Portal:Ancient Germanic culture/Selected article
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The Franks were one of several west Germanic tribes who entered the late Roman Empire from Frisia as foederati and established a lasting realm in an area that covers most of modern-day France and the region of Franconia in Germany, forming the historic kernel of both these two modern countries. The conversion to Christianity of the pagan Frankish king Clovis I was a climactic event in the history of Europe.
The Frankish realm underwent many partitions and repartitions, since the Franks divided their property among surviving sons, and lacking a broad sense of a res publica, they conceived of the realm as a large extent of private property. This practice explains in part the difficulty of describing precisely the dates and physical boundaries of any of the Frankish kingdoms and who ruled the various sections. The contraction of literacy while the Franks ruled compounds the problem: they produced few written records. In essence however, two dynasties of leaders succeeded each other, first the Merovingians and then the Carolingians.
