Clotilde was the daughter of King Chilperic II of Burgundy and his Catholic queen Caretena. Her uncle Gundobad killed her parents and seized the throne; Clotilde was raised in the Catholic faith despite the Arian environment of the Burgundian court. King Clovis I of the Franks asked for her hand around 492; Gundobad consented hoping to seal a political alliance.
From her marriage to Clovis until his baptism in 496 (or 508), Clotilde patiently and persistently urged her pagan husband to embrace the Catholic faith. She had their first son baptized; the child died shortly afterward, and Clovis blamed her religion. Clotilde answered with the words quoted by Gregory of Tours: 'I give thanks to the omnipotent God who has deigned to admit this child of mine to His kingdom.' She baptized their second son, who also fell ill but recovered after her prayer.
After Clovis's death in 511 she withdrew from political life to a religious life at the shrine of St. Martin at Tours, where she lived another thirty-four years in prayer and almsgiving until her death in 545. She is buried beside Clovis (originally at Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, then at Saint-Denis).