History of the Franks
Introduction
History of the Franks: Books I-X
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
The text presented here is the abridged translation of Gregory of Tour's History of the Franks made by Earnest Brehaut in 1916. The etext gives the full text of the Brehaut edition, pp. 1-248, apart from the Selections from The Eight Books of Miracles [pp. 249-62] which has been made available separately.
Brehaut gives a complete list of books and chapters, but only translated a selection of the chapters. Here each book is preceded by a list of all the chapters. I have made clear which chapters are available here by highlighting those that are translated. Short notes from the foot of each page have been inserted italicized into the body of the text.
This version is dated 12/21/1997, and now contains Brehaut's Introduction, and Books I-X, as well as an up-to-date Bibliography and guide to Web Resources. The end notes will be added as time allows].
[Other Translations Included: In addition to the Chapters translated by Brehaut, which amount to over half the full text, from time to time other chapters will be inserted in the text, as copy-permitted translations become available. So far such other translations include: VIII:20]
By Earnest Brehaut, [from his 1916 translation] , pp. ix-xxv
[Note: Many of Brehaut's opinions and prejudices would not be upheld by modern historians. Students should not rely on this Introduction as a guide.]
The History of the Franks by Gregory, bishop of Tours, is an historical record of great importance. The events which it relates are details of the perishing of the Roman Empire and the beginning of a great modern state and for these events it is often the sole authority. However although Gregory was relating history mainly contemporaneous or recent, we must allow largely for error and prejudice in his statements of fact. It is rather as an unconscious revelation that the work is of especial value. The language and style, the intellectual attitude with which it was conceived and written, and the vivid and realistic picture, unintentionally given, of a primitive society, all combine to make the History of the Franks a landmark in European culture. After reading it the intelligent modern will no longer have pleasing illusions about sixthcentury 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. [note: 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-sorSaône, ChâlonssurMarne, Rheims, Soissons, Metz, Coblentz, Braine, Paris, Orleans. Monod, Sources de l'histoire Mérovingienne, p. 37.] 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. Its wealth brought Clermont much trouble during the disorderly period that followed the breakup of Roman rule, and Gregory gives a hint of the eagerness which the Frankish kings felt to possess this country [note: Childebert the elder is represented as saying: Velim unquam Arvernam Lemanem quae tantae jocunditatis gratia refulgere dicitur, oculis cernere. H. F. III: 9.]
After 573 Gregory lived at Tours in the lower Loire valley. This city with its pleasant climate and moderately productive territorial background had more than a local importance in this age. It lay on the main thoroughfare between Spain and Aquitania and the north. Five Roman roads centered in it and the traffic of the Loire passed by it. The reader of Gregory's history judges that sooner or later it was visited by every one of importance at the time. It was here that the Frankish influences of the north and the Roman influences of the south had their chief contact.
However the natural advantages of Tours at this time were surpassed by the supernatural ones. Thanks to the legend of St. Martin this conveniently situated city had become "the religious metropolis" of Gaul. St. Martin had made a great impression on his generation. [note: In France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there are at the present time three thousand six hundred and seventyfive churches dedicated to St. Martin, and four hundred and twentyfive villages or hamlets are named after him. C. Bayet, in Lavisse, Histoire de France, 221, p. 16] A Roman soldier, turned monk and then bishop of Tours, he was a man of heroic character and force. He had devoted himself chiefly to the task of Christianizing the pagani or rural population of Gaul and had won a remarkable ascendancy over the minds of a superstitious people, and this went on increasing for centuries after his death. The center of his cult was his tomb in the great church built a century before Gregory's time just outside the walls of Tours. This was the chief point of Christian pilgrimage in Gaul, a place of resort for the healing of the sick and the driving out of demons, and a sanctuary to which many fled for protection. [note: . C. Bayet, in Lavisse, Histoire de France, 21, pp. 13 ff.] In a time of dense superstition and political and social disorder this meant much in the way of securing peace, influence, and wealth, and it was to the strategic advantage of the office of bishop of Tours as well as to his own aggressive character that Gregory owed his position as the leading prelate of Gaul.
Gregory does not neglect to tell us of his family connections and status in society. [note: Monod, op. cit. pp. 25 ff. See pp. 13, 84, 109,0, 140.] He belonged to the privileged classes. Of his father's family he tells us that "in the Gauls none could be found better born or nobler," and of his mother's that it was "a great and leading family." On both his father's and his mother's side he was of senatorial rank, a distinction of the defunct Roman empire which still retained much meaning in central and southern Gaul. But the great distinction open at this time to a Gallo-Roman was the powerful and envied office of bishop. 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 granduncle Nicetius, bishop of Lyons, and of his greatgrandfather Gregory, bishop of Langres, in honor of whom Gregory discarded the name of Georgius Florentinus which he had received from his father. Entering on a clerical career with such powerful connections he was at the same time gratifying his ambitions and obeying the most strongly felt impulse of his time.
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