The History of the Franks

King Lothar issued a new tax claiming one-third of church revenues. The only bishop who defied the new tax was Saint Injuriosus. Afraid of offending Saint Martin, Lothar gave gifts to Injuriosus and repealed the tax. Gregory also tells the story of how, when Lothar’s wife Ingund asked Lothar to find a wealthy husband for her sister Aregund, Lothar married Aregund himself. Theudebald died, which Gregory claims was signaled by the fact that grapes instead of blackberries grew from an elder tree (203). After this, Lothar annexed Theudebald’s kingdom.

Meanwhile, a priest named Cato was to become the new bishop of Tours. Cato even bribed a woman “to behave in church as if she were possessed and to shout that he, Cato, was a great saint and very dear to God” (204). Cato’s rival was Cautinus, the corrupt and heavy-drinking bishop of Clermont-Ferrand. Cautinus tried to pressure a priest named Anastasius into giving up some property he owned and had Anastasius buried alive in a crypt. Anastasius miraculously escaped and went to King Lothar, who confirmed his ownership of the property by renewing his property documents.

Lothar’s son, Chramn, deposed and threatened the count of Clermont, Ferminus, who took refuge in a church with his sister-in-law, Caesaria. Ferminus and Caesaria were violently taken out of the church by Chramn’s men but were able to save themselves from having to go into exile. Cautinus, who was also an enemy of Chramn, feared for his own life as well.

Lothar marched on the Saxon people, who were part of his kingdom and failed to pay him tribute. When they did offer to make peace, Lothar was forced to attack them anyway by his own men. Lothar offered to make sure Cato would become bishop of Tours, but Cato demanded Cautinus’s position as bishop of Clermont-Ferrand instead. The king refused, and when Cato asked if he could be made bishop of Tours instead, Lothar gave him nothing at all. Instead, Lothar made Eufranius bishop of Tours.

Meanwhile, Chramn continued in “evil living” (211), encouraged by his friends. Eventually, Chramn plotted with Childebert against his own father. With Childebert’s support, Chramn raised an army against Lothar while Lothar was fighting against the Saxons. Duke Austrapias, who stayed loyal to Lothar, resisted in his castle against Chramn’s forces, so Chramn’s troops trapped and starved him in the church of Saint Martin. When someone offered Austrapias water, a judge ran up and poured the water to the ground. However, that judge suddenly died afterward.

In the meantime, King Childebert I died and Lothar was able to take over his territories. Chramn fled to Brittany, then ruled by Count Chanao. Due to the civil war between Chlothar and Chramn, Tours was badly damaged, so Lothar had the city and the Church of Saint Martin restored. Chramn and the Bretons were defeated. The prince, his wife, and daughters were all killed when they were trapped in a burning hut. After this, Lothar prayed at the Church of Saint Martin “to gain pardon for his foolish actions” (227). Lothar died from a fever a year after Chramn was killed. After Lothar’s death, his four sons Chilperic, Sigibert, Guntram, and Charibert divided his kingdom between themselves.

While Sigibert was busy fighting the Huns who were invading Gaul, Chilperic attacked his domains, causing civil war to break out between the brothers. Meanwhile, Charibert’s queen, Ingoberg, became jealous of Charibert’s love for a servant named Merofled, the daughter of a wool-maker. Ingoberg had Merofled’s father work in front of Charibert, hoping to cause Charibert to become disgusted with Merofled’s social background. Instead, Charibert banished Ingoberg from court and took Merofled as his wife.

Noting that Charibert and his other brothers were taking lower-class women as their wives, Sigibert sought to marry Brunhild, the daughter of King Athanagild of Spain. Brunhild was Arian, but she soon converted to Catholicism. This prompted Chilperic to become betrothed to Brunhild’s sister, Galswinth. Chilperic “promised to dismiss all the others, if only he were considered worthy of marrying a King’s daughter of a rank equal to his own" (222). However, once he married Galswinth, he had one of his servants murder her because she kept complaining that Chilperic remained with one of his previous wives, Fredegund, a former servant.

King Sigibert was defeated and made to form a treaty with the Huns, whom Gregory says used witchcraft to make phantoms appear on the battlefield. Then, Sigibert and Guntram fought each other for control over the city of Arles. Guntram won, but he still returned a city that had belonged to Sigibert—Avignon—after he had captured Avignon during the war. Meanwhile, a “curious bellowing sound” (225) blew before a severe flood and landslide killed many people near the fortress of Tauredunum. Gregory also writes that strange lights that looked like suns were seen in the sky before a plague struck the region of Auvergne.

When it was time for a new bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, one candidate was Eufrasius, a man whose “conversation was agreeable, but he was loose in his private life” (229). However, the king and the people of Clermont-Ferrand instead supported Avitus. In Lyons, the new bishop Priscus and his wife Susanna began prosecuting friends of the previous, deceased bishop, Nicetus. Appearing in the dreams of a man to warn Priscus, Nicetus also cursed Priscus and his family with illness.

Moving back to politics, Gregory describes Palladius, Count of Javols. He got into a dispute with the local bishop, Parthenius, and accused Parthenius of having male lovers. A year later, Palladius lost his title of count. His political rival, Romanus, spread the rumor that King Sigibert was planning to have him killed. Out of paranoia, Palladius died by suicide. As the civil wars between Clovis’s sons continued, a general named Mummolus got a group of migrating Saxons to settle peacefully in Sigibert’s territory. He defended Gaul from an invasion by the Longobards. In Clermont-Ferrand, a courtier of King Sigimund, Andarchius, sought to marry the daughter of a rich local man named Ursus. Andarchius used trickery and forged documents to claim he was wed to Ursus’s daughter. Ursus’s servants trapped Andarchius in a house and burned it down.

At the same time, Chilperic marched on the territories of Sigibert. Gregory claims that the brutal sacking of the people and the churches carried out by Chilperic’s army was worse than what happened at the time of Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians (244). After Chilperic’s soldiers looted the Church of Saint Martin, all of them later died in a boat accident except for the one man who opposed attacking the church. Chilperic’s son, Theudebert, was killed in the fighting. When Sigibert began winning the war and made peace with Chilperic’s ally Guntram, Chilperic fled to Tournai. Fredegund hired two men to assassinate Sigibert on the battlefield, saving Chilperic.