THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE Gregory of Tours was Metropolitan Bishop of that city from 573 until his death in 594. He was a Gallo-Roman who spoke and wrote sixth- century Latin as his native language. On both his mother’s and his father's side he came of distinguished senatorial families. During his episcopate the civil rule in Tours passed from Sigibert to Chilperic and then again to Childebert II, during whose minority Guntram exercised control. Gregory wrote many books. The most famous of them. The History of the Franks, begins with the Creation; but much of it is an eye-witness account of the bloodthirsty behaviour of these four Merovingian Kings and their savage consorts. Gregory was later canonized. Lewis Thorpe, B.A., L.-ès-L., Ph.D., D. de l’U., LL.D., F.I.A.L., F.R.S.A., F.R. Hist.S., was Professor of French at Nottingham Univer­ sity from 1958 to 1977. He joined the staff of that university in 1946 after distinguished war service. He was President of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, and editor of the Society’s Bulletin Bibliographique. He was also editor of Nottingham Mediaeval Studies and Nottingham French Studies. He published many articles, and his books include La France Guerrière (1945), Le roman de Laurin, fils de Marques le Sénéchal (1950), Le roman de Laurin, text of MS. B.N.f.fr. 22548 (1960), Guido Farina, Painter of Verona, 1896-1957 (1967) with Barbara Reynolds, Einhard the Frank: The Life of Charlemagne (1970), Le roman de Silence, by Heldris de Comudlle (1972) and The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion (1973). He also transited Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, Two Lives of Charlemagne and Gerald of Wales: The Journey through Wales and The Description of Wales for the Penguin Classics. Lewis Thorpe was a member of the M.C.C. He died on 10 October 1977. GREGORY OF TOURS THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS Translated with an Introduction by Lewis Thorpe PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England This translation first published 1974 13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14 Copyright © Lewis Thorpe, 1974 All rights reserved Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Set in Intertype Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 7 I Gregory of Tours 7 Genealogical table: the family of Gregory of Tours 11 II The Times in which Gregory lived 16 Genealogical table: the Merovingians, down to Dagobert 18 III Gregory's Writings 22 IV The History of the Franks 23 1. Intention and shape 23 2. Historical and literary debts 27 3. Personal knowledge 31 4. Credibility 33 5. Other historians of the period 36 6. Language 38 7. Style 41 8. Humour and irony 46 9. Nature notes 50 10. The manuscripts 53 11. Earlier translations 54 12. This translation 54 V Gregory down the Centuries 54 VI Short Bibliography 56 ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR THE BOOKS WRITTEN BY GREGORY OF TOURS 59 MAP OF GAUL 60 63 PREFACE BOOK I 65 BOOK II 101 BOOK III 159 BOOK IV 195 BOOK v 251 book vi 325 book vu 383 BOOK VIII 431 book ix 479 BOOK x 541 INDEX 605 INTRODUCTION I. GREGORY OF TOURS The historian who was to become known to the world as Greg­ ory, nineteenth Bishop of Tours, was bora on 30 November c. 539,1 in what is now Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme, and what was then Arvernus or Arvernorum civitas, the chief city of Arvernia or Auvergne. He was baptized Georgius Flor­ entius. On both his father’s and his mother’s side he came of distinguished senatorial families with a long tradition of service to the Catholic Church, that is to say of wealthy Gallo-Roman landed gentry whose ancestors had enjoyed the rank of Senators under the Empire and were still extremely proud of the fact. His father was the Senator Florentius and his paternal grand­ father was the Senator Georgius, both of Clermont.2 His mother was Armentaria,3 grand daughter of Saint Tetricus, Bishop of Langres, 539-72, and great-grand-daughter of Saint Gregory, also Bishop of Langres, 507-39. Gregory’s immediate predecessor as Bishop of Tours, Saint Eufronius, 556-73, was his first cousin once removed. Duke Gundulf and his brother Saint Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons, 552-73, were two of Arm- entaria’s uncles.4 When Bishop Eufronius was introduced to 1. See MBA, 38, where Gregory tells us that he was bora on Saint An­ drew’s day. See VSM, III, 10, where he tells us that his mother came to Tours after his consecration and was cured by Saint Martin of muscular pains which had troubled her ever since his own birth thirty-four years before. 2. See VP, XIV, 3, where Gregory’s father, as a boy, was taken to be cured by Saint Martius of a tertian fever: ‘Famulus tuus est puer Florentius, Georgi quondam filius senatoris.’ 3. She is mentioned in VP, VII, 4, when she was taken to Saint Gregory of Langres to be cured of a quartan fever: ‘Armentaria autem, neptis eius...’ 4. T received him kindly, the more so as I realized that he was my mother’s uncle,* writes Gregory of Gundulf, HF, VI, 11. 7 Introduction King Lothar I as a descendant of Saint Gregory of Langres, the King replied: ‘That is one of the noblest and most dis­ tinguished families in the land.’5 Gregory had many other famous forbears; and, indeed, he himself said that of the eighteen Bishops who preceded him in Tours all but five were his blood-relations.6 * There was even an early Christian martyr in the family, Vettius Epagatus, who was killed in Lyons in 177.T These rather indigestible details are made the more strange for us by the fact that so many of Gregory’s relations were canonized by the Catholic Church, as he was to be himself. What I have given is, however, more than sufficient to prove that in his family there was a long and constant tradition of service to the state and to the Church, even more marked perhaps on his mother’s side than on his father’s, and directed more often towards ecclesiastical than lay office, but rewarded by high place in both spheres.8 Gregory does not mention his father or mother by name in the History of the Franks. He describes in some detail and with much feeling the murder in 574 of his brother Peter, who was a deacon in Langres.9 He had a sister, who married a man called Justinus, neither of whom is mentioned, but their daughter, Gregory’s niece, plays a valiant part in the story as Justina, Prioress of Saint Radegund’s nunnery in Poitiers.10 There is also a reference to the husband of another niece, Eustenia, who was presumably Justina’s sister,11 although Eustenia herself is not named. It is inferred that Gregory’s father died while he was still a boy. His mother went to live in Burgundy, where she had prop­ erty, especially near Cavaillon, Vaucluse, and there Gregory visited her.12 When he was about eight he was sent to Cler­ mont-Ferrand to be brought up in the household of his uncle, 5. HF, IV, 15. 6. HF, V, 49. 7. HF, I, 29, 31. 8. See the family tree on p. 11. 9. HF, V, 5. 10. HF, X, 15. 11. HF, V, 14. 12. VSM, 111, 60. ‘Oportunitatis causa nuper exteterat, ut ad visitandam genetricem meam in terretorium Cavellonensis urbis adirem.* 8