June third is observed in France as the feast of St. Clotilde. She was the 5th-century wife of Clovis, pagan king of the Franks. Clotilde was a Catholic, an orthodox one at a time Arianism still had some following in what we now call France. The Franks were a Germanic tribe who, as the Western Roman Empire declined, moved into what we call France (named after them) but which the Romans called Gaul (named after the Gauls, who lost in status and country name vis-à-vis the newcomers). So, as in our day, demographic changes caused by movement of peoples mattered.

Another aspect of demography in our day is the flight from marriage and parenthood, which likewise makes the lives of Clotilde and Clovis important. They were spouses in what might in some places still be called a “mixed marriage.” They had three sons and a daughter together. What can we learn from their “mixed marriage”?

Clotilde was firm in her faith. Clovis was in no hurry to become Christian. She practiced her faith and insisted it be passed on to the next generation: the children were baptized. She also prayed for her husband, mindful of Paul’s affirmation that “the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife” (and “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?” 1 Cor 7: 14, 16). And it paid off. Like Constantine, Clovis won a battle against his enemies and attributed his victory to Christianity. This was noblesse oblige; if God helped me, I owe Him. Clovis was baptized. And with him, the Franks were, too. France — like Gaul — would remain the “Church’s eldest daughter.”

But Clotilde could not do those things — raise her kids Catholic and convert her husband — without first being firm about her own faith. Yes, there was God’s grace, but does one doubt that Clotilde really left alone the topic of religion at home? There is a reason the Church now asks the Catholic entering a “mixed marriage” to promise to raise children in the faith to which they remain committed.

No doubt there are those who will simplistically look at the Clotilde-Clovis marriage and see it as approval of interfaith or mixed marriage. That would be falsifying the picture. The point is not that it was a Catholic-pagan marriage, but that the Catholic spouse was firm in her faith. And, compared to our day, let’s ask honestly: How many mixed marriages turn into some nondescript “spiritual” miasma where the Sunday morning discussion is not going to “St. Stephen’s” versus “First Street Episcopal” but reading The New York Times Sunday Edition versus Washington Post? That was not the Clotilde-Clovis marriage.

When Clovis died, his boys (plus a son from a previous marriage) went back on the warpath, fighting over division of the inheritance. Clotilde sought to reconcile them and it’s said that one battle was avoided because she begged St. Martin of Tours, to whom she was particularly devoted, for help and a downpour kept the opponents off the battlefield. There’s no guarantee everything will turn out right; but it helps when somebody in the union/family is clear about what “right” means and stands firm for it.

Clovis’s and Clotilde’s marriage was probably arranged, as were many marriages in human history, in their case probably for power and land purposes. There’s a lesson or two to be learned there, too (though I am not advocating arranged marriages), especially for moderns. First, they also learned to love each other. Today’s focus on “soulmates” falsely assumes that “love” is largely a finished product that is or isn’t. Clovis’s and Clotilde’s marriage — like many throughout history — involved them knowing each other “enough” to consent validly to be married while leaving room to continue to get to know each other over a lifetime: through quotidian life, through children, through conversion.

There’s a scene in Fiddler on the Roof — the famous “Do You Love Me?” song (see here) — in which Tevye and Golda tell each other how “nervous” they were on their wedding day, the day they actually first met. Tevye adds, “But my father and my mother//said we’d learn to love each other” and – no matter how awkwardly they still approached the word – 25 years suggests they did learn to love each other. Again, am I advocating such arranged nuptials? No. But there is something today to be learned from the idea of “learning to love each other,” which recognizes marriage is a sacramental lifetime, not simply a moment.

And there’s a second lesson to glean here. No, I am not advocating arranged marriages. But “arrangement” takes various forms. No doubt, chieftains and powerbrokers helped “arrange” Clotilde and Clovis’s wedding. But in earlier times, so did parents and other relatives. So did friends. There was even an institution of venerable memory showcased in Fiddler: the matchmaker. And while they may not have “matched” people in ways that forced them, these “arrangements” also helped recognize that marriage as a step for one’s children and the next generation is also important to the larger community — important enough that, on a matter on which the joy or sorrows of a lifetime hangs, one should not abandon those we love to their own devices and lights. That is not to force them but to support them. In a world where young people of marriageable age still seem to have problems finding each other, would it be wrong for those who care about them to lend an “arranging” (a.k.a. “helping”) hand?