the history of the franks by gregory of tours

Gregory of Tours was a Catholic bishop who recorded the historical events as he saw them as an eyewitness. One of these roaming populations were the Francs. Vandals, Aleman’s, Goths, Saxons, Thuringia’s, Huns and others raided the cities and their surrounding countries brutally and violently, killing or enslaving the populations, burning homes and churches and stealing and robbing anything they could get hold of. The Roman Empire was crumbling, and the void after the Roman Rule gave place for invading barbarian populations from the east and north. The 5th and 6th Century was the darkest of the dark middle ages in the land of Gaul. Gregory would have been certain of the opposite, he was a Roman, his family were Romans, his friends were Romans, they just had to live in this strange world of the Franks, observing the actions of the vengeful Saints, whose slumbers in their tombs one should never, ever disturb. This is probably a sign that I'm overdue for a reread, one of the curiosities is that most of us, in or out of pubs or other drinking places if asked would be absolutely certain that there was no Roman empire and therefore no Romans in central France in the sixth century. Beer addled, my abiding memory is of how the monarchical legitimacy bestowed by having long hair worked to the advantage of the quarrelling kings since any potential rival claimant would have to hide themselves for long enough for their hair to grow before being able to declare themselves King while enemies could be disposed of by giving them a vicious and unrelenting haircut. Possibly that might have aided my recall.

I'd travel back in the evening and would often stop in a pub off Villiers Street named after George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham from The Three Musketeersa curious place partly under the station - it had an extension on the other side of the street, if I was clever enough I could arrive after the various city types had gone home, drink a pint, and read a bit of Gregory of Tours before catching a train from Charing Cross back into Kent.Īs a Gallio-Roman the ghost of that Bishop of Tours would probably have preferred wine to be drunk in his memory as I read of the plotting, scheming and infighting of the long-haired Kings of France. I got this while studying something that had nothing to do with the Franks, in London. “A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad”.

The history of the franks by gregory of tours