Gregory of Tours

Gregory of Tours (c. 538 - November 17, 594?) was a Gallo-Roman historian and bishop of Tours, which made him the leading prelate of Gaul. He wrote in a clumsy, ungrammatical and barbarized late Latin attempt at a literary style, which is nevertheless full of vitality and of many Frankish and Germanic terms. When inspiration fails, he is quick to fall back on the linguistic formulae of doctrine. He is the main contemporary source for Merovingian history. His most notable work was his Decem Libri Historiarum or Ten Books of History, better known as the Historia Francorum ("History of the Franks"), a title given to it by later chroniclers, but he is also known for his credulous accounts of the miracles of saints, especially four books of the miracles of Martin of Tours. St Martin's tomb was a major draw in the 6th century, and Gregory's writings had the practical aspect of promoting this highly organized cultus. Gregory has been canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic church. Gregory shares the Gaulish appetite for miraculous events--the more incredible, the more thrilling.

Gregory was born into the upper stratum of Gallo-Roman society, of senatorial rank on both sides as he tells us, in Clermont, in the Auvergne region of central Gaul. Of the bishops of Tours from the beginning, all but five were connected with him by ties of kinship. He spent most of his career at Tours, though he travelled as far as Paris. The rough world he lived in was on the cusp of the dying world of Antiquity and the new barbarian culture of early medieval Europe (the "Dark Ages" according to 19th century historians). Gregory lived also on the border between the Frankish culture of the Merovingians to the north and the Gallo-Roman culture of the south of Gaul.

At Tours, Gregory could not have been better placed to hear everything and meet everyone of influence in Merovingian culture. Tours lay on the watery highway of the navigable Loire. Five Roman roads radiated from Tours, which lay on the main thoroughfare between the Frankish north and Aquitania, with Spain beyond. At Tours the Frankish influences of the north and the Gallo-Roman influences of the south had their chief contact (see map). As the center for the popular cult of St Martin, Tours was a pilgrimage site, hospital, and a political sanctuary to which important leaders fled during the violence and turmoil of Merovingian disorder.

Gregory struggled through personal relations with four Frankish kings, Sigebert I, Chilperic I, Guntram, and Childebert I and he personally knew most of the leading Franks.

Gregory's canonization as a saint of the Roman Catholic church may make some readers uneasy about criticizing him as a chronicler. "It is rather as an unconscious revelation that the work is of especial value," is the way his translator, Ernest Brehaut, introduced the work in 1915.

The Historia Francorum is in ten books. Books I to IV recount the world's history from the Creation but move quickly to the Christianization of Gaul, the conversion of the Franks and the conquest of Gaul under Clovis, and the more detailed history of the Frankish kings down to the death of Sigebert in 575. At this date Gregory had been bishop of Tours for two years.

The second part, books V and VI, closes with Chilperic's death in 584. During the years that Chilperic held Tours, relations between him and Gregory were tense. After hearing rumours that the Bishop of Tours had slandered his wife, Chilperic had Gregory arrested and tried for treason - a charge which threatened both Gregory's bishopric and his life. The most eloquent passage in the Historia is the closing chapter of book VI, in which Chilperic's character is summed up unsympathetically.

The third part, comprising books VII to ­X, takes his increasingly personal account to the year 591. An epilogue was written in 594, the year of Gregory's death.

One must decide when reading the Historia Francorum whether this is a royal history, and whether Gregory was writing to please his patrons. It is likely that one royal Frankish house is more generously treated than others. He was also a Catholic bishop, and his writing reveals views typical of someone in his position. His views on perceived dangers of Arianism (still strong among the Visigoths) led him to preface the Historia with a detailed expression of his orthodoxy on the nature of Christ. His scorn of pagans and Jews should be seen in the context of the time. Gregory's education was limited: the narrowly Christian one available, ignoring the liberal arts and the pagan classics. Though he had read Virgil, he cautions us that "We ought not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence of eternal death."

Gregory of Tours embodies the unresolved contradictions of a wild transitional era. "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?" Ernest Brehaut asked. A contemporary professor of history[1] (http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/4505/co4505.htm) has asked his students about Gregory, "Is he a civilized man writing down the follies and cruelties of a barbaric age? Is he a barbaric and superstitious product of a backward society? Is he a careful and honest historian, or a disorganized, even disingenuous promoter of poorly-concealed agenda? Or did he have a consistent agenda?"

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia: Gregory of Tours (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07018b.htm)
• Excerpts from Historia Francorum with Ernest Brehaut's critical analysis of Gregory in the context of his time (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/gregory-hist.html) This Fordham University website warns Many of Brehaut's opinions and prejudices would not be upheld by modern historians. A purely secular historian might find Brehaut more illuminating, and his analysis of the undoubted superstition of the times credible.
• Brehaut's complete, unexpurgated introduction (http://charlemagne.celtic-twilight.com/gregory_of_tours/contents.htm)

Further Reading

The following represent the key modern texts on Gregory of Tours, including the most recent translations of his work.

Whilst Thorpe's translation of The History of the Franks is more accessible than Brehaut's, his introduction and commentary are not well regarded by contemporary historians.

Primary Sources

• Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Confessors, translation by R. Van Dam (Liverpool, 1988)
• Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, translation by R. Van Dam (Liverpool, 1988)
• Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, translation by L. Thorpe (Penguin, 1974: many reprints)
• Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers, translation by E. James (Liverpool, 1985)
• Gregory of Tours, The Miracles of the Bishop St. Martin, translation by R. Van Dam in Saints and their Miracles in Late Antiwue Gaul (Princeton, 1993)
• Gregory of Tours, The Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian, translation by R. Van Dam in Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993)
• Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1, 1 (Hannover, 1951).
• Gregory of Tours, Liber in Gloria Martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1, 2 (Hannover, 1885).
• Gregory of Tours, Liber in Gloria Confessorum, ed. B. Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1, 2 (Hannover, 1885)

Secondary Sources

• P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (London, 1981)
• W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800) (Princeton, 1988)
• E. James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988)
• R. Van Dam, Saints and their miracles in late antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993)
• I.N. Wood, The Merovingian kingdoms 450-751 (London, 1994)
• I.N. Wood, Gregory of Tours (Oxford, 1994)da:Gregor af Tours

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