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