The History of the Franks

The History of the Franks begins with Gregory of Tours declaring his Catholic Christian faith. Specifically, he declares that he believes that Jesus was human when he was crucified and then rose from the dead; that there is a holy trinity which includes God the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost or Spirit; and that the world will end with the rise of the Antichrist. Specifically, Gregory rejects what he views as the heretical argument that the Son is a lesser entity than God the Father, which is proven by the fact that Jesus does not know the day the world will end (68-69).

Next, Gregory begins his history with the biblical account of Adam and Eve. Before he committed the first sin, Gregory argues the first human Adam was like Jesus in his purity. After they were expelled from paradise for their sin, Adam and Eve had two sons (these are Cain and Abel, although Gregory does not name them). One killed the other in an act of jealousy. After that, humans began to “commit one execrable crime after another” (70).

An exception was Enoch the Just, who was taken to Heaven by God. Disgusted with humanity’s sins, God flooded the world, which only spared Noah and the people on the ark Noah prepared. At this point, Gregory makes the point that God’s anger is not like a human’s and that “He is enraged so that He may reform us” (70). He compares Noah’s ark to the “mother Church” (70-71), which protects Christians from evil.

Modern humanity is descended from Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham’s first son, Chus, invented “idolatry” (71) and magic. He became the prophet Zoroaster (a real-life prophet who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism in Iran). When humanity tried building a large tower in a city called Babel, God caused humanity to spread throughout the Earth and speak many different languages. Gregory identifies Babel with Babylon, which he says was founded by Chus’s son Habron (71-72).

As for Shem, his descendant was Abraham, “who was the beginning of our faith” (72). Gregory states that Christ revealed himself and the truth about his eventual sacrifice to Abraham. One of Abraham’s descendants, Jacob, established the Israelite people and was the father of the 12 biblical patriarchs. Jacob’s son, Joseph, whom Gregory notes had visions like Jesus (74), led the Israelites to Egypt. After Joseph’s death, the Pharaoh of Egypt enslaved all the Israelites. They escaped from Egypt into the desert under the leadership of Moses. At Sinai, Moses had a vision of the Holy Spirit as a “column of fire” (76). After Moses’s time, Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan, the “Promised Land” (77).

After Joshua, Gregory writes that the Israelites became sinful, so God allowed them to fall under the dominion of other peoples. After the Israelites repented, God gave the Israelites a series of kings, beginning with Saul, David, and Solomon. After Solomon’s death, the 12 Israelite tribes split, with two tribes forming the kingdom of Judah, and the other 10 tribes creating the kingdom of Israel. Since they “later turned to idolatry” (78), God sent the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, to conquer the Israelites and force them to go to Babylon. The Jewish official Zerubbabel then freed the Israelites and brought them back to their capital city of Jerusalem. Gregory of Tours sees the captivity as a “symbol of the enslavement into which the soul of a sinner is led, and indeed such a soul will be carried off into fearful exile unless some Zerubbabel, that is Christ Himself, can rescue it” (79). However, Gregory writes that even then the Israelites went back to idolatry.

After giving a brief timeline establishing the number of generations between the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites and the birth of Christ (79), Gregory skips ahead to Julius Caesar, whom he describes as the first emperor of the Roman Empire. During the reign of Caesar’s nephew, Augustus, Gregory notes that the city of Lyons in Gaul was founded, and that the city would become famous for its Christian martyrs (81). Also, during this time, Jesus was born. Gregory blames Christ’s persecution on the Jewish community, whose “minds, which had fed on the blood of the prophets, now strove unjustly to destroy the Just” (81). Following Jesus’s crucifixion and death, Gregory describes that he rose from the dead. Gregory insists this happened on Sunday and not on a Saturday.

Gregory then proceeds to discuss how the apostles Peter, James, and Mark and the early Christian father Paul were martyred. Further Christians would be martyred on the order of the Roman emperors. Among these were Saint Iranaeus, whom Gregory credits with converting the city of Lyons to Christianity. Iranaeus was killed by the Romans along with 48 Christian martyrs (86). One of the most brutal persecutions was carried out by Emperor Diocletian, under whom “great multitudes of Christians were slaughtered because of their worship of the true God” (90).

The persecution ended with the reign of Constantine, who converted to Christianity. During his life, his mother Helena found a wooden piece of the cross Jesus was crucified on. Born during Constantine’s reign, the bishop of Tours, Saint Martin, preached in Gaul. In Gregory’s words, “Gaul became bright with new rays coming from its lamps” (91). Meanwhile the Emperor Valens forced monks to join the military. Since Valens was killed in a war, Gregory believes “God’s vengeance caught up with him in the end for the blood of the saintly men which he had shed” (92).

Back in Gaul, Urbicus became the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand. He was married to a woman, and both lived as chaste monastics. However, his wife desired him and shouted at him from outside the locked doors of the church. She became pregnant with a daughter who later became a nun. The bishop went to a monastery and atoned for his sin. Gregory also tells the story of Injuriosus, who came from a noble family in Clermont-Ferrand. He married a woman from another aristocratic family who convinced him to live with her in celibacy out of religious devotion. Their two tombs were found beside each other, even after they were separated.

Meanwhile, when Saint Martin died, the citizens of the cities of Tours and Poitiers thought over who could claim his body. The corpse was locked away while groups from both cities waited. Gregory credits God with causing the representatives of Poitiers to fall asleep, allowing the people of Tours to claim and take the body of Saint Martin to Tours.