Talk:Gregory of Tours
From Academic Kids
I do not think that Gregory was writing to please the Frankian kings at all! He was much more concerned with the Church and with religious matters.
- Sorry, but I think that, like Einhard a couple of centuries later, he was also somewhat concerned with the people he served. Never underestimate the importance of patronage. Who are you? JHK
- I agree with the contributor above. One must remember when reading the Historia Francorum that this is a royal history, and that Gregory was most likely writing to please his patrons. It it likely for that reason that one royal Frankish house is more generously treated than others. Gregory's chronicle just is not a 'house history' written for Merovingians, judging from the excerpts I've been reading (to which I'm creating links). I'm enlarging this entry, so there'll be plenty to pull apart. Wetman 17:04, 24 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- I would agree that Gregory's Histories was affected by the kings he served (particularly given that he was arrested for slander by Chilperic whilst writing it), and because he, and Tours, were under the jurisdiction of so many of the different Frankish kings it's interesting to see how his opinions about people change (or become more forceful) depending on the time period, who's in charge and who's dead.
- But for him religion is everything - the portents and the saints and the church are what seem to drive him to write. They're in everything and they explain everything (comets in the sky come before kings die, and bad times are coming whenever a giant shows up), in particular secular events. There was/is the argument that the History of the Franks wasn't the original name for the text, that it should be called simply the Histories. Ren 03:40, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- All these Early Medieval chronicles and histories begin at the beginning with the Creation. It means that in a history of six volumes, no one reads any but the last two... --Wetman 05:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
