and may have received that name from the Salians, who formed the core of the Frankish pirates.
Since the very end of the second century, Franks appear in Roman textual and archeological sources and on Roman soil as both enemies and allies (laeti or dediticii). Around 250, one group of Franks, taking advantage of a weakened Roman Empire, penetrated as far as Tarragona in present-day Spain, plaguing this region for about a decade before Roman forces subdued them and expelled them from Roman territory. About forty years later, the Franks had the Scheldt region under control and were raiding the Channel, disrupting transportation to Britain. Roman forces pacified the region, but did not expel the Franks, who were feared as pirates along the shores at least till the time of Julian the Apostate (358), when some of them were settled as foederati in Toxandria according to a treaty with the Roman authority. They participated in the spectacular episode known as the Conspiratio Barbarica (367–369).
The Old Frankish language spoken by the early Franks is not directly attested, but it left its imprint on many Old French and even Latin loanwords. It evolved into Old Low Franconian in the Low Countries and from the 7th century was replaced by Old French further south. It may have been extinct by the 8th century.
There is no surviving work of literature in the Frankish language and no work may ever have existed. Latin was the written language of Gaul before and during the Frankish period. Of the Gallic works which survive, there are a few chronicles, many hagiographies and saints' lives, and a small corpus of poems.
The Franks originally followed a form of Germanic paganism, but in 496, their king, Clovis I, who had married a Burgundian Roman Catholic named Clotilda, was baptised into the Catholic faith by Saint Remi. This event had an immense impact on the history of Europe, for at the time the Franks were the only major Germanic tribe in communion with Rome. Their contemporary rivals, the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Lombards, were of the Arian persuasion.
Frankish art and architecture belong to that of phase of European art called Migration Period art. It was followed by a period called the Pre-Romanesque.
Very little is preserved in the way of Frankish architecture of the Merovingian period. The works of Gregory of Tours praise the churches of his day, but the most commonly given example of Merovingian architecture is a baptistery dedicated to Saint John in Poitiers. It is a small building with little pattern or cohesive style, it is largely a hodgepodge of borrowed Roman devices.
What is preserved of the visual and plastic arts largely consists of jewellery (such as brooches), weapons (such as swords with decorative hilts), and apparel (such as capes and sandals) found in grave sites, such as the famous grave of the queen Aregund, discovered 1959. Not many illuminated manuscripts survive from the Merovingian period, though the few that do contain a great deal of zoomorphic representations.
By the sixth century, there persisted two basic legal subdivisions within the Frankish nation: the Salian and the Ripuarian, following the Lex Salica and the Lex Ribuaria respectively. By the ninth century, if not earlier, this division 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.
The early political history of the Franks is largely unknown. The earliest recorded tribal chieftains have more to do with legend than fact. What is clear, is that Frankish chieftains from the late fifth century had as a goal the unification of their confederacy under one king, in like manner to the Goths and Vandals who had established kingdoms on former Roman territory.
The first Frankish chief to make himself "King of the Franks" (rex Francorum) was Clovis I in 509. He had conquered the Kingdom of Soissons of the Roman general Syagrius and expelled the Visigoths from southern Gaul at the Battle of Vouillé, thus establishing Frankish hegemony over all of Gaul save Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany, which he left to his successors, the Merovingians, to conquer.
Clovis divided his realm between his four sons in a manner which would become familiar, as his sons and grandsons in turn divided their kingdoms between their sons. Clovis' sons united to defeat Burgundy in 534, but internecine feuding came to the fore during the reigns of the brothers Sigebert I and Chilperic I and their sons and grandsons, largely fueled by the rivalry of the queens Fredegunda and Brunhilda. This period saw the emergence of three distinct regna (realms or subkingdoms): Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy. Each region developed in its own way and often sought to exert influence over the others. The rising star of the Arnulfing clan of Austrasia meant that the centre of political gravity in the kingdom gradually shifted eastwards from Paris and Tours to the Rhineland.
The Frankish realm was united again in 613 by Chlothar II, son of Chilperic. Chlothar granted the Edict of Paris to the nobles in an effort to cut down on corruption and unite his vast realm under his authority. After the militarily successful reign of his son and successor Dagobert I, royal authority rapidly declined under a series of kings traditionally known as rois fainéants. By 687, after the Battle of Tertry, the chronicler could say that the mayor of the palace, formerly the king's chief household official, "reigned." Finally, in 751, with the approval of the papacy and the nobility, the mayor Pepin the Short deposed the last Meroving, Childeric III, and had himself crowned, inaugurating a new dynasty, the Carolingians.
The unification of most of what is now western and central Europe under one chief ruler provided a fertile ground for the continuation of what is known as the Carolingian Renaissance. Despite the almost constant internecine warfare that the Carolingian Empire endured, the extension of Frankish rule and Roman Christianity over such a large area ensured a fundamental unity throughout the Empire. Each part of the Carolingian Empire developed differently; Frankish government and culture depended very much upon individual rulers and their aims. Those aims shifted as easily as the changing political alliances within the Frankish leading families. However, those families, the Carolingians included, all shared the same basic beliefs and ideas of government. These ideas and beliefs had their roots in a background that drew from both Roman and Germanic tradition, a tradition that began before the Carolingian ascent and continued to some extent even after the deaths of Louis the Pious and his sons.
Because the Frankish kingdom dominated Western Europe for centuries, terms derived from "Frank" were used by many in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and beyond as a synonym for Roman Christians (e.g., al-Faranj in Arabic, farangi in Persian, Frenk in Turkish, Feringhi in Hindustani, and Frangos in Greek). See also Thai ฝรั่ง farang[1]. During the crusades, which were at first led mostly by nobles from northern France who claimed descent from Charlemagne, both Muslims and Christians used these terms as ethnonyms to describe the Crusaders. This usage is often followed by modern historians, who call Western Europeans in the eastern Mediterranean "Franks" regardless of their country of origin. Compare with Rhomaios, Rûmi ("Roman"), used for Orthodox Christians. Catholics on various islands in Greece are still referred to as Φραγκοι, "Frangoi" (Franks). Examples include the naming of a Catholic from the Island of Syros as "Frangosyrianos" (Φραγκοσυριανος).
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