The History of the Franks

At the time Gregory of Tours was writing, Christianity was still divided between sects, the Catholic and the Arian. Arianism or Arian Christianity was named for the bishop Arius (256-336). He rejected the doctrine that was made Christian orthodoxy by the Council of Nicaea in 325 which declared God existed as a trinity of equal, eternal, and connected beings: the Father (God), the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Arius rejected the concept of the trinity, arguing instead that Jesus was later created by God and thus is a lesser being than God. His opinions were condemned by the Council of Nicaea, and he and a number of his followers were exiled.

As a result, Arians found themselves among the Germanic peoples who would later divide the western Roman Empire among themselves and converted several of their kings to Arianism. At the time Gregory lived, in western Europe, kingdoms ruled by Arians were the majority, most notably the Vandal kingdom of Africa (in North Africa), the Gothic kingdom of Italy, and originally the Visigothic kingdom of modern-day Portugal and Spain. As a Catholic who subscribed to the Council of Nicaea, Gregory bitterly rejected Arianism and considered it a heresy.

Although Gregory wrote to preserve memory of the events, The History of the Franks is also written with a providential view of history. This means that Gregory also wrote his history with the view that God actively intervenes in history, so heretics like the Arians and wicked people are never vindicated and eventually punished.

As the western Roman Empire’s borders receded in the 5th century, Germanic peoples began establishing kingdoms in former Roman provinces. These included the Anglo-Saxons in modern-day England, the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Hispania (modern-day Spain and Portugal), and the Franks in Gaul and western Germany. King Clovis I (481-511) conquered the city of Soissons which, under the Roman commander Syagrius, was the capital of the last outpost of Roman rule in Gaul. Through further conquests by Clovis I, the Franks were united under the rule of one dynasty, the Merovingians, known as the “long-haired kings” for wearing long hair as a sign of their royal status.

The History of the Franks covers a critical period of history, after the fall of the western Roman Empire and before the Islamic conquests of the Middle East and North Africa. The Roman Empire still existed in the form of the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, which had its capital in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). At this time, Byzantine territory covered Greece, most of the Balkans, modern-day Turkey, Syria, Palestine/Israel, Egypt, and, after the Byzantine conquest of the Vandals in 534, most of North Africa. As shown when the Byzantines gave Clovis the ancient Roman title of consul, Clovis was presented as ruling on behalf of the Roman Empire.

However, this was a diplomatic fiction, and the Frankish kingdoms were politically independent. Many of the people who had lived in Gaul since the days of the Roman Empire, the Gallo-Romans, continued to fill important roles in the new kingdoms’ administration and the church. Merovingian rule would last until 751, when the Merovingians were quietly deposed and replaced by a new dynasty, the Carolingians.