Table Of ContentTHE 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
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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
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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
