Clodoald (Latin: C(h)lodoaldus, Cloudus; reconstructed Frankish: *Hlōdōwald;[4] 522 – c. 560 AD), better known as Saint Cloud (French: [klu]), was a Merovingian prince, grandson of Clovis I and son of Chlodomer, who preferred to renounce royalty and became a hermit and monk.

Clodoald found a hill along the Seine, two leagues below Paris, in a place called Novigentum (the present commune of Saint-Cloud).

Here, among the fishermen and farmers, he led a life of solitude and prayer, and built a church, which he dedicated in honor of Martin of Tours.

Upon the death of Clovis, his sons, Chlodomer, Childebert, Clothaire, and their half-brother Thierry shared the kingdom.

Sigismund's brother, Godomar III, supported by his ally and relative, the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great, slaughtered the garrison the Franks had left in Burgundy.

[6] By one account, in 525, Childebert and Clotaire asked their mother Clotilde to send them the children so that they might be proclaimed their father's successors.

At the age of twenty, Clodoald left his hermitage and appeared before the Bishop of Paris surrounded by religious and civic leaders and members of the royal family.

Childebert and Clotaire, who saw him as no threat, left him undisturbed and even gave him some inheritances to live more comfortably in the place of his retirement.

[7] Clodoald remained there eleven years, and then went back to his first hermitage, where the people greeted his return with joy.

Clodoald could not endure these honours for long, and to avoid them, retired to a hill along the Seine, two leagues below Paris, in a place called Novigentum (the present commune of Saint-Cloud).

[6] Here among the fishermen and farmers, he led a life of solitude and prayer, and built a church, which he dedicated in honor of Martin of Tours.