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47 



While Rome yet withstood to some extent, the barbarian 

 hordes, old Clovis the son of Childeric, having permitted 

 himself to get entangled with the Alemanni and finding his 

 own people on the verge of a catastrophy, pledged himself 

 to become one of the new sect called Christians if their god 

 y could relieve the most pressing of his necessities. At this 

 stage of the tradition obviously paganism intervenes, for the 

 prayer of Clovis the pledged Christian is recognised rather 

 by the gods of Olympus than by the single deity of the newer 

 religion, and we see Clovis comforted by a message straight 

 from heaven, conveyed as a message from heaven to earth- 

 bom man had always been and would in mythology of ^/^ 

 necessity be conveyed, by the customary Olympian messen- 

 ger service, and we find Iris selected for the duty, with blue 

 uniform, albeit without brass buttons or a blank receipt to 

 be signed on the dotted line; but symbolising her position 

 with less up-to-date crudeness and more romance by leaving 

 in the hands of Clovis a branch of her own iris plant as a 

 souvenir of the occasion. Either by way of keeping the 

 pledge which he had made or merely for the good which he 

 foresaw would come of it (being something of an oppor- 

 tunist) Clovis embraced Christianity and the fleur-de-lys 

 became an object of veneration to be made later on in the 

 days of chivalry and true heraldic rules and laws, a part of 

 the pride and blazon of France. Officially it first appears in 

 an ordonnance of Louis le Jeune about 1 147 soon after which 

 it is found as a very common charge in the arms of the 



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