Gregory of Tours

“ Among the narrative records of civilization inaccessible to those whose reading is confined to English texts, few are of greater historical interest than the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. ”

“ Men of the most powerful families struggled to attain this office and we can therefore judge of Gregory’s status when he tells us proudly that of the bishops of Tours from the beginning all but five were connected with him by ties of kinship. We hear much of Gregory’s paternal uncle Gallus, bishop of Auvergne, under whom he probably received his education and entered the clergy, and of his grand-uncle Nicetius, bishop of Lyons, and of his great-grandfather Gregory, bishop of Langres, in honor of whom Gregory discarded the name of Georgius Florentinus which he had received from his father. ”

“ Gregory of Tours, and Fredigarius, whose tedious and repulsive pages illustrate with considerable clearness the conflict of races and the dislocation of governments that for centuries existed. In Italy, the traditions and habits of the old Empire had in some degree reasserted their sway; but in Gaul the Church subsisted in the midst of barbarians, whose native vigour had never been emasculated by civilisation and refined by knowledge. The picture which Gregory of Tours gives us is that of a society which was almost absolutely anarchical. ”

“ Perhaps this singular adventure, which is marked with so many circumstances of truth and nature, was related by Attalus himself, to his cousin or nephew, the first historian of the Franks. Gregory of Tours 110 was born about sixty years after the death of Sidonius Apollinaris; and their situation was almost similar, since each of them was a native of Auvergne, a senator, and a bishop. The difference of their style and sentiments may, therefore, express the decay of Gaul; and clearly ascertain how much, in so short a space, the human mind had lost of its energy and refinement. ”

“ Venantius Fortunatus, who dedicated his poems to Gregory the Great, and was "the great man of letters of his age," was a poet, but a Christian poet—a writer of letters, but a close friend of holy souls, and notably of S. Radegund, the exiled princess and saint. [10] We learn from him that even in those days of blood there was a literary society at the Frankish courts, and the savage king Chilperich made pretence to be a writer, a theologian, and even a poet, though Gregory of Tours assures us that he had not the least notion of prosody. ”

“ And after Gregory of Tours (continues Bartoli) there is a further fall: "Behold Fredigarius, in whom credulity, ignorance, and confusion surpass every limit... there survives in him nothing of a previous civilization." After Fredigarius, with the monastic chronicle, we take another step down-ward toward nothingness, though this would seem to be impossible. ”

“ And so each returned to his own place. Leudast heard this and took refuge in the church of St. Peter in Paris. But when he heard the king’s edict that he should be received by no one in his kingdom, and especially because his son whom he had left at home had died, he came to Tours secretly and carried his valuables to Bourges. And when the king’s men pursued him he escaped by flight. But his wife was captured and sent into exile at a village of Tournai. But the clerk Riculf was sentenced to death. But I managed to secure his life, although I could not free him from torture. ”

“ And the king said to him: “I at first gave directions that they should ordain you bishop of Tours, but as I hear, you looked down on that church; therefore you shall be kept from becoming master of it.” And so he went off in confusion. When the king asked about the holy Eufronius they told him that he was grandson of the blessed Gregory, whom I have mentioned before. The king answered: [BF] “It is a great and leading family. Let the will of God and the blessed Martin be done ”

“ Everywhere we can read in the lines and between the lines Gregory’s single-minded devotion to the church and above all to the cult of St. Martin.
The great value of Gregory’s writings is that we get in them an intimate view of sixth-century ideas. At first sight, perhaps, we seem to have incongruous elements which from the modern viewpoint we cannot bring into harmony with one another. Credulity and hard-headed judgment appear side by side. How could Gregory be so shrewd and worldly-minded in his struggle with Chilperic and at the same time show such an appetite for the miraculous? ”

“ Mystical healing was adjusted to an everyday basis as many “cases” cited by Gregory indicate. Many like the following are found: “Charigisil, king Clothar’s secretary, whose hands and feet were made helpless by a humor, came to the holy church, and devoting himself to prayer for two or three months, was visited by the blessed bishop [30] and had the merit to obtain health in his crippled limbs. He was later domesticus of the king I have mentioned, and did many kindnesses to the people of Tours and the officials of the holy church.” ”

“ But in the thirty-third year after his ordination there arose against him a lamentable ground for accusation. For a woman to whom his servants used to give his garments to be washed, one who had changed her garb on the pretext of religion, conceived and bore a child. Because of this the whole population of Tours arose in wrath and laid the whole blame on the bishop, wishing with one accord to stone him. For they said: “The piety of a holy man has too long been a cover for your wantonness. But God does not any longer allow us to be polluted by kissing your unworthy hands.” ”

“ Falling seriously ill, he went to Tours to seek a cure at the tomb of St Martin. At Tours he lived with Euphronius, and so great was the young man’s popularity that, on the death of Euphronius in 573, the people unanimously designated him bishop.
At that time Tours belonged to Austrasia, and King Sigebert hastened to confirm Gregory’s election. After the assassination of Sigebert (575) , the province was ruled by Chilperic for nine years, during which period Gregory displayed the greatest energy in protecting his town and church from the Frankish king. ”

“ Bishop Gunthar died at Tours, and at a suggestion, it is said, of bishop Cautinus the priest Cato was requested to undertake the government of the church at Tours. And the clergy accompanied by Leubastes, keeper of the relics and abbot, went in great state to Clermont. And when they had declared the king’s will to Cato he would not answer them for a few days. But they wished to return and said: “Declare your will to us so that we may know what we ought to do; otherwise we will return home. ”

“ And so allow me to tell you that I have married her, which I think will not displease you.” And she replied; “Let my Lord do what seems good in his eyes; only let his handmaid live in favor with the king.”
Now Gunthar, Chramnus and Childeric died in their father’s lifetime. Of the death of Chramnus I shall write later. And Albin, king of the Lombards, married Chlotsinda, his daughter. Injuriosus, bishop of Tours, died in the seventeenth year of his episcopate and Baudinus, a former official of king Clothar, succeeded him, the sixteenth after the death of the blessed Martin. ”

“ Chilperic used often to say: “Behold our treasury has remained poor, our wealth has been transferred to the churches; there is no king but the bishops; my office has perished and passed over to the bishops of the cities.” [36] Chilperic was thus the forerunner of the secular state in France.
E. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Besides Clermont and Tours in which cities Gregory spent most of his life we hear of stays at Poitiers, Saintes, Bordeaux, Riez, Cavaillon, Vienne, Lyons, Chalon-sur-Saône, Châlons-sur-Marne, Rheims, Soissons, Metz, Coblentz, Braine, Paris, Orleans. ”

“ In the hundred and sixtieth year after that holy and praiseworthy man, the blessed bishop Martin, was taken up to heaven, when the holy bishop Eufronius was governing the church of Tours in his seventh year, and in the second year of the glorious king Sigibert, I became ill with malignant pimples and fever, and being unable to eat or drink I was reduced to such a state that I lost all hope of the present life and thought of nothing but of the details of my burial. For death was constantly raging at me, eager to separate my soul from my body. ”

“ And when I would not give it he was full of rage and vented on me, as I have said, a thousand insults. I finally replied to him: “Remember the words of the prophet: ‘Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field! They are not going to inhabit the earth alone, are they?’ I wish you had been bishop of Marseilles! For ships would never have brought oil or other goods there, but only paper that you might have greater opportunity for writing to defame honest men. It is the scarcity of paper that sets a limit to your wordiness.” He was a man of unlimited greed and boastfulness. ”

“ It should be remembered that in these cases the point is that Gregory is applying his theory of life to a concrete situation in such a way that the contrast between the modern attitude and that of the dark ages is brought out strongly. His view of the material world was not one that laid any stress upon natural cause and effect, but rather upon supernatural cause and natural effect. ”

“ P. 159, l. 7. Gregory attributes the assassination of Sigibert to Fredegunda (p. 100) .
[DM] P. 159, l. 17. Bourges belonged to Gunthram; Tours, Poitiers, Angers, Nantes, to Chilperic.
[DN] P. 162, l. 15. The Mummolus mentioned here is a different person from Mummolus the patrician. See Index.
[DO] P. 162, l. 26. Gregory’s attitude toward the story in general is not skeptical; but he regarded the diabolical powers as always deceitful. Cf. p. 116: “What the devil promises is not to be believed.”
[DP] P. 163, l. 29. To take Riguntha as bride of the king of Spain. ”

“ In the first place, although part of Gregory’s narrative deals with events and men of great importance, there are long sections dealing with happenings which in themselves are not worth our remembering. Yet, if one views the work as a source for the history of society rather than merely as a narrative of the acts of kings, queens, or saints, it is often these relatively unimportant events which are most instructive and interesting; for Gregory’s picture of manners and customs is given by way of a story of what real people actually did and said. ”

“ After reading it the intelligent modern will no longer have pleasing illusions about sixth-century society.
Gregory’s life covers the years from 538 to 594. He was a product of central Gaul, spending his whole life in the Loire basin except for brief stays elsewhere. [1] The river Loire may be regarded as the southern limit of Frankish colonization and Gregory therefore lived on the frontier of the barbarians. He was born and grew up at Clermont in Auvergne, a city to which an inexhaustibly fertile mountain valley is tributary. In this valley his father owned an estate. ”

“ These works represent two sides of Gregory’s experience,—​his profession, and his relations with the Merovingian state.
In the former sphere the overshadowing interest was the miraculous. We have eight books devoted to miracles and it may be said that as a churchman Gregory never got very far away from them. It is idle to discuss the question whether he believed in them or not. It is more to the point to attempt to appreciate the part they played in the thought and life of the time. ”

“ The “virtue” which this person possessed was mystic potency, which was not moral but a supernatural force. The orthodox of course called the saint good, but this was merely because they were on the same side, just as Cicero for example six centuries before called the members of his political party the boni. Gregory’s moral praise or blame is distributed in the same way. When he praises a man we must look for the service done by this man to [Pg xxii] the church, and when he blames one we must look in like manner for the opposite. ”

“ Gottschalk, abbat of Saint Eloy, 163 Gottschalk the predestinarian, 44 sq. ; cf. 39 n. 27, 47 Greek learning among the Irish, 11, 50 sq. ; in England, 17; cf. 19 n. 21 : on the continent, 74, 277 sq. : cf. 271 sq. Gregory, saint, the Great, 7 Gregory II, 275 n. 4 Gregory VII, see Hildebrand Gregory IX, 218, 219 Gregory XI, 248 n. 2, 255 Gregory of Tours, 66 Grimbald, 273 sqq. Grimoald, duke of Benevento, 38 Guitmund, archbishop of Aversa, 76 Gundobad, king of the Burgun- dians, 39 Hadrian II, 82 Hadrian IV, 187, 204 Hadrian, abbat of Canterbury, 16 sq. ”

“ And when king Chilperic could not keep his army from plundering he slew the count of Rouen with the sword and thus returned to Paris, leaving all the booty and giving up the captives. And the besiegers of Bourges, on receiving orders to return home, took with them so much plunder that all the district they left was believed to be emptied of men and domestic animals. The army of Desiderius and Bladast went through the land of Tours and burned, plundered, and slew, as is the custom with enemies, and they took captives, the most of whom they spoiled and afterwards let go. ”

“ The bishop rejoiced at seeing them, and wept on the neck of Attalus his nephew; he set Leo free from the yoke of slavery with all his family, and gave him land of his own, on which he lived a free man with his wife and children all the days of his life.
[16. Sigivald, duke of Auvergne, is miraculously punished for taking church property. 17. Seven successive bishops of Tours are mentioned, one of them, Leo, being “a man of energy and skill in the building of wooden structures.”] ”