SELECTIONS FROM THE EIGHT BOOKS OF MIRACLES 249
NOTES 263
GENEALOGIES 276
BIBLIOGRAPHY 279
MAP _facing_ 280
INDEX 281
INTRODUCTION
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
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. Its wealth brought Clermont much trouble during the
disorderly period that followed the break-up of Roman rule, and
Gregory gives a hint of the eagerness which the Frankish kings felt
to possess this country.[2]
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.[3]
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.[4] 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.[5] 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 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. 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.
In spite of all these advantages, under the externals of Christianity
Gregory was almost as superstitious as a savage. His superstition
came to him straight from his father and mother and from his whole
social environment. He tells us that his father, when expecting in
534 to go as hostage to king Theodobert’s court, went to “a certain
bishop” and asked for relics to protect him. These were furnished
to him in the shape of dust or “sacred ashes” and he put them in
a little gold case the shape of a pea-pod and wore them about his
neck, although he never knew the names of the saints whose relics
they were. According to Gregory’s account the miraculous assistance
given to his father by these relics was a common subject of family
conversation. After his death the relics passed to Gregory’s mother,
who on one occasion extinguished by their help a great fire that
had got started in the straw stacks on the family estate near
Clermont. While on a horseback journey from Burgundy to Auvergne
Gregory himself happened to be wearing these same relics. A fearful
thunderstorm threatened the party, but Gregory “drew the beloved
relics from his breast and lifted them up against the cloud, which at
once separated into two parts and passed on the right and left, and
after that did no harm to them or any one else.” In spite of himself
Gregory could not help being somewhat elated at the incident and he
hinted to his companions that his own merit must have had something
to do with it. “No sooner were the words spoken than my horse shied
suddenly and threw me heavily on the ground; and I was so shaken that
I could scarcely get up. I understood that my vanity was the cause
of it, and it was a lesson to me to be on my guard against the spur
of pride. And if thereafter I happened to have the merit merely to
behold miracles of the saints I would say distinctly that they had
been worked by God’s grace through faith in the saints.”[6]
The number of miracles at which Gregory “assisted” was great. A
picturesque and significant one is the following: “It happened once
that I was journeying to visit my aged mother in Burgundy. And when
passing through the woods on the other side of the river Bèbre we
came upon highwaymen. They cut us off from escape and were going to
rob and kill us. Then I resorted to my usual means of assistance and
called on St. Martin for help. And he came to my help at once and
efficiently, and so terrified them that they could do nothing against
us. And instead of causing fear they were afraid, and were beginning
to flee as fast as they could. But I remembered the apostle’s words
that our enemies ought to be supplied with food and drink, and told
my people to offer them drink. They wouldn’t wait at all, but fled
at top speed. One would think that they were being clubbed along or
were being hurled along involuntarily faster than their horses could
possibly go.”[7]
The reality of this incident need not be doubted. The highwaymen were
as superstitious as Gregory, probably more so. When they found what
they had against them they fled in a panic. The peculiar wording of
the last sentence makes it seem likely that Gregory for his part
thought that the highwaymen had demons to help them and that these in
their urgent flight before the superior “virtue” of St. Martin were
responsible for the appearance he describes.
* * * * *
Of Gregory’s education and literary training we receive scanty
details. At the age of eight he was beginning to learn to read.[8]
The books he read were naturally the Scriptures and works of
Christian writers and his contact with pagan literature of the
classical period must have been slight; he appears to have read
Virgil and Sallust’s _Catiline_ but probably did not go beyond
these.[9] His attitude toward pagan literature was the conventional
one of his age,--fear of the demonic influences embodied in it;[10]
he expresses it thus: “We ought not to relate their lying fables lest
we fall under sentence of eternal death.”[11] Among Christian writers
Sulpicius Severus, Prudentius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Fortunatus
were the only ones to exercise a genuine influence on his style.
The question has been much discussed whether sixth-century education
in Gaul included a knowledge of the liberal arts. Gregory gives
us no definite information on the point. It is true that he is
explicit as to his own case. He says, “I was not trained in grammar
or instructed in the finished style of the heathen writers, but the
influence of the blessed father Avitus, bishop of Auvergne, turned
me solely to the writings of the church.”[12] Gregory does indeed
mention Martianus Capella’s work on the seven liberal arts and seems
to have had some notion of the scope of each one,[13] but in the face
of his repeated confessions of ignorance of the most elementary of
them as well as the actual proof of ignorance which he constantly
gives, the conclusion must be that they were not included in his
education. As to the general situation the only evidence is furnished
by Gregory’s famous preface in which he declares that “liberal
learning is declining or rather perishing in the Gallic cities,” and
no one could be found sufficiently versed in the liberal arts to
write the _History of the Franks_ as it ought to be written. We may
feel certain that Gregory’s idea of the qualifications for historical
writing were not high; correct spelling, knowledge of the rules of
grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic as laid down in the text-books would
be sufficient. But, as he tells us, no person so qualified could
be found to undertake the task. Again we hear of bishops who were
illiterate. It is plain that the trend of the evidence is all in one
direction, namely that in Gaul by this time the liberal arts had
disappeared from education.
Gregory’s Latin presents many problems. Its relation to sixth-century
linguistic development is not well understood although it has been
closely scrutinized. Gregory’s vocabulary does not show the decadence
that might be expected. It is extremely rich and varied and contains
a moderate number of Celtic, Germanic, and Hunnish additions. Old
Latin words, however, often have new and unexpected meanings. In the
field of grammar the situation is different. Judged by anything like
a classical standard Gregory is guilty of almost every conceivable
barbarity. He spells incorrectly, blunders in the use of the
inflections, confuses genders, and often uses the wrong case with the
preposition. In addition he is very awkward in handling the Latin
verb: the different voices, tenses, and modes are apt to look alike
to him. His constructions, too, are frequently incorrect. In all this
he seems very erratic; he may use the correct form ten times and
then give us something entirely different. No method has so far been
traced in his vagaries.
Gregory’s literary style is as peculiar as his language. It is often
vigorous and direct, giving realistic and picturesque delineations
of events. Within his limitations he well understood the complexity
of human motives and actions, and now and then he shows a trace
of humor. However, offending elements often appear; sometimes his
realism verges on a brutal plainness. He is also by no means free
from literary affectation; indeed by his choice of expressions, his
repetitions and unnatural arrangement of words, he is almost always
striving for effect. In his day the tradition of literary workmanship
was quite dead but it would seem as if its ghost tortured Gregory. On
the whole his literary style is uncouth, awkward, and full of rude
surprises.
There are well-marked variations in the style. At times we have
the conventionalized jargon of the church, in which Gregory was
proficient and which was always in the back of his mind ready to
issue forth when other inspiration failed. At the opposite extreme
from this is the easy, clear narrative in which the popular tales,
both Frankish and Roman, are often recited. It is believed that
in some of these we have a version of epic recitals of Frankish
adventures. Then there are the passages, like the baptism of
Clovis[14] or the tale of the two lovers, which Gregory labored to
make striking. These do not offend; they are so naïvely overdone that
they are merely amusing.
In the light of these conclusions, objectively reached,[15] as to
Gregory’s language and style, how shall we interpret the confessions
in regard to them which he repeatedly makes? In these confessions
there are two leading notions: first, that he is without the
qualifications to write in the literary style; second, that the
popular language can be more widely understood. The inference is
always therefore that Gregory writes in the language of the day.
This, however, cannot be so. A language spoken by the people would
have something organic about it, and it would not defy as Gregory’s
does the efforts of scholars to find its usages. It would be
simpler than the literary language and probably as uniform in its
constructions. We must decide then that Gregory’s self-analysis is
a mistaken one, correct in the first part but not in the second. He
knew he could not write the literary language but in spite of this he
made the attempt, and the result is what we have, a sort of hybrid,
halfway between the popular speech and the formally correct literary
language.
* * * * *
In the Epilogue of the _History of the Franks_ written in 594, the
year of Gregory’s death, he gives us a list of his works: “I have
written ten books of _History_, seven of _Miracles_, one on the
_Lives of the Fathers_, a commentary in one book on the _Psalms_, and
one book on the _Church Services_.”[16] 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. They were considered as the most
significant of phenomena. They seemed a guarantee that the relations
were right between the supernatural powers on the one hand and on the
other the men who possessed the “sanctity” to work miracles and those
who had the faith or merit to be cured or rescued by them. Gregory’s
eight books of _Miracles_ were thus a register of the chief interest
of his day, with an eye of course to its promotion, and it is much
more remarkable that he wrote a _History of the Franks_ than that he
compiled this usually wearisome array of impossibilities.
A brief glance at the practical situation that lay back of the four
books which Gregory devotes to the miracles wrought by St. Martin
will be enlightening. The cult of St. Martin was a great organized
enterprise at the head of which Gregory was placed. In the sixth
century St. Martin’s tomb was a center toward which the crippled,
the sick, and those possessed by demons flowed as if by gravity
from a large territory around Tours. The cures wrought there did
much “to strengthen the faith.” They passed from mouth to mouth and
brought greater numbers to the shrine and it was to aid this process
that the four books of St. Martin’s miracles were written. Gregory
is here a promoter and advertiser. To get at the practical side of
the situation we have only to remember that St. Martin’s tomb was
the chief place of healing among the shrines of Gaul, and that the
shrines of the sixth century stood for the physicians, hospitals,
drugs, patent medicines, and other healing enterprises of the
twentieth.
The _History of the Franks_ is Gregory’s chief work. It was written
in three parts. The first, comprising books I-IV, begins with the
creation, and after a brief outline of events enters into more detail
with the introduction of Christianity into Gaul. Then follow the
appearance of the Franks on the scene of history, their conversion,
the conquest of Gaul under Clovis, and the detailed history of the
Frankish kings down to the death of Sigibert in 575. At this date
Gregory had been bishop of Tours two years. The second part comprises
books V and VI and closes with Chilperic’s death in 584. During
these years Chilperic held Tours and the relations between him and
Gregory were as a rule unfriendly. The most eloquent passage in the
_History of the Franks_ is the closing chapter of book VI, in which
Chilperic’s character is unsympathetically summed up. The third part
comprises books VII-X. It comes down to the year 591 and the epilogue
was written in 594, the year of Gregory’s death. The earlier part
of the work does not stand as it was first written; Gregory revised
it and added a number of chapters. It will be noticed that from the
middle of the third book on, Gregory was writing of events within his
own lifetime, and in the last six books, which are of especial value,
of those that took place after he became bishop. For the earlier part
of the work he depended on various chronicles, histories and local
annals,[17] and also on oral tradition.
For the task undertaken by Gregory in the _History of the Franks_
no one else was so well qualified. His family connections were such
as to afford him every opportunity of knowing the occurrences of
central Gaul, while his position as bishop of Tours with all that
it entailed brought him into touch with almost every person and
matter of interest throughout the country. His frequent journeys
and wide acquaintance, his leadership among the bishops, and his
personal relations with four kings, Sigibert, Chilperic, Gunthram,
and Childebert and also with most of the leading Franks, gave him
unsurpassed opportunities for learning what was going on. Perhaps
his most realistic notions of the working of Frankish society were
obtained in dealing with the political refugees who sought refuge
in St. Martin’s church. Though these people must have always been
interesting to talk with, they were the cause of some of Gregory’s
most harrowing and at the same time informing experiences. This
varied contact with the world about him made Gregory what every
reader feels him to be, a vivid and faithful delineator of his time.
The _History of the Franks_ must not be looked upon as a secular
history. The old title, _Ecclesiastical History of the Franks_, is a
better one descriptively. It is written not from the point of view of
the Gallo-Roman or the Frank, but solely from that of the churchman,
almost that of the bishop. Gregory does not take a tone of loyalty
to the Frankish kings, much less of inferiority. His attitude toward
them is cold unless they are zealous supporters of the church, and he
speaks with the utmost disgust of their civil wars, which seemed to
him absolute madness in view of the greater war between the good and
evil supernatural powers.[18] On the other hand his loyalty to his
worthy fellow-bishops is often proved. No doubt the words he quotes
from Paulinus expressed his own feelings: “Whatever evils there
may be in the world, you will doubtless see the worthiest men as
guardians of all faith and religion.”[19] 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? How could he
find it necessary to preface his history, as no other historian has
done, with an exact statement of his creed? And how could he relate
Clovis’s atrocities and then go on to say, “Every day God kept
laying his enemies low before him and enlarging his kingdom because
he walked with right heart before him and did what was pleasing in
his eyes”? These apparently glaring incongruities must have some
explanation.
The reason why they have usually passed as incongruities is perhaps
that it is difficult for us to take an unprejudiced view of religious
and moral phenomena that are in the direct line of our cultural
descent. If we could regard the Franks and Gallo-Romans as if they
were alien to us, living, let us say, on an island of the southern
Pacific, and believing and practising a religion adapted to their
general situation, the task of understanding the _History of the
Franks_ would become easier. It is really a primitive society with a
primitive interpretation of life and the universe with which we have
to deal.
Look at the conception of religion held by Gregory. It seems most
explicable, not by the creed he thrusts at us or by any traditional
elements interpreted in a traditional sense, but by the living
attitude toward the supernatural which he held. Two words are always
recurring in his writings; _sanctus_ and _virtus_,[20] the first
meaning sacred or holy, and the second the mystic potency emanating
from the person or thing that is sacred. These words have in
themselves no ethical meaning and no humane implications whatever.
They are the key-words of a religious technique and their content
is wholly supernatural. In a practical way the second word is the
more important. It describes the uncanny, mysterious power emanating
from the supernatural and affecting the natural. The manifestation
of this power may be thought of as a contact between the natural and
the supernatural in which the former, being an inferior reality, of
course yielded. These points of contact and yielding are the miracles
we continually hear of. The quality of sacredness and the mystic
potency belong to spirits, in varying degrees to the faithful, and
to inanimate objects. They are possessed by spirits, acquired by the
faithful, and transmitted to objects.
There was also a false mystic potency. It emanated from spirits who
were conceived of as alien and hostile, and, while it was not strong
as the true “virtue,” natural phenomena yielded before it and it had
its own miracles, which however were always deceitful and malignant
in purpose. This “virtue” is associated with the devil, demons,
soothsayers, magicians, pagans and pagan gods, and heretics, and
through them is continually engaged in aggressive warfare on the true
“virtue.”[21]
For the attainment of the true mystic potency asceticism was the
method. This was not a withdrawal from lower activities of life
to gain more power for higher activities, but it was undertaken
in contempt of life, and in the more thoroughgoing cases the
only restraint was the desire to avoid self-destruction, which
was forbidden. Almost every known method of self-denial and
self-mortification was practised. Humility of mind was insisted on
as an always necessary element. Fasting was part of the prescribed
method. The strength of the motive behind asceticism may be judged
from the practice of immuring,[22] several specimens of which are
related by Gregory. In this the ascetic was shut in a cell and the
door walled up and only a narrow opening left to hand in a scanty
supply of food. Here he was to remain until he died. Such men were
regarded as having the true “virtue” in the highest degree. In
reality their life must have made them distinctly inferior in all the
ordinary virtues of a natural existence.[23]
As asceticism was the method by which mystic potency was attained, so
miracles were the product, and the proof that it had been acquired.
Of course in theory the main object of the mystic was to assimilate
himself to the supernatural and not expressly to work miracles.
Still to society in general the miracles were the important thing.
In the first place they served the immediate purpose for which a
miracle might be needed, healing the sick or driving out a demon or
something of the sort; in the second place they encouraged society
by evidencing the fact that things in general were right and that
their spiritual leaders had the right “medicine.” Incredulity is not
to be expected in such a situation. The miracle played an integral
part in the life-theory of the time. It was the proof of religion and
it did not need to be proved itself. Furthermore many miracles were
real; for example, the cessation of a pain or natural recovery from a
sickness would be regarded as a miracle.
Some mention should be made of the transmissibility of the mystic
potency. The case of St. Martin is a good example. During his
lifetime he acquired this power in a large degree. When he died on
November 8, 397, at a village half-way between Tours and Poitiers,
the inhabitants of these cities were all ready to fight for his body,
when the people of Tours managed to secure it by stealth. This was
because of the sanctity and mystic “virtue” inherent in it. It was
carried to Tours and buried there and proved the greatest asset of
the city. The mystic potency resided in the tomb and the area about
it, and was transmitted to the dust accumulated on it, the wine and
oil placed on it for the purpose, and was carried in these portable
forms to all parts of Gaul. Gregory himself, for example, carried
relics of St. Martin on his journeys and records that they kept his
boat from sinking in the river Rhine.
The system of superstition just outlined is the greater and more
real part of Gregory’s religion. There was the right mystery and the
wrong mystery; and both were of a low order; men had to deal with
capricious saints and malignant demons. It was a real, live, local
religion comparable with that of savages. By the side of this and
intertwined with it the elements of traditional Christianity in a
more or less formalized and ritualized shape were retained. Here the
great stress was laid on the creed, not, however, that it amounted
to anything in Gregory’s mind as a creed. He was no theologian. His
acceptance of it and insistence on it was ritualistic. However,
although he accepted it as he tells us with _pura credulitas_,[24]
that is, without a critical thought, it was not mere formality. He
felt, no doubt, that it was a sort of mystic formula, especially the
Trinitarian part of it,--for putting men into the right relation with
the supernatural. If they believed in the creed they had the right
“medicine”; if they did not, they had not.
This system of superstition was not calculated to nourish delicate
moral sensibilities. Life had gone too far back to the primitive.
The word applied to the adept in this religion was _sanctus_, and it
indicated not moral excellence at all but a purely mystic quality.
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 the church, and when
he blames one we must look in like manner for the opposite. Outside
of the interests of the orthodox group Gregory is not morally
thin-skinned; he shared in the brutality of his contemporaries, as
we can see in many recitals. His portrait of Clovis throws no false
light back on Gregory. Clovis was a champion and favorite of the
right supernatural powers in their fight with the wrong ones, and
any occasional atrocities he committed in the struggle were not only
pardonable but praiseworthy.[25]
* * * * *
Secular activities and the state of mind just indicated could not
coexist in the same society. We have noticed already how education
was desecularized. It is of interest to note also what had happened
to the secular professions of medicine and law.
The profession of medicine had almost completely disappeared. It
is true indeed that we hear of a few physicians. For example when
Austrechild, king Gunthram’s wife, was dying, she accused her two
physicians of having given her “potions” that were proving fatal,
and asked the king to take an oath to have them executed. He did
so and kept his word and Gregory remarks with what seems excessive
moderation, “Many wise men think that this was not done without
sin.”[26] Again we hear of Gregory’s own illness, when he sent for
a physician. He soon decided that “secular means could not help the
perishing,” and sent for some dust from St. Martin’s tomb which he
put in water and drank, and was soon cured.[27] Such tales indicate
the status of the medical profession.
The truth was that the condition of the people’s minds made the
profession an impossibility. Disease was looked upon as supernatural.
The sick man thought he had a better chance if he called the priest
rather than the doctor. Gregory tells us of Vulfilaic, who was
suddenly covered from head to foot with angry pimples; he rubbed
himself with oil consecrated at St. Martin’s tomb, and they speedily
disappeared. He reasoned that if they had been driven away by St.
Martin, they had plainly been sent by the devil.[28] This meant to
him that the whole thing was supernatural and that the true mystic
power had driven out the false which had caused the trouble.
Perhaps this was not the reasoning in every case, but at any rate
the people went to the shrines and churches to be healed. In some
cases the diagnosis was quite clear as with a patient at Limoges. The
priest put holy oil on his head and “the demon went down into his
finger-nail; seeing this the priest poured oil on the finger and soon
the skin burst, blood flowed from the place, and the demon thus took
his departure.”[29]
Such practices were not isolated or unusual, but typical. 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.” An
analysis of this record reveals the typical elements, with the
exception of fasting which is usually mentioned. The miraculous
properties of St. Martin were thus reënforced by change of scene,
prolonged treatment, and a rigorous mental and physical regimen.
With such a state of mind prevailing no rivals of the clergy in the
healing art were to be found except among those healers who used
a “virtue” of another kind--the false virtue of the magicians and
demons; the few physicians who remained were not real competitors.
The administration of justice was also affected by the same causes
which brought about the disappearance of medicine. There was little
inducement to look for evidence when an appeal could be made to
superstitious fear. Hence the importance of the oath. Gregory
himself, when he was charged with slandering queen Fredegunda, had
to take oath to his innocence on three altars. We have also other
appeals to the supernatural in the trial by combat and the ordeal.
Another interference in the domain of law was a peculiar one; holy
men seemed to have a particular desire to set prisoners free. Gregory
himself begs them off. We hear of one dead bishop whose body sank
like lead on the street before the jail and could not be moved until
all in the jail were let loose.[31] Another holy man tried to secure
the pardon of a notorious criminal, and failing, brought him back to
life after he was executed.
In the _History of the Franks_ attention is given from time to time
to natural phenomena. With few exceptions these passages deal with
prodigies. Gregory tells for example of the prodigies of the year
587. Most of them are given from his own personal observation.[32]
Mysterious marks which could not be deleted in any way appeared on
dishes; vines made a new growth and bore deformed fruit in the month
of October after the vintage; at the same time fresh leaves and
fruits appeared on fruit trees; rays of light were seen in the north.
In addition Gregory mentions from hearsay that snakes had fallen from
the clouds, and that a village with its inhabitants and dwellings had
disappeared entirely. He goes on to say, “Many other signs appeared
such as usually announce a king’s death or the destruction of a
country.” In the same way he tells us of the signs preceding plagues.
Sometimes he relates the prodigies without giving any sequel to them.
In one case he says, “I do not know what these prodigies foretold.”
It is evident that the idea which Gregory had of the phenomena of
nature was such as to prevent his giving any intelligent attention to
them. The supernatural came between him and objective realities in
such a way as to prevent the latter from having a natural effect upon
his mind.
The inhibiting and paralyzing force of superstitious beliefs
penetrated to every department of life, and the most primary and
elementary activities of society were influenced. War, for example,
was not a simple matter of a test of strength and courage, but
supernatural matters had to be taken carefully into consideration.
When Clovis said of the Goths in southern Gaul, “I take it hard that
these Arians should hold a part of the Gauls; let us go with God’s
aid and conquer them and bring the land under our dominion,”[33] he
was not speaking in a hypocritical or arrogant manner but in real
accordance with the religious sentiment of the time. What he meant
was that the Goths, being heretics, were at once enemies of the
true God and inferior to the orthodox Franks in their supernatural
backing. Considerations of duty, strategy, and self-interest all
reënforced one another in Clovis’s mind. However, it was not always
the orthodox side that won. We hear of a battle fought a few years
before Gregory became bishop of Tours between king Sigibert and
the Huns,[34] in which the Huns “by the use of magic arts caused
various false appearances to arise before their enemies and overcame
them decisively.” It is very plain that one exceedingly important
function of the leader of a sixth-century army was to keep in the
right relation with the supernatural powers. Clovis is represented as
heeding this necessity more than any other Frankish king.[35]
It is clear that in the sixth-century state of mind in Gaul nothing
was purely secular. As far as possible all secular elements had been
expelled. Men did not meet the objective realities of society and
of nature as they were; there was a superstitious interpretation
for everything. The hope in such a condition of things lay only in
unconscious developments which might break through the closed system
of thought before the latter realized that it was on the defensive.
The most promising element in the situation was the Frankish state.
Apparently the Frankish kingship was not to any large extent a
magico-religious institution, but simply a recent development arising
out of the conquest. As an institution it was not grounded in the
superstitious past, and the cold hostility of the bishops kept it
from the development usual in a benighted society. To this chance we
may perhaps attribute a momentous result; in it lay the possibility
and promise of a secular state.
In the case of King Chilperic we apparently have a premature
development in this direction. We must read between the lines when
Gregory speaks of him. Gregory calls him “the Nero and Herod of
our time,” and loads him with abuse. He ridicules his poems, and
according to his own story overwhelms him with an avalanche of
contempt when he ventures to state some new opinions on the Trinity.
The significant thing about Chilperic was this, that he had at this
time the independence of mind to make such a criticism, as well as
the hard temper necessary to fight the bishops successfully. “In his
reign,” Gregory tells us, “very few of the clergy reached the office
of bishop.” 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. Monod, _Sources
de l’histoire Mérovingienne_, p. 37.
[2] Childebert the elder is represented as saying: _Velim
unquam Arvernam Lemanem quae tantae jocunditatis gratia
refulgere dicitur, oculis cernere._ _H. F._ III, 9.
[3] In France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there are
at the present time three thousand six hundred and
seventy-five churches dedicated to St. Martin, and four
hundred and twenty-five villages or hamlets are named
after him. C. Bayet, in Lavisse, _Histoire de France_,
=2=1 p. 16.
[4] C. Bayet, in Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, =2=1, pp.
13 ff.
[5] Monod, _op. cit._ pp. 25 ff. See pp. 13, 84, 109, 140.
[6] _Gloria Martyrum_, c. 83.
[7] _De Virtut. S. Mart._ I, 36.
[8] _Vitæ Patrum_, VIII, 3.
[9] Bonnet, _Le Latin de Gregoire de Tours_, pp. 48-76.
[10] Speaking of Jupiter, Mercury, Minerva, Venus, a
character in the _Vitæ Patrum_, XVII, 5, says,
_Nolite, o viri, nolite eos invocare, non sunt enim
dii isti sed dæmones_.
[11] _Gloria Martyrum_, Pref.
[12] _Vitæ Patrum_, II, Pref.
[13] See p. 240.
[14] See p. 40.
[15] They are substantially the conclusions of Bonnet in
_Le Latin de Gregoire de Tours_, Paris, 1890.
[16] See p. 247. In the Arndt and Brusch edition in the
_Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_ we have all these
titles included. The commentary on the _Psalms_
however is in a fragmentary condition, and the _Lives
of the Fathers_ appears as one of eight books of
_Miracles_. The book on _Church Services_ is there
entitled _Account of the Movements of the Stars as
they ought to be observed in performing the Services_.
It is really a brief astronomical treatise the purpose
of which was in the absence of clocks to guide the
church services at night.
[17] The list as given by Manitius is as follows:
Chronicles of Jerome, Victor, Sulpicius
Severus; history of Orosius; church history of
Eusebius-Rufinus; life of St. Martin by Sulpicius
Severus; letters of Sidonius Apollinaris and
Ferreolus; writings of Avitus; histories of Renatus
Profuturus Frigeridus and Sulpicius Alexander
(not elsewhere known); annals of Arles, Angers,
Burgundy. _Geschichte der Lateinischen Litteratur des
Mittelalters_, p. 220.
[18] III, Pref. and IV, Pref.
[19] _H. F._, II, 13. Cf. V, 11. p. 113.
[20] Nunc autem cognovi quod magna est virtus eius beati
Martini. Nam ingrediente me atrium domus, vidi virum
senem exhibentem arborem in manu sua, quae mox
extensis ramis omne atrium texit. Ex ea enim unus me
adtigit ramus, de cuius ictu turbatus corrui. VII, 42.
[21] See pp. 38, 162, 185, 205.
[22] For an objective account of immuring as the climax of
religious practice see vol. II, chap. 1, Sven Hedin’s
_Trans-Himalaya_, 1909. The following is his account
of an immured monk who was brought out from his cell
after a long time. “He was all bent up together and
as small as a child and his body was nothing but a
light-gray parchment-like skin and bones. His eyes had
lost their color, were quite bright and blind. His
hair hung round his head in uncombed matted locks and
was pure white. His body was covered only by a rag for
time had eaten away his clothing and he had received
no new garments. He had a thin unkempt beard, and had
never washed himself all the time or cut his nails.”
[23] pp. 147-150, 158, 198-199.
[24] _H. F._, I, Pref.
[25] See pp. 47-50.
[26] p. 130.
[27] _De Virtut. S. Martin._, II, 1.
[28] p. 196.
[29] _Glor. Conf._, c. 9.
[30] St. Martin.
[31] _De Virtut. S. Martin._, I, 21, 25.
[32] IX, 5.
[33] See p. 45.
[34] _H. F._, IV, 29.
[35] pp. 36-38, 40, 45, 53-54.
[36] See p. 166.
HISTORY OF THE FRANKS
BY GREGORY BISHOP OF TOURS
HERE BEGINS GREGORY’S FIRST PREFACE
With liberal culture on the wane, or rather perishing in the Gallic
cities, there were many deeds being done both good and evil: the
heathen were raging fiercely; kings were growing more cruel; the
church, attacked by heretics, was defended by Catholics; while the
Christian faith was in general devoutly cherished, among some it was
growing cold; the churches also were enriched by the faithful or
plundered by traitors--and no grammarian skilled in the dialectic
art could be found to describe these matters either in prose or
verse; and many were lamenting and saying: “Woe to our day, since
the pursuit of letters has perished from among us and no one can be
found among the people who can set forth the deeds of the present on
the written page.” Hearing continually these complaints and others
like them I [have undertaken] to commemorate the past, in order that
it may come to the knowledge of the future; and although my speech
is rude, I have been unable to be silent as to the struggles between
the wicked and the upright; and I have been especially encouraged
because, to my surprise, it has often been said by men of our day,
that few understand the learned words of the rhetorician but many the
rude language of the common people. [A]I have decided also that for
the reckoning of the years the first book shall begin with the very
beginning of the world, and I have given its chapters below.
HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF THE FIRST BOOK
1. Adam and Eve.
2. Cain and Abel.
3. Enoch the Just.
4. The flood.
5. Cush, inventor of idols.
6. Babylonia.
7. Abraham and Ninus.
8. Isaac, Esau, Job and Jacob.
9. Joseph in Egypt.
10. Crossing of the Red Sea.
11. The people in the desert and Joshua.
12. The captivity of the people of Israel and the generations to
David.
13. Solomon and the building of the Temple.
14. The division of the kingdom of Israel.
15. The captivity in Babylonia.
16. Birth of Christ.
17. The various kingdoms of the nations.
18. When Lyons was founded.
19. The gifts of the magi and the slaughter of the infants.
20. The miracles and suffering of Christ.
21. Joseph who buried Him.
22. James the apostle.
23. The day of the Lord’s resurrection.
24. The ascension of the Lord and the death of Pilate and Herod.
25. The suffering of the Apostles and Nero.
26. James, Mark and John the evangelist.
27. The persecution under Trajan.
28. Hadrian and the heretics’ lies and the martyrdom of Saint
Polycarp and Justin.
29. Saints Photinus, Irenæus and the rest of the martyrs of Lyons.
30. The seven men sent into the Gauls to preach.
31. The church of Bourges.
32. Chrocus and the shrine in Auvergne.
33. The martyrs who suffered in Auvergne.
34. The holy martyr, Privatus.
35. Quirinus, bishop and martyr.
36. Birth of St. Martin and the finding of the cross.
37. James, bishop of Nisibis.
38. Death of the monk Antony.
39. The coming of St. Martin.
40. The matron Melania.
41. Death of the emperor Valens.
42. Imperial rule of Theodosius.
43. Death of the tyrant Maximus.
44. Urbicus, bishop of Auvergne.
45. The holy bishop Hillidius.
46. The bishops Nepotian and Arthemius.
47. The chastity of the lovers.
48. St. Martin’s death.
IN CHRIST’S NAME HERE END THE CHAPTERS OF THE FIRST
BOOK
IN CHRIST’S NAME
HERE BEGINS THE FIRST BOOK OF THE HISTORIES
[B]As I am about to describe the struggles of kings with the heathen
enemy, of martyrs with pagans, of churches with heretics, I desire
first of all to declare my faith so that my reader may have no doubt
that I am Catholic. I have also decided, on account of those who are
losing hope of the approaching end of the world, to collect the total
of past years from chronicles and histories and set forth clearly how
many years there are from the beginning of the world. But I first beg
pardon of my readers if either in letter or in syllable I transgress
the rules of the grammatic art in which I have not been fully
instructed, since I have been eager only for this, to hold fast,
without any subterfuge or irresolution of heart, to that which we are
bidden in the church to believe, because I know that he who is liable
to punishment for his sin can obtain pardon from God by untainted
faith.
I believe, then, in God the Father omnipotent. I believe in Jesus
Christ his only Son, our Lord God, born of the Father, not created.
[I believe] that he has always been with the Father, not only since
time began but before all time. For the Father could not have been
so named unless he had a son; and there could be no son without a
father. But as for those who say: “There was a time when he was
not,”[37] reject them with curses, and call men to witness that they
are separated from the church. I believe that the word of the Father
by which all things were made was Christ. I believe that this word
was made flesh and by its suffering the world was redeemed, and I
believe that humanity, not deity, was subject to the suffering. I
believe that he rose again on the third day, that he freed sinful
man, that he ascended to heaven, that he sits on the right hand of
the Father, that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I
believe that the holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son,
that it is not inferior and is not of later origin, but is God, equal
and always co-eternal with the Father and the Son, consubstantial in
its nature, equal in omnipotence, equally eternal in its essence,
and that it has never existed apart from the Father and the Son and
is not inferior to the Father and the Son. I believe that this holy
Trinity exists with separation of persons, and one person is that of
the Father, another that of the Son, another that of the Holy Spirit.
And in this Trinity I confess that there is one Deity, one power, one
essence. I believe that the blessed Mary was a virgin after the birth
as she was a virgin before. I believe that the soul is immortal but
that nevertheless it has no part in deity. And I faithfully believe
all things that were established at Nicæa by the three hundred and
eighteen bishops. But as to the end of the world I hold beliefs which
I learned from our forefathers, that Antichrist will come first.
And Antichrist will first propose circumcision, asserting that he
is Christ; next he will place his statue in the temple at Jerusalem
to be worshiped, just as we read that the Lord said: “You shall see
the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.” But the
Lord himself declared that that day is hidden from all men, saying:
“But of that day and that hour knoweth no one not even the angels
in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father alone.” Moreover we
shall here make answer to the heretics[38] who attack us, asserting
that the Son is inferior to the Father since he is ignorant of this
day. Let them learn then that Son here is the name applied to the
Christian people, of whom God says: “I shall be to them a father
and they shall be to me for sons.” For if he had spoken these words
of the only-begotten Son he would never have given the angels first
place. For he uses these words: “Not even the angels in heaven nor
the Son,” showing that he spoke these words not of the only-begotten
but of the people of adoption. But our end is Christ himself, who
will graciously bestow eternal life on us if we turn to him.
[C]As to the reckoning of this world, the chronicles of Eusebius,
bishop of Cæsarea, and of Jerome the priest, speak clearly, and they
reveal the plan of the whole succession of years. Orosius too,
searching into these matters very carefully, collects the whole
number of years from the beginning of the world down to his own time.
Victor also examined into this in connection with the time of the
Easter festival. And so we follow the works of the writers mentioned
above and desire to reckon the complete series of years from the
creation of the first man down to our own time, if the Lord shall
deign to lend his aid. And this we shall more easily accomplish if we
begin with Adam himself.
1. In the beginning the Lord shaped the heaven and the earth in his
Christ, who is the beginning of all things, that is, in his son; and
after creating the elements of the whole universe, taking a frail
clod he formed man after his own image and likeness, and breathed
upon his face the breath of life and he was made into a living soul.
And while he slept a rib was taken from him and the woman, Eve, was
created. There is no doubt that this first man Adam before he sinned
typified the Redeemer. For as the Redeemer slept in the stupor of
suffering and caused water and blood to issue from his side, he
brought into existence the virgin and unspotted church, redeemed
by blood, purified by water, having no spot or wrinkle, that is,
washed with water to avoid a spot, stretched on the cross to avoid
a wrinkle. These first human beings, who were living happily amid
the pleasant scenes of Paradise, were tempted by the craft of the
serpent. They transgressed the divine precepts and were cast out from
the abode of angels and condemned to the labors of the world.
2. Through intercourse with her companion the woman conceived and
bore two sons. But when God received the sacrifice of the one with
honor, the other was inflamed with envy; he rushed on his brother,
overcame and killed him, becoming the first parricide by shedding a
brother’s blood.
3. Then the whole race rushed into accursed crime, except the just
Enoch, who walked in the ways of God and was taken up from the midst
by the Lord himself on account of his uprightness, and freed from a
sinful people. For we read: “Enoch walked with the Lord, and he did
not appear for God took him.”
4. And so the Lord, being angered against the iniquities of the
people who did not walk in his ways, sent a flood, and by its waters
destroyed every living soul from the face of the earth; only Noah,
who was most faithful and especially belonged to him and bore the
stamp of his image, he saved in the ark, with his wife and those of
his three sons, that they might restore posterity. Here the heretics
upbraid us because the holy Scripture says that the Lord was angry.
Let them know therefore that our God is not angry like a man; for he
is aroused in order to inspire fear; he drives away to summon back;
he is angry in order to amend. Furthermore I have no doubt that
the ark typified the mother church. For passing amidst the waves
and rocks of this world it protects us in its motherly arms from
threatening ills, and guards us with its holy embrace and protection.
Now from Adam to Noah are ten generations, namely: Adam, Seth, Enos,
Cainan, Malalehel, Jareth, Enoch, Mattusalam, Lamech, Noah. In these
ten generations 2242 years are included. The book Joshua clearly
indicates that Adam was buried in the land of Enacim, which before
was called Hebron.
5. Noah had after the flood three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. From
Japheth issued nations, and likewise from Ham and from Shem. And, as
ancient history says, from these the human race was scattered under
the whole heaven. The first-born of Ham was Cush. He was the first
inventor of the whole art of magic and of idolatry, being instructed
by the devil. He was the first to set up an idol to be worshipped, at
the instigation of the devil, and by his false power he showed to men
stars and fire falling from heaven. He passed over to the Persians.
The Persians called him Zoroaster, that is, living star. They were
trained by him to worship fire, and they reverence as a god the man
who was himself consumed by the divine fire.
6. Since men had multiplied and were spreading over all the earth
they passed out from the East and found the grassy plain of Senachar.
There they built a city and strove to raise a tower which should
reach the heavens. And God brought confusion both to their vain
enterprise and their language, and scattered them over the wide
world, and the city was called Babyl, that is, confusion, because
there God had confused their tongues. This is Babylonia, built by the
giant Nebron, son of Cush. As the history of Orosius tells, it is
laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made of baked
brick cemented with pitch, is fifty cubits wide, two hundred high,
and four hundred and seventy stades[D] in circumference. A stade
contains five agripennes.[E] Twenty-five gates are situated on each
side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these gates, which
are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze. The same historian tells
many other tales of this city, and says: “Although such was the glory
of its building still it was conquered and destroyed.”
[7. Abraham, who is described as “the beginning of our faith.”
8. Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Job. 9. The twelve patriarchs, the story
of Joseph, and the coming out of Egypt to the crossing of the Red
Sea.][39]
10. Since many authorities have made varying statements about this
crossing of the sea I have decided to give here some information
concerning the situation of the place and the crossing itself. The
Nile flows through Egypt, as you very well know, and waters it by
its flood, from which the inhabitants of Egypt are named Nilicolæ.
And many travellers say its shores are filled at the present time
with holy monasteries. And on its bank is situated, not the Babylonia
of which we spoke above, but the city of Babylonia in which Joseph
built wonderful granaries of squared stone and rubble.[40] They are
wide at the base and narrow at the top in order that the wheat might
be cast into them through a tiny opening, and these granaries are
to be seen at the present day. From this city the king set out in
pursuit of the Hebrews with armies of chariots and a great infantry
force. Now the stream mentioned above coming from the east passes in
a westerly direction towards the Red Sea; and from the west a lake or
arm of the Red Sea juts out and stretches to the east, being about
fifty miles long and eighteen wide.[41] And at the head of this lake
the city of Clysma is built, not on account of the fertility of the
soil, since there is nothing more barren, but because of the harbor,
since ships coming from the Indias lie there for the convenience of
the harbor; and the wares purchased there are carried through all
Egypt. Toward this arm the Hebrews hastened through the wilderness,
and they came to the sea itself and encamped, finding fresh water.
It was in this place, shut in by the wilderness as well as by the
sea, that they encamped, as it is written: “Pharaoh, hearing that
the sea and the wilderness shut them in and that they had no way by
which they could go, set out in pursuit of them.” And when they were
close upon them and the people cried to Moses, he stretched out his
wand over the sea, according to the command of the Deity, and it was
divided, and they walked on dry ground, and, as the Scripture says,
they crossed unharmed under Moses’ leadership, a wall of water on
either hand, to that shore which is before Mount Sinai, while the
Egyptians were drowned. And many tales are told of this crossing,
as I have said. But we desire to insert in this account what we
have learned as true from the wise, and especially from those who
have visited the place. [F]They actually say that the furrows which
the wheels of the chariots made remain to the present time and are
seen in the deep water as far as the eye can trace them. And if the
roughness of the sea obliterates them in a slight degree, when the
sea is calm they are divinely renewed again as they were. Others say
that they returned to the very bank where they had entered, making a
small circuit through the sea. And others assert that all entered by
one way; and a good many, that a separate way opened to each tribe,
giving this evidence from the Psalms: “Who divided the Red Sea in
parts.”[42] But these parts ought to be understood according to the
spirit and not according to the letter. For there are many parts in
this world, which is figuratively called a sea. For all cannot pass
to life equally or by one way. Some pass in the first hour, that is
those who are born anew by baptism and are able to endure to the
departure from this life unspotted by any defilement, of the flesh.
Others in the third hour, plainly those who are converted later in
life; others in the sixth hour, being those who hold in check the
heat of wanton living. And in each of these hours, as the evangelist
relates, they are hired for the work of the Lord’s vineyard, each
according to his faith. These are the parts in which the passage
is made across this sea. As to the opinion that upon entering the
sea they kept close to the shore and returned, these are the words
which the Lord said to Moses: “Let them turn back and encamp before
Phiahiroth which is between Magdalum and the sea before Belsephon.”
There is no doubt that this passage of the sea and the pillar of
cloud typified our baptism, according to the words of the blessed
Paul the apostle: “I would not, brethren, have you ignorant that
our fathers were all under the cloud and all baptized unto Moses
in the cloud and in the sea.” And the pillar of fire typified the
holy Spirit. Now from the birth of Abraham to the going forth of the
children of Israel from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea, which
was in the eightieth year of Moses, there are reckoned four hundred
and sixty-two years.
[G][11. The Israelites spend forty years in the wilderness. 12. From
the crossing of the Jordan to David. 13. Solomon. 14. Division of
the kingdom into Judæa and Israel. 15. The captivity. 16. From the
captivity to the birth of Christ.]
17. In order not to seem to have knowledge of the Hebrew race
alone[43] we shall tell what the remaining kingdoms were in the
time of the Israelites. In the time of Abraham Ninus ruled over the
Assyrians; Eorops over the Sitiones; among the Egyptians it was the
sixteenth government, which they call in their own tongue dynasty.
In Moses’ time lived Trophas, seventh king of the Argives; Cecrops,
first in Attica; Cencris, who was overwhelmed in the Red Sea, twelfth
among the Egyptians; Agatadis, sixteenth among the Assyrians; Maratis
was ruler of the Sicionii….[44]
[18. Beginning of the Roman empire; founding of Lyons, a city
afterwards ennobled by the blood of martyrs. 19. Birth of Christ.
20. Christ’s crucifixion. 21. Joseph is imprisoned and escapes
miraculously. 22. James fasts from the death of the Lord to the
resurrection. 23. The day of the Lord’s resurrection is the first,
not the seventh. 24. Pilate transmits an account of Christ to
Tiberius. The end of Pilate and of Herod. 25. Peter and Paul are
executed at Rome by order of Nero, who later kills himself. 26.
The martyrs, Stephen, James and Mark; burning of Jerusalem by
Vespasian; death of John. 27. Persecution under Trajan. 28. The rise
of heresy. Further persecutions. 29. The martyrs of Lyons. Irenæus,
second bishop, converts the whole city. His death and that of “vast
numbers,” of whom Gregory knows of forty-eight.]
30. Under the emperor Decius many persecutions arose against the
name of Christ, and there was such a slaughter of believers that
they could not be numbered. Babillas, bishop of Antioch, with his
three little sons, Urban, Prilidan and Epolon, and Xystus, bishop of
Rome, Laurentius, an archdeacon, and Hyppolitus, were made perfect by
martyrdom because they confessed the name of the Lord. Valentinian
and Novatian were then the chief heretics and were active against
our faith, the enemy urging them on. At this time seven men were
ordained as bishops and sent into the Gauls to preach, as the history
of the martyrdom of the holy martyr Saturninus relates. [H]For it
says: “In the consulship of Decius and Gratus, as faithful memory
recalls, the city of Toulouse received the holy Saturninus as its
first and greatest bishop.” These bishops were sent: bishop Catianus
to Tours; bishop Trophimus to Arles; bishop Paul to Narbonne; bishop
Saturninus to Toulouse; bishop Dionisius to Paris; bishop Stremonius
to Clermont; bishop Martial to Limoges.
[I]And of these the blessed Dionisius, bishop of Paris, after
suffering divers pains in Christ’s name, ended the present life by
the threatening sword. And Saturninus, already certain of martyrdom,
said to his two priests: “Behold, I am now to be offered as a victim
and the time of my death draws near. I ask you not to leave me at
all before I come to the end.” But when he was seized and was being
dragged to the capitol he was abandoned by them and was dragged
alone. And so when he saw that he was abandoned he is said to have
made this prayer; “Lord Jesus Christ, grant my request from holy
heaven, that this church may never in all time have the merit to
receive a bishop from among its citizens.” And we know that to the
present it has been so in this city. And he was tied to the feet of
a mad bull, and being sent headlong from the capitol he ended his
life. Catianus, Trophimus, Stremonius, Paul and Marcial lived in
the greatest sanctity, winning people to the church and spreading
the faith of Christ among all, and died in peace, confessing the
faith. And thus the former by martyrdom, as well as the latter by
confession, left the earth and were united in the heavens.
31. One of their disciples went to the city of Bourges and carried
to the people the news of Christ the lord as the saviour of all. A
few of them believed and were ordained priests and learned the ritual
of psalm-singing, and were instructed how to build a church and how
they ought to observe the worship of the omnipotent God. But as they
had small means for building as yet, the citizens asked for the house
of a certain man to use for a church. But the senators and the rest
of the better class of the place were at that time devoted to the
heathen religion and the believers were of the poor, according to the
word of the Lord with which he reproached the Jews saying; “Harlots
and publicans go into the kingdom of God before you.” And they did
not obtain the house from the person from whom they asked it, but
they found a certain Leocadius,[45] the first senator of the Gauls,
who was of the family of Vectius Epagatus, who, we have said above,
suffered in Lyons in Christ’s name. And when they had made known to
him at the same time their petition and their faith he answered,
“If my own house in the city of Bourges were worthy of this work I
would not refuse to offer it.” And when they heard this they fell
at his feet and offered three hundred gold pieces on a silver dish
and said the house was very worthy of this mystery. And he accepted
three gold pieces from them for a blessing and kindly returned the
rest, although he was yet entangled in the error of idolatry, and he
became a Christian and made his house a church. This is now the first
church in the city of Bourges, built with marvelous skill and made
illustrious by the relics of Stephen, the first martyr.
32. Valerian and Gallienus received the Roman imperial power in the
twenty-seventh place, and set on foot a cruel persecution of the
Christians. At that time Cornelius brought fame to Rome by his happy
death, and Cyprian to Carthage. In their time also Chrocus the famous
king of the Alemanni raised an army and overran the Gauls. This
Chrocus is said to have been very arrogant. And when he had committed
a great many crimes he gathered the tribe of the Alemanni, as we
have stated,--by the advice, it is said, of his wicked mother,--and
overran the whole of the Gauls, and destroyed from their foundations
all the temples which had been built in ancient times. And coming
to Clermont he set on fire, overthrew and destroyed that shrine[J]
which they call Vasso Galatæ in the Gallic tongue. It had been built
and made strong with wonderful skill. And its wall was double, for on
the inside it was built of small stone and on the outside of squared
blocks. The wall had a thickness of thirty feet. It was adorned on
the inside with marble and mosaics. The pavement of the temple was
also of marble and its roof above was of lead.
[33. Martyrs of Clermont. 34. The bishop of Gévaudan is maltreated by
the Alemanni.]
35. Under Diocletian, who was emperor of Rome in the thirty-third
place, a cruel persecution of the Christians was kept up for four
years, at one time in the course of which great numbers of Christians
were put to death, on the sacred day of Easter, for worshiping the
true God. At that time Quirinus, bishop of the church of Sissek,[46]
endured glorious martyrdom in Christ’s name. The cruel pagans cast
him into a river with a millstone tied to his neck, and when he had
fallen into the waters he was long supported on the surface by a
divine miracle, and the waters did not suck him down since the weight
of crime did not press upon him. And a multitude of people standing
around wondered at the thing, and despising the rage of the heathen
they hastened to free the bishop. He saw this and did not permit
himself to be deprived of martyrdom, and raising his eyes to heaven
he said: “Jesus lord, who sittest in glory at the right hand of the
Father, suffer me not to be taken from this course, but receive my
soul and deign to unite me with thy martyrs in eternal peace.” With
these words he gave up the ghost, and his body was taken up by the
Christians and reverently buried.
36. Constantine was the thirty-fourth emperor of the Romans, and he
reigned prosperously for thirty years. In the eleventh year of his
reign, when peace had been granted to the churches after the death
of Diocletian, our blessed patron Martin was born at Sabaria, a city
of Pannonia, of heathen parents, who still were not of the lowest
station. This Constantine in the twentieth year of his reign caused
the death of his son Crispus by poison, and of his wife Fausta by
means of a hot bath, because they had plotted to betray his rule. In
his time the venerated wood of the Lord’s cross was found, through
the zeal of his mother Helen on the information of Judas, a Hebrew
who was called Quiriacus after baptism. [K]The historian Eusebius
comes down to this period in his chronicle. The priest Jerome
continues it from the twenty-first year of Constantine’s reign. He
informs us that the priest Juvencus wrote the gospels in verse at the
request of the emperor named above.
[37. James of Nisibis and Maximin of Trèves. 38. Hilarius bishop of
Poitiers.]
39. At that time our light arose and Gaul was traversed by the rays
of a new lamp, that is, the most blessed Martin then began to preach
in the Gauls, and he overcame the unbelief of the heathen, showing
among the people by many miracles that Christ the Son of God was
the true God. He destroyed heathen shrines, crushed heresy, built
churches, and while he was glorious for many other miracles, he
completed his title to fame by restoring three dead men to life.
At Poitiers, in the fourth year of Valentinian and Valens, Saint
Hilarius passed to heaven full of sanctity and faith, a priest of
many miracles; for he too is said to have raised the dead.
[40. Melania’s journey to Jerusalem.]
41. After the death of Valentinian, Valens, who succeeded to the
undivided empire, gave orders that the monks be compelled to serve in
the army, and commanded that those who refused should be beaten with
clubs. After this the Romans fought a very fierce battle in Thrace,
in which there was such slaughter that the Romans fled on foot after
losing their horses, and when they were being cut to pieces by the
Goths, and Valens was fleeing with an arrow wound, he entered a small
hut, the enemy closely pursuing, and the little dwelling was burned
over him. And he was deprived of the burial he desired. And thus the
divine vengeance finally came for shedding the blood of the saints.
Thus far Jerome; from this period the priest Orosius wrote at greater
length.
[42. The pious emperor Theodosius. 43. The emperor Maximus with
capital at Trèves. 44. Urbicus, second bishop of Clermont, and his
wife. 45. Hillidius, third bishop of Clermont, and his miracles. 46.
Nepotian and Arthemius, fourth and fifth bishops of Clermont. 47.
Legend of the two lovers of Clermont.]
48. In the second year of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, Saint
Martin, bishop of Tours, departed this life at Candes, a village
of his diocese, and passed happily to Christ in the eighty-first
year of his life and the twenty-sixth of his episcopate, a man full
of miracles and holiness, doing many services to the infirm. [L]He
passed away at midnight of the Lord’s day, in the consulship of
Atticus and Cæsarius. Many heard at his passing away the sound of
psalm-singing in heaven, which I have spoken of at greater length in
the first book of his _Miracles_. Now as soon as the saint of God
fell sick at the village of Candes, as we have related, the people
of Poitiers came to be present at his death, as did also the people
of Tours. And when he died, a great dispute arose between the two
peoples. For the people of Poitiers said: “As a monk, he is ours; as
an abbot, he belonged to us; we demand that he be given to us. Let it
be enough for you that when he was a bishop on earth you enjoyed his
conversation, ate with him, were strengthened by his blessings and
cheered by his miracles. Let all that be enough for you. Let us be
permitted to carry away his dead body.” To this the people of Tours
replied: “If you say that the working of his miracles is enough for
us, let us tell you that while he was placed among you he worked
more miracles than he did here. For, to pass over most of them, he
raised two dead men for you, and one for us; and as he used often to
say himself, there was more virtue in him before he was bishop than
after. And so it is necessary that he complete for us after death
what he did not finish in his lifetime. For he was taken away from
you and given to us by God. If a custom long established is kept,
a man shall have his tomb by God’s command in the city in which he
was ordained. And if you desire to claim him because of the right
of the monastery, let us tell you that his first monastery was at
Milan.” While they were arguing in this way the sun sank and night
closed in. And the body was placed in the midst, and the doors were
barred and the body was guarded by both peoples, and it was going to
be carried off by violence by the people of Poitiers in the morning.
But omnipotent God was unwilling that the city of Tours should be
deprived of its protector. Finally at midnight the whole band from
Poitiers were overwhelmed with sleep and no one remained out of this
multitude to keep watch. Then when the people of Tours saw that they
had fallen asleep they seized on the clay of the holy body and some
thrust it out the window[M] and others received it outside, and
placing it in a boat they went down the river Vienne with all their
people and entered the channel of the Loire, and made their way to
the city of Tours with great praises and plentiful psalm-singing,
and the people of Poitiers were waked by their voices, and having
no treasure to guard they returned to their own place greatly
crestfallen. And if any one asks why there was only one bishop, that
is, Litorius, after the death of bishop Gatianus to the time of
Saint Martin, let him know that for a long time the city of Tours
was without the blessing of a bishop, owing to the resistance of the
heathen. For they who lived as Christians at that time celebrated
the divine office secretly and in hiding. For if any Christians were
found by the heathen they were punished with stripes or slain by the
sword.
Now from the suffering of the Lord to the passing of Saint Martin,
412 years are included.
* * * * *
HERE ENDS THE FIRST BOOK CONTAINING 5597 YEARS WHICH ARE RECKONED
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO THE DEATH OF THE HOLY BISHOP
MARTIN.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] A leading belief of Arian Christology.
[38] The Arians.
[39] The square brackets indicate where less significant
sections of the text have been summarized.
[40] The Pyramids, apparently.
[41] Gregory’s geography is mixed.
[42] Psalms cxxxv. 13.
[43] Gregory’s purpose is not realized.
[44] Jerome’s Chronicle was the source for the history
summarized here. It is clear that Gregory had not much
sense of the historical perspective in spite of a list
of names which might impress his audience. He passes
directly from “Servius the sixth king of Rome” to
Julius Caesar the founder of the empire.
[45] Gregory’s paternal grandmother was Leocadia, who
traced her descent from Vectius Epagatus. See
_Historia Francorum_ ed. Arndt, Introd. p. 4, in
_Monumenta Germaniae Historica_. The story related
above was from Gregory’s family tradition.
[46] In Hungary.
HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF THE SECOND BOOK
1. The episcopate of Bricius.
2. The Vandals and the persecution of the Christians under them.
3. Cyrola the heretics’ bishop and the holy martyrs.
4. The persecution under Athanaric.
5. Bishop Aravatius and the Huns.
6. St. Stephen’s church in the city of Metz.
7. The wife of Ætius.
8. What the historians have written about Ætius.
9. What the same say of the Franks.
10. What the prophets of the Lord write about the images of the
nations.
11. The emperor Avitus.
12. King Childeric and Egidius.
13. The episcopate of Venerandus and of Rusticus in Auvergne.
14. The episcopate of Eustochius at Tours and of Perpetuus; St.
Martin’s church.
15. The church of St. Simphorianus.
16. Bishop Namatius and the church at Clermont.
17. His wife and St. Stephen’s church.
18. How Childeric went to Orleans and Odoacer to Angers.
19. War between the Saxons and Romans.
20. Duke Victor.
21. Bishop Eparchius.
22. Bishop Sidonius.
23. The holiness of bishop Sidonius and the visitation of the
divine vengeance for the wrongs done to him.
24. The famine in Burgundy and Ecdicius.
25. The persecutor Euvarege.
26. Death of the holy Perpetuus and the episcopates of Volusianus
and Virus.
27. Clovis becomes king.
28. Clovis marries Clotilda.
29. Death of their first son in his baptismal garments.
30. War with the Alamanni.
31. Clovis’s baptism.
32. War with Gundobad.
33. Killing of Godegisel.
34. How Gundobad wished to be converted.
35. Clovis and Alaric have an interview.
36. Bishop Quintian.
37. War with Alaric.
38. King Clovis is made patrician.
39. Bishop Licinius.
40. Killing of Sigibert the elder and his son.
41. Killing of Chararic and his son.
42. Killing of Ragnachar and his brothers.
43. Death of Clovis.
HERE END THE CHAPTERS
HERE BEGINS THE SECOND BOOK
Following the order of time we shall mingle together in our tale the
miraculous doings of the saints and the slaughters of the nations.
I do not think that we shall be condemned thoughtlessly if we tell
of the happy lives of the blessed together with the deaths of the
wretched, since it is not the skill of the writer but the succession
of times that has furnished the arrangement. The attentive reader,
if he seeks diligently, will find in the famous histories of the
kings of the Israelites that under the just Samuel the wicked Phineas
perished, and that under David, whom they called Stronghand, the
stranger Goliath was destroyed. Let him remember also in the time
of the great prophet Elias, who prevented rains when he wished and
when he pleased poured them on the parched ground, who enriched the
poverty of the widow by his prayer, what slaughters of the people
there were, what famine and what thirst oppressed the wretched earth.
Let him remember what evil Jerusalem endured in the time of Hezekiah,
to whom God granted fifteen additional years of life. Moreover under
the prophet Elisha, who restored the dead to life and did many other
miracles among the peoples, what butcheries, what miseries crushed
the very people of Israel. So too Eusebius, Severus and Jerome in
their chronicles, and Orosius also, interwove the wars of kings
and the miracles of the martyrs. We have written in this way also,
because it is thus easier to perceive in their entirety the order
of the centuries and the system of the years down to our day. And
so, leaving the histories of the writers who have been mentioned
above,[N] we shall describe at God’s bidding what was done in the
later time.
[O]1. After the death of the blessed Martin, bishop of Tours, a very
great and incomparable man, whose miracles fill great volumes in our
possession, Bricius succeeded to the bishopric. Now this Bricius,
when he was a young man and the saint was yet living in the body,
used to lay many traps for him, because he was often accused by Saint
Martin of following the easy way. And one day when a sick man was
looking for the blessed Martin in order to get medicine from him he
met Bricius, at this time a deacon, in the square, and he said to
him in a simple fashion: “Behold I am seeking the blessed man, and I
don’t know where he is or what he is doing.” And Bricius said: “If
you are seeking for that crazy person look in the distance; there he
is, staring at the sky in his usual fashion, as if he were daft.” And
when the poor man had seen him and got what he wanted, the blessed
Martin said to the deacon: “Well, Bricius, I seem to you crazy, do
I?” And when the latter, in confusion at this, denied he had said
so, the saint replied: “Were not my ears at your lips when you said
this at a distance? Verily I say unto you that I have prevailed upon
God that you shall succeed to the bishop’s office after me, but let
me tell you that you will suffer many misfortunes in your tenure of
the office.” Bricius on hearing this laughed and said: “Did I not
speak the truth that he uttered crazy words?” Furthermore, when he
had attained to the rank of priest, he often attacked the blessed
man with abuse. But when he had become bishop by the choice of the
citizens, he devoted himself to prayer. And although he was proud
and vain he was nevertheless considered chaste in his body. 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.” But he denied the charge forcibly.
“Bring the infant to me,” said he. And when the infant, which was
thirty days old, was brought, the bishop said to it: “I adjure you in
the name of Jesus Christ, son of omnipotent God, to declare publicly
to all if I begot you.” And the child said: “It is not you who are
my father.” When the people asked him to inquire who was the father,
the bishop said: “That is not my affair. I was troubled in so far as
the matter concerned me; inquire for yourselves whatever you want.”
Then they asserted that this had been done by magic arts, and arose
against him in a conspiracy, and dragged him along, saying: “You
shall not rule us any longer under the false name of a shepherd.”
And to satisfy the people he placed red-hot coals in his cloak and
drawing it close to him he walked as far as the tomb of the blessed
Martin along with throngs of the people. And when the coals were cast
down before the tomb his robe was seen to be unburned. And he said:
“Just as you see this robe uninjured by the fire, so too my body
is undefiled by union with a woman.” And when they did not believe
but denied it, he was dragged, abused, and cast out, in order that
the words of the saint might be fulfilled: “Let me tell you that
you will suffer many misfortunes in your episcopate.” When he was
cast out they appointed Justinian to the office of bishop. Finally
Bricius went to see the pope of the city of Rome, weeping and wailing
and saying: “Rightly do I suffer this because I sinned against a
saint of God and often called him crazy and daft; and when I saw
his miracles I did not believe.” And after his departure the people
of Tours said to their bishop: “Go after him and attend to your own
interest, for if you do not attack him, you shall be humiliated by
the contempt of us all.” And Justinian went forth from Tours and
came to Vercelli, a city of Italy, and was smitten by a judgment of
God and died in a strange country. The people of Tours heard of his
death, and persisting in their evil course, they appointed Armentius
in his place. But bishop Bricius went to Rome and related to the
pope all that he had endured. And while he remained at the apostolic
see he often celebrated the solemn ceremony of the mass, weeping
for the wrong he had done to the saint of God. In the seventh year
he left Rome and by the authority of that pope purposed to return
to Tours. And when he came to the village called Mont-Louis at the
sixth mile-stone from the city, he resided there. Now Armentius was
seized with a fever and died at midnight. This was at once revealed
to bishop Bricius in a vision, and he said to his people: “Rise
quickly, so that we may go to bury our brother, the bishop of Tours.”
And when they came and entered one gate of the city, behold they
were carrying his dead body out by another. And when he was buried,
Bricius returned to the bishop’s chair and lived happily seven years
after. And when he died in the forty-seventh year of his episcopate,
Saint Eustochius, a man of magnificent holiness, succeeded him.
2. After this the Vandals left their own country and burst into the
Gauls under king Gunderic.[P] And when the Gauls had been thoroughly
laid waste they made for the Spains. The Suebi, that is, Alamanni,
following them, seized Gallicia.[Q] Not long after, a quarrel arose
between the two peoples, since they were neighbors. And when they had
gone armed to the battle, and were already at the point of fighting,
the king of the Alemanni said: “Why are all the people involved in
war? Let our people, I pray, not kill one another in battle, but
let two of our warriors go to the field in arms and fight with one
another. Then he whose champion wins shall hold the region without
strife.” To this all the people agreed, that the whole multitude
might not rush on the edge of the sword. In these days king Gunderic
had died and in his place Thrasamund held the kingdom. And in the
conflict of the champions the side of the Vandals was overcome, and,
his champion being slain, Thrasamund promised to depart, and so, when
he had made the necessary preparations for the journey, he removed
from the territories of Spain.
About the same time Thrasamund persecuted the Christians, and by
torture and different sorts of death tried to force all Spain to
consent to the perfidy of the Arian sect. And it so happened that a
certain maiden bound by religious vows was brought to trial. She was
very rich and of the senatorial nobility according to the ranking of
the world, and what is nobler than all this, strong in the catholic
faith and a blameless servant of Almighty God. And when she was
brought before the eyes of the king he first began to coax her with
kind words to be baptized again. And when she repelled his venomous
shaft by the armor of the faith, the king commanded that wealth be
taken from her who already in her heart possessed the kingdom of
paradise, and later that she should be tortured without hope of
this life. Why make a long story? After long examinations, after
losing the treasure of earthly riches, when she could not be forced
to attack the blessed Trinity she was led against her will to be
re-baptized. And when she was being forcibly immersed in that filthy
bath and was crying loudly; “I believe that the Father and the holy
Spirit are of one substance with the Son,” when she said this she
stained the water with a worthy ointment,[47] that is, she defiled it
with excrement. Then she was taken to the examination according to
the law, and after the needle, flame and claw, she was beheaded for
Christ the lord. After this the Vandals crossed the sea, the Alemanni
following as far as Tangier, and were dispersed throughout all Africa
and Mauretania.
[3. Persecutions of Catholics by Arians under the Vandal king Honeric
of Africa. 4. The same, under the Gothic king Athanaric of Spain. 5.
Journey of Bishop Aravatius of Tongres to Rome that he might avert by
prayer the threatened invasion of the Huns. But there he learns that
“it was sanctioned in the council of the Lord that the Huns must come
into the Gauls and ravage them.” He returns to Tongres and dies.]
6. Now the Huns left Pannonia and, as certain say, on the very
watch-night of holy Easter arrived at the city of Metz, after
devastating the country, and gave the city over to burning, slaying
the people with the edge of the sword and killing the very priests
of the Lord before the holy altars. And there remained in the city
no place unburned except the oratory of the blessed Stephen, the
deacon and first martyr. And I do not hesitate to tell what I have
heard from certain persons about this oratory. For they say that
before these enemies came, a man of the faith saw in a vision the
blessed levite Stephen as if conferring with the holy apostles Peter
and Paul, and speaking as follows about this disaster: “I beg you,
my lords, to prevent by your intercession the burning of the city of
Metz by the enemy, because there is a place in it in which the relics
of my life on earth are preserved; rather let the people learn that I
have some influence with God. But if the wickedness of the people has
grown too great, so that nothing else can be done except deliver the
city to burning, at least let this oratory not be consumed.” And they
replied to him: “Go in peace, beloved brother, your oratory alone
the fire shall not burn. But as for the city, we shall not prevail,
because the sentence of the will of the Lord has already gone out
over it. For the sin of the people has grown great, and the outcry of
their wickedness ascends to the presence of God; therefore this city
shall be burned with fire.” [R]Whence it is certain that it was by
the intercession of these that when the city was burned the oratory
remained unharmed.
7. And Attila king of the Huns went forth from Metz and when he had
crushed many cities of the Gauls he attacked Orleans and strove to
take it by the mighty hammering of battering rams. Now at that time
the most blessed Annianus was bishop in the city just mentioned, a
man of unequaled wisdom and praiseworthy holiness, whose miracles are
faithfully remembered among us. And when the people, on being shut
in, cried to their bishop, and asked what they were to do, trusting
in God he advised all to prostrate themselves in prayer, and with
tears to implore the ever present aid of God in their necessities.
Then when they prayed as he had directed, the bishop said: “Look from
the wall of the city to see whether God’s mercy yet comes to your
aid.” For he hoped that by God’s mercy Ætius was coming, to whom he
had recourse before at Arles when he was anxious about the future.
But when they looked from the wall, they saw no one. And he said:
“Pray faithfully, for God will free you this day.” When they had
prayed he said: “Look again.” And when they looked they saw no one
to bring aid. He said to them a third time: “If you pray faithfully,
God comes swiftly.” And they besought God’s mercy with weeping and
loud cries. When this prayer also was finished they looked from the
wall a third time at the old man’s command, and saw afar off a cloud
as it were arising from the earth. When they reported this the bishop
said: “It is the aid of the Lord.” Meanwhile, when the walls were now
trembling from the hammering of the rams and were just about to fall,
behold, Ætius came, and Theodore, king of the Goths and Thorismodus
his son hastened to the city with their armies, and drove the enemy
forth and defeated him. And so the city was freed by the intercession
of the blessed bishop, and they put Attila to flight. And he went to
the plain of Moirey and got ready for battle. And hearing this, they
made manful preparations to meet him….
Ætius with the Goths and Franks fought against Attila. And the latter
saw that his army was being destroyed, and escaped by flight. And
Theodore, king of the Goths, was slain in the battle. Now let no one
doubt that the army of Huns was put to flight by the intercession
of the bishop mentioned above. And so Ætius the patrician, along
with Thorismodus, won the victory and destroyed the enemy. And when
the battle was finished, Ætius said to Thorismodus: “Make haste and
return swiftly to your native land, for fear you lose your father’s
kingdom because of your brother.” The latter, on hearing this,
departed speedily with the intention of anticipating his brother,
and seizing his father’s throne first. At the same time Ætius by a
stratagem caused the king of the Franks to flee. When they had gone,
Ætius took the spoils of the battle and returned victoriously to
his country with much booty. And Attila retreated with a few men.
Not long after Aquileia was captured by the Huns and burned and
altogether destroyed. Italy was overrun and plundered. Thorismodus,
whom we have mentioned above, overcame the Alans in battle, and was
himself defeated later on by his brothers, after many quarrels and
battles, and put to death.
[8. The history of Renatus Frigeridus is quoted for the character of
Ætius and an account of his death.]
[S]9. The question who was the first of the kings of the Franks
is disregarded by many writers. Though the history of Sulpicius
Alexander tells much of them, still it does not name their first
king, but says that they had dukes. However, it is well to relate
what he says of them. For when he tells that Maximus, losing all hope
of empire, remained within Aquileia, almost beside himself, he adds:
“At that time the Franks burst into the province of Germany under
Genobaud, Marcomer, and Sunno, their dukes, and having broken through
the boundary wall they slew most of the people and laid waste the
fertile districts especially, and aroused fear even in Cologne. And
when word was carried to Trèves, Nanninus and Quintinus, the military
officers to whom Maximus had intrusted his infant son and the
defense of the Gauls, assembled an army and met at Cologne. Now the
enemy, laden with plunder after devastating the richest parts of the
provinces, had crossed the Rhine, leaving a good many of their men
on Roman soil all ready to renew their ravages. An attack upon these
turned to the advantage of the Romans, and many Franks perished by
the sword near Carbonnière. And when the Romans were consulting after
their success whether they ought to cross into Francia, Nanninus said
no, because he knew the Franks would not be unprepared and would
doubtless be stronger in their own land. And since this displeased
Quintinus and the remainder of the officers, Nanninus returned to
Mayence, and Quintinus crossed the Rhine with his army near the
stronghold of Neuss, and at his second camp from the river he found
dwellings abandoned by their occupants and great villages deserted.
For the Franks pretended to be afraid and retired into the more
remote tracts, where they built an abattis on the edge of the woods.
And so the cowardly soldiers burned all the dwellings, thinking that
to rage against them was the winning of victory, and they passed a
wakeful night under the burden of their arms. At the first glimmer of
dawn they entered the wooded country under Quintinus as commander of
the battle, and wandered in safety till nearly mid-day, entangling
themselves in the winding paths. At last, when they found everything
solidly shut up by great fences, they struggled to make their exit
into the marshy fields which were adjacent to the woods, and the
enemy appeared here and there, and sheltered by trunks of trees or
standing on the abattis as if on the summit of towers, they sent as
if from engines a shower of arrows poisoned by the juices of herbs,
so that sure death followed even superficial wounds inflicted in
places that were not mortal. Later the army was surrounded by the
enemy in greater number, and it eagerly rushed into the open places
which the Franks had left unoccupied. And the horsemen were the
first to plunge into the morasses, and the bodies of men and animals
fell indiscriminately together, and they were overwhelmed by their
own confusion. The foot soldiers also who had escaped the hoofs of
the horses were impeded by the mud, and extricated themselves with
difficulty, and hid again in panic in the woods from which they had
struggled a little before. And so the ranks were thrown into disorder
and the legions cut in pieces. Heraclius, tribune of the Jovinians,
and nearly all the officers were slain, when night and the lurking
places of the woods offered a safe escape to a few.” This he narrated
in the third book of his History.
And in the fourth book, when he tells of the killing of Victor, son
of Maximus, the tyrant, he says: “At that time Carietto and Sirus who
had been appointed in place of Nanninus, were absent in the province
of Germany with the army opposed to the Franks.” And a little later
when the Franks had taken booty from Germany, he added: “Arbogastes,
wishing no further delay, warned Cæsar that the punishment due
must be exacted from the Franks, unless they speedily restored all
the plunder they had taken the previous year when the legions were
destroyed, and delivered up the instigators of the war to be punished
for their treachery in breaking the peace.” He related that this
had been done under the leadership of dukes and says further: “A
few days later he held a hasty conference with Marcomer and Sunno,
princes[48] of the Franks and required hostages of them as usual,
and then retired to Trèves to spend the winter.” But when he calls
them princes, we do not know whether they were kings or held in the
place of kings. Still the same writer, when he told of the hard
straits of the emperor Valentinian, added this: “While events of
various sorts were taking place in the East throughout Thrace, the
public order was disturbed in Gaul. Valentinian the emperor was shut
up in Vienne in the palace, and reduced almost below the position
of a private person, and the military command was given over to the
Frankish allies, and even the civil offices fell under the control
of Arbogast’s faction, and no one of all the oath-bound soldiery was
found to dare to heed the familiar speech or obey the command of
the emperor.” Then he says: “In the same year Arbogast pursued with
heathenish hate the princes of the Franks, Sunno and Marcomer, and
hastened to Cologne in the depth of winter, since he knew that all
the retreats of Francia could be safely penetrated and ravaged with
fire when the woods, left bare and dry by the fall of the leaves,
could not conceal men lying in ambush. And so he gathered an army and
crossed the Rhine, and devastated the country of the Brictori, near
the bank, and also the district which the Chamavi inhabit, and no
one met him anywhere, except that a few of the Ampsivarii and Chatti
appeared with Marcomer as duke on the ridges of distant hills.” At
another time this writer, no longer mentioning dukes and princes,
openly asserts that the Franks had a king, and without mentioning
his name he says: “Then the tyrant Eugenius undertook a military
expedition, and hastened to the Rhine to renew in the customary way
the old alliances with the kings of the Alemanni and the Franks and
to threaten the barbarian nations at that time with a great army.”
So much the historian mentioned above wrote about the Franks.
Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, whom we have already mentioned, in
his story of the capture and destruction of Rome by the Goths, says:
“Meantime when Goare had gone over to the Romans, Respendial, king
of the Alamanni, turned the army of his people from the Rhine, since
the Vandals were getting the worse of the war with the Franks, having
lost their king Godegisil, and about 20,000 of the army, and all the
Vandals would have been exterminated if the army of the Alamanni[49]
had not come to their aid in time.” It is surprising to us that when
he names the kings of the other nations he does not name the king of
the Franks as well. However, when he says that Constantine, after
seizing imperial power, commanded his son Constantius to come to
him from the Spains, he speaks as follows: “The tyrant Constantine
summoned from the Spains his son Constans, also a tyrant, in order
to consult with him about their general policy; and so Constans
left at Saragossa his court and his wife, and gave Gerontius charge
over all in the Spains, and hastened to his father without breaking
his journey. And when they met, many days passed and there was no
danger from Italy, and Constantine gave himself up to gluttony and
urged his son to return to Spain. And while Constans was sending his
troops forward, being still with his father, news came from Spain
that Maximus, one of his clients, had been given imperial authority
by Gerontius, and was securing a following of the barbarians. Alarmed
at this, they sent Edobeccus forward to the German tribes, and
Constans and Decimus Rusticus, now a prefect,--he had been master of
the offices,--hastened to the Gauls, with the intention of presently
returning to Constantine with the Franks and Alamanni and all the
soldiers.”
Again, when he writes that Constantine was being besieged, he
uses these words: “The fourth month of the siege of Constantine
was scarcely yet under way, when news came suddenly from farther
Gaul that Iovinus had assumed royal state, and was threatening the
besiegers with the Burgundians, Alamanni, Franks, Alans, and all
his army. So the attack on the walls was hastened, the city opened
its gates, and Constantine surrendered. He was sent hastily into
Italy, and was slain at the river Mincio by assassins sent to meet
him by the emperor.” And a little later the same writer says: “At the
same time Decimus Rusticus, prefect of the tyrants, Agrœtius, one
of the chief secretaries of Jovinus, and many nobles, were captured
in Auvergne by the commanders of Honorius and cruelly put to death.
The city of Trèves was plundered and burnt in a second inroad of the
Franks.” And when Asterius had been made a patrician by an imperial
letter, he adds this: “At the same time Castinus, count of the
body-guard, undertook an expedition against the Franks and was sent
into the Gauls.” This is what these have told of the Franks. And the
historian Horosius says in the seventh book of his work: “Stilico
gathered the nations, crushed the Franks, crossed the Rhine, wandered
through the Gauls, and made his way as far as the Pyrenees.”
This is the evidence that the historians who have been named have
left us about the Franks, and they have not mentioned kings. Many
relate that they came from Pannonia and all dwelt at first on
the bank of the Rhine, and then crossing the Rhine they passed
into Thuringia, and there among the villages and cities appointed
long-haired kings over them from their first or, so to speak, noblest
family. This title Clovis’ victories afterwards made a lasting one,
as we shall see later on. [T]We read in the Fasti Consulares that
Theodomer, king of the Franks, son of Richimer, and Ascyla his
mother, were once on a time slain by the sword. They say also that
Chlogio, a man of ability and high rank among his people, was king of
the Franks then, and he dwelt at the stronghold of Dispargum which
is within the borders of the Thuringians. And in these parts, that
is, towards the south, the Romans dwelt as far as the Loire. But
beyond the Loire the Goths were in control; the Burgundians also,
who belonged to the sect of the Arians, dwelt across the Rhone in
the district which is adjacent to the city of Lyons. And Chlogio
sent spies to the city of Cambrai, and they went everywhere, and he
himself followed and overcame the Romans and seized the city, in
which he dwelt for a short time, and he seized the land as far as the
river Somme. Certain authorities assert that king Merovech, whose son
was Childeric, was of the family of Chlogio.
10. Now this people seems to have always been addicted to heathen
worship, and they did not know God, but made themselves images of
the woods and the waters, of birds and beasts, and of the other
elements as well. They were wont to worship these as God and to offer
sacrifice to them. O! would that that terrible voice had touched
the fibers of their hearts which spoke through Moses to the people
saying, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make
unto thee any graven image nor worship any likeness of anything that
is in heaven or on earth or in the water; thou shalt not make them
and shalt not worship them.”…
And in Isaiah he speaks a second time: “I am the first, and I am
the last, and besides me there is no god and creator whom I do not
know. They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity, and
the things that they delight in shall not profit them. They are
themselves witnesses of what they are, that they do not see nor
have understanding, and they are confounded in them. Behold all his
fellows shall be put to shame, for the workmen are of men. On the
coals and with hammers did he form it, and he worked it with his
strong arm. In like manner, too, the carpenter fashioned it with
compasses, and made the likeness of a man as if of a comely man
dwelling in a house. He hewed down the wood, he worked and made a
graven image, and worshiped it as a god, he fastened it with nails
and hammers so that it should not fall to pieces. They are carried
because they cannot walk; and the remainder of the wood is prepared
by men for the hearth and they are warmed. And from another he
made a god, and a graven image for himself. He bends before it and
worships it and prays, saying: ‘Deliver me, for thou art my god. I
burned half of it with fire; and baked bread upon its coals; I baked
flesh and ate, and from the residue I shall make an idol, I shall
worship before a wooden trunk; part of it is ashes.’ The foolish
heart worshiped it, and did not deliver his soul. And he does not
say: ‘Perhaps there is a lie in my right hand?’” The nation of the
Franks did not understand at first; but it understood later, as the
following history relates.
[11. Avitus, citizen of Clermont, emperor of Rome, and bishop of
Placentia.]
12. Childeric was excessively wanton and being king of the Franks he
began to dishonor their daughters. And they were angry with him on
this account and took his kingdom from him. And when he learned that
they wished also to kill him he hastened to Thuringia, leaving there
a man who was dear to him to calm their furious tempers; he arranged
also for a sign when he should be able to return to his country, that
is, they divided a gold piece between them and Childeric took one
half and his friend kept the other part, saying: “Whenever I send you
this part and the joined parts make one coin, then you shall return
securely to your native place.” Accordingly Childeric went off to
Thuringia and remained in hiding with king Basinus and Basina his
wife. The Franks, after he was driven out, with one accord selected
as king Egidius, whom we have mentioned before as the commander of
the troops sent by the republic. And when he was in the eighth year
of his reign over them that faithful friend secretly won the good
will of the Franks and sent messengers to Childeric with the part
of the divided coin which he had kept, and Childeric learned by
this sure sign that he was wanted by the Franks, and returned from
Thuringia at their request and was restored to his kingdom. Now when
these princes were reigning at the same time, the Basina whom we have
mentioned above left her husband and came to Childeric. And when he
asked anxiously for what reason she had come so far to see him it
is said that she answered: “I know your worth,” said she, “and that
you are very strong, and therefore I have come to live with you. For
let me tell you that if I had known of any one more worthy than you
in parts beyond the sea I should certainly have sought to live with
him.” And he was glad and united her to him in marriage. And she
conceived and bore a son and called his name Clovis. He was a great
and distinguished warrior.
[13. Artemius, bishop of Clermont, is succeeded by Venerandus, and he
by Rusticus.]
[U]14. In the city of Tours after the death of bishop Eustochius
in the 17th year of his episcopate, Perpetuus was ordained fifth
bishop after the blessed Martin. And when he saw that miracles were
being worked continually at Saint Martin’s tomb, and that the chapel
which had been built over it was a tiny one, he judged it unworthy
of such miracles, and moving it away he built there a great church
which remains to the present day, situated 550 paces from the city.
It is 160 feet long and 60 wide and 45 high to the vault; it has 32
windows in the part around the altar, 20 in the nave; 41 columns; in
the whole building 52 windows; 120 columns; 8 doors, three in the
part around the altar and five in the nave. The feast of the church
is given sanctity by a triple virtue; that is, the dedication of the
temple, the transfer of the body of the saint, and his ordination
as bishop. This feast you shall observe four days before the Nones
of July, and remember that his burial is the third day before the
Ides of November. And if you celebrate these faithfully, you will
merit the protection of the blessed bishop both in the present life
and that to come. And since the ceiling of the former chapel was of
choice workmanship the bishop thought it unworthy that this work
should perish, and he built another church in honor of the blessed
apostles Peter and Paul in which he placed the ceiling. He built many
other churches which remain to the present time in Christ’s name.
[15. Eufronius, bishop of Autun, who “piously sent the block of
marble which is placed above the holy tomb of the blessed Martin.”]
16. Now after the death of the bishop Rusticus, saint Namatius became
the eighth bishop of Clermont. He undertook the task of building
the older church which is still standing and is contained within
the walls of the city, one hundred and fifty feet in length, sixty
in width,--that is, the nave,--fifty in height to the vault, with
a round apse in front and on each side aisles finely built; the
whole building is laid out in the form of a cross; it has forty-two
windows, seventy columns, eight doors. The fear of God is in it and a
great brightness is seen, and in the spring a very pleasant fragrance
as if of spices is perceived there by the devout. It has near the
altar walls of variegated work adorned with many kinds of marble. The
blessed bishop on finishing the building in the twelfth year, sent
priests to Bologna in Italy, to procure relics of saints Agricola and
Vitalis, who we know very certainly were crucified in the name of
Christ our God.
17. His wife built the church of Saint Stephen in the outskirts of
the city. And wishing to adorn it with colors she used to carry
a book in her bosom, reading the histories of ancient times and
describing to the painters what they were to represent on the walls.
It happened one day that while she sat in the church and read, a
certain poor man came to pray, and seeing her in black clothing,
already an old woman, he thought she was one of the needy, and he
took out part of a loaf and put it in her lap and went off. But she
did not disdain the gift of the poor man who did not know her, but
took it and thanked him and put it away, and setting it before her at
meals used it as holy bread until it was used up.
18. Now Childeric fought at Orleans and Odoacer came with the Saxons
to Angers. At that time a great plague destroyed the people. Egidius
died and left a son, Syagrius by name. On his death Odoacer received
hostages from Angers and other places. The Britanni were driven from
Bourges by the Goths, and many were slain at the village of Déols.
Count Paul with the Romans and Franks made war on the Goths and
took booty. When Odoacer came to Angers, king Childeric came on the
following day, and slew count Paul, and took the city. In a great
fire on that day the house of the bishop was burned.
19. After this war was waged between the Saxons and the Romans; but
the Saxons fled and left many of their people to be slain, the Romans
pursuing. Their islands were captured and ravaged by the Franks,
and many were slain. In the ninth month of that year, there was an
earthquake. Odoacer made an alliance with Childeric, and they subdued
the Alamanni, who had overrun part of Italy.