Ten Books of Histories
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A Gallo-Roman bishop writes the Frankish kingdoms as they are rather than as they should be, in a Latin he apologises for, and produces the only detailed narrative of sixth-century Gaul.
- contemporary political history written by a participant bishop
- an explicit anxiety that Latin learning is ending
- miracle and murder reported in the same register
- a partisan source that is also the only source
Gregory's ten books run from creation to his own day, but the weight falls on the Merovingian generations he knew, with their feuds, poisonings, disputed successions and episcopal politics recorded in circumstantial detail. He opens by apologising for his rustic Latin and worrying that no one educated is left to write, then proceeds to a narrative whose vividness owes much to that plainness. He is partisan, credulous about relics and hostile to those he considers heretics, and he is nonetheless the indispensable source: without him the political history of sixth-century Gaul would be almost blank.
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