He protected his nephews against the practices of the wicked Dowager Queen, Brunehault of Sigebert and Fredegonde of Chilperic, the firebrands of France. He divorced his wife, Mercatrude; some time later she became seriously ill and when her physician could not cure her, he had the doctor murdered. These crimes are laid to his charge but upon his conversion to Christianity, he was so overcome with remorse for the acts of his prior life, that by tears of repentance., he sought to make reparation for his sins.
He governed his Kingdom, studying rather to promote the temporal happiness of others than his own, a stranger to the passions of pride, jealousy and ambition and making piety the only rule of his policy.
The prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condemns those who think that human policy cannot be modelled by the maxims of the Gospel, whereas nothing can render a government more flourishing.
He always treated the Priests of the Church with respect and veneration, regarding them as his fathers and honoring and consulting them as his masters. He was the protector of the oppressed and the tender parent of his subjects, whom he treated as his children. He poured out his treasures among them with a holy profusion, especially in the time of a pestilence and famine. He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick.
He fasted, prayed, wept and offered himself to God night and day, as a victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of his justice, to avert his indignation, which he believed he himself had provoked and drawn down upon his innocent people.
He was a severe punisher of crimes in his officers and others and, by many wholesome regulations, restrained the barbarous licentiousness of his troops but no man was more ready to forgive offences against his own person. He contented himself with imprisoning a man who, through the instigation of Queen Fredegonde, had attempted to stab him and he spared another assassin sent by the same wicked woman because he had taken shelter in a Church.
This good King died on the 28th of March, in 592, having reigned thirty-one years and some months. He was buried in the Church of Saint Marcellus, which he had founded.
The Huguenots scattered his relics in the sixteenth century, only his skull escaped their fury and is now kept there in a silver case.
