Literature and History.com

Hello and welcome to Literature and History.

Episode 105, Gregory of Tour.

In this program, we will read the first half of the History of the Franks,

or Historia Francon, written by Bishop Gregory of Tour and completed in about 591 C.E.

The history of the Franks is about the founding and first five generations of the Merivindian dynasty,

a dynasty which ruled much of modern-day France from 481 until 751.

Our author for today, again Gregory of Tour, died in the year 594, and so his history covers only the first 110 years of Merovingian leadership,

the years between 481 and 591.

But oh, what a 110-year period this was.

From 481 to 591, Roman Gaul definitively became Merovingian Francia.

The collapse of Roman power gave way first to a failed state

in which shifting consortiums of barbarians destroyed the last bastions of Roman power,

while also vying for supremacy with one another.

Out of this chaos, in the late four hundreds, there arose King Childeric the first, and his son,

Clovis, the founders of the Merivinjian dynasty, and ultimately some of the most influential

figures in European history.

When we read their story in the pages of Gregory of Tours' History of the most influential figures in European history. When we read their story in the pages

of Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, and as we press on to read the stories of their children

and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, something extraordinary happens. We see, unmistakably, the world of the Middle Ages born on the page. It is a smaller and more

local world than the old Roman one. News travels more slowly there. Checkerboards of modestly

sized kingdoms have replaced emperors ruling over swaths of continents.

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