In the tomb of the Frankish king Childeric I (458–481 A.D.), accidentally discovered at Tournai in 1653, in an ancient cemetery of the parish church of St. Brica, were found a number of valuable relics of this sovereign, among them his signet ring. After having been taken to Vienna by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, then governor of the Low Countries, the treasure came, after his death, into the Imperial Cabinet there. In 1665 the Archbishop of Mayence secured from Emperor Leopold I permission to offer it to Louis XIV. In July of this year the precious objects were transmitted to the French king and were deposited in the Cabinet de Médailles, recently constituted in the Louvre. Shortly afterward, they were transferred to the Bibliothèque du Roi, and were safely preserved in this institution, under its changing names, until 1831, when the ring and other of the Childeric relics, as well as a number of other historic objects, were stolen from the library. The ring was never recovered. Fortunately there exists a very exact description and a figuration of the ring in an account of the treasure published in 1655, at Antwerp, by Jean Jacques Chifflet, first physician of the Archduke.[239] The ring, which is of massive gold, bears a large oval bezel on which is engraved the bust, full face. The sovereign is beardless, with long hair parted in the middle and hanging down to his shoulders. The bust is garbed in Roman style; on the tunic may be seen a decorative plaque. The king’s right hand holds a lance which rests on his shoulder, as may be observed in the imperial medals of Constantine II, Theodosius II, and their successors. The legend, in the genitive case, _Childerici Regis_, presupposes the word _signum_ or _sigillum_, as the ring was unquestionably a signet. M. Deloche considers it probable that it was made on the occasion of Childeric’s marriage with Basnia, Queen of Thuringia, who had abandoned her native land and her husband to wed the Frankish sovereign. Clovis I (481–511) was the offspring of this union. Although the original has been lost there has fortunately been preserved an imprint from it on the margin of a manuscript in the Bibliothèque de Sainte Geneviève; of the entire ring there is the carefully executed drawing made for Chifflet’s work.[240]