Dr. John Rao discusses Gaul and the background of the Papal-Frankish alliance. Both papal pragmatism as well as frustration with a political/religious order under the authority of the emperors in Constantinople gradually led Rome to contemplate a break with the imperium. That break would bring with it a new alliance, one with the German tribes, especially that of the Franks in Gaul. Here, Dr. John Rao traces the growth of the importance of the Franks in a still quite Roman Gaul under Clovis and the Merovingian Family.