Book 5
1. The rule of the younger Childebert; his mother.
2. Merovech marries Brunhilda.
3. War with Chilperic; Rauching's wickedness.
4. Roccolenus comes to Tours.
5. The bishops of Langres.
6. Leonastis, archdeacon of Bourges.
7. The recluse Senoch.
8. The holy Germanus, bishop of Paris.
9. The recluse Caluppa.
10. The recluse Patroclus.
11. Conversion of Jews by bishop Avitus.
12. The abbot Brachio.
13. Mummulus devastates Limoges.
14. Merovech after receiving the tonsure flees to St. Martin's church.
15. War between the Saxons and Suevi.
16. Death of Macliavus.
17. The uncertainty about Easter; the church at Chinon; how king Gunthram killed Magnachar's sons and lost his own and then allied himself with Childebert.
18. Bishop Prætextatus and Merovech's death.
19. Tiberius's charities.
20. Bishops Salunius and Sagittarius.
21. The Breton Winnoc.
22. Death of Samson, Chilperic's son.
23. Prodigies that appeared.
24. Gunthram Boso takes his daughters from the church of the holy Hilarius and Chilperic attacks Poitiers.
25. Death of Dacco and of Dracolinus.
26. The army marches against the Bretons.
27. Salunius and Sagittarius are degraded.
28. Chilperic's taxes.
29. The ravaging of Brittany.
30. The rule of Tiberius.
31. The attacks of the Bretons
32. Sacrilege done in the church of St. Denis because of a woman.
33. Prodigies.
34. Dysentery and the death of Chilperic's sons
35. Queen Austrechild.
36. Bishop Eraclius and Count Nanthinus.
37. Martin, bishop of Galicia.
38. Persecution of the Christians in the Spains.
39. Clovis's death.
40. Bishops Elafius and Eunius.
41. Legates from Galicia and prodigies.
42. Maurilio, bishop of Cahors.
43. Dispute with a heretic.
44. Chilperic's writings.
45. Death of bishop Agricola.
46. Death of bishop Dalmatius.
47. Eunomius becomes count.
48. Leudast's wickedness.
49. The plots he formed against us and how he was himself brought low
50. Prediction of the
blessed Salvius about Chilperic.
I am weary of relating the details of the civil wars that mightily plague the nation and kingdom of the Franks; and the worst of it is that we see in them the beginning of that time of woe which the Lord foretold: "Father shall rise against son, son against father, brother against brother, kinsman against kinsman." They should have been deterred by the examples of former kings who slain by their enemies as soon as they were divided. How often has the very city of cities, the great capital of the whole earth, been laid low by civil war and again, when it ceased, has risen as if from the ground! Would that you too, O kings, were engaged in battles like those in which your fathers struggled, that the heathen terrified by your union might be crushed by your strength ! Remember how Clovis won your great victories, how he slew opposing kings, crushed wicked peoples and subdued their lands, and left to you complete and unchallenged dominion over them! And when he did this he had neither silver nor gold such as you now have in your treasuries. What is your object ? What do you seek after?' What have you not in plenty? In your homes there are luxuries in abundance, in your storehouses wine, grain and oil abound, gold and silver are piled up in your treasuries. One thing you lack: without peace you have not the grace of God. Why does one take from another? Why does one desire what another has? I beg of you, beware of this saying of the apostle: "But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." ~ Examine carefully the books of the ancients and you will see what civil wars beget. Read what Orosius writes of the Carthaginians, who says that after seven hundred years their city and country were ruined and adds: "What preserved this city so long? Union. What destroyed it after such a period? Disunion." Beware of disunion, beware of civil wars which destroy you and your people. What else is to be expected but that your army will fall and that you will be left without strength and be crushed and ruined by hostile peoples. And, king, if civil war gives you pleasure, govern that impulse which the apostle says is urgent within man, let the spirit struggle against the flesh and the vices fall before the virtues; and be free and serve your chief who is Christ, you who were once a fettered slave of the root of evil.
[1. Sigibert's son, Childebert, not yet five years old, is made king. Chilperic seizes Brunhilda and keeps her in exile at Rouen.]
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