the history of the franks by gregory of tours

Some are family stories, including the efforts of Gregory’s own great grandfather to redeem his nephew from slavery, but most deal with the turbulent affairs of the Frankish royal lines. It is this world which Gregory depicts, using an anecdotal style replete with detail and vivid characterisations. These areas, ruled by various lineages of the Merovingian dynasty, were constantly subject to internecine rivalries between uncles and brothers, fathers and sons. Gregory himself was writing from Austrasia.

The Frankish lands, in Merovingian and Carolingian times. This territory was not held under a single king, however, but was split into mini-kingdoms known as teilreich, which coalesced into the areas of Neustria, Austrasia, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. This process was advanced by Childeric’s son Clovis, and the Frankish dynasty known as the Merovingians.īy Gregory’s day, they ruled from Belgium south to the borders of Visigothic Spain–an area hotly contested by the two groups–and often clashed with their neighbours the Ostrogoths in Italy. During the 5th century, a group of Germanic ‘barbarians’ known as the Franks had begun to gain power in the lands of Roman Gaul, forming their own kingdom under Childeric, a man presumed to rule the area around Paris and Soissons, near Belgium. If he owed much of his success and later recognition to the continuity of his family traditions–which linked him back to the Roman aristocracy–however, his world was frighteningly new. These he set into the perspective of world history–beginning with the Creation–and recorded for the betterment of his contemporaries and posterity. His personal relationships with many kings, as well as with cultural figures like poet Venantius Fortunatus, gave him unparalleled access onto the significant events of his day. Having become the Bishop of Tours after a period of education in that city, he acted as a powerful political figure not only in his own region, but also in those of the other Frankish kingdoms located in modern France. It was to this background that Gregory owed much of his success, and which allowed him to write the works, including ten books of history usually referred to as the History of the Franks, which have made him such a prominent figure in modern scholarship on the Middle Ages.

Fronticepiece of a 7th century manuscript of Gregory’s Historia Francorum, a considerable literary achievement.

The history of the franks by gregory of tours