Chilperic I imposes baptism on the Jews of the kingdom; the merchant Priscus, who refuses, is murdered

Chilpéric Iᵉʳ, king of Neustria, imposed baptism on the Jews of his kingdom and himself served as godfather to several of them — a practice that made the sovereign the personal guarantor of the converts.

Grégoire de Tours recounts the case of Priscus, a Jewish merchant attached to the king for his purchases, who refused baptism and was imprisoned. The king and he held, in the presence of the bishop, a disputation on the Scriptures of which the chronicler gives a detailed account. Priscus was finally permitted to leave to give his son in marriage at Marseille; he was murdered along the way by Phatir, a convert, who took refuge in a church before being killed in turn in an act of vengeance.

The account speaks at once to the coercion exercised upon the community and to the position a Jew could hold in the household of a Merovingian king.