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Episode 106, Gregory of Tour, Part 2.

In this episode, we will read the second half of the history of the Franks, a chronicle of some of the earliest kings of what is today France, written by Bishop Gregory of Tour and completed around 591.

Books 6 through 10 of this foundational work of medieval history tell us all about the third generation of Meravindian kings.

Not Clovis, nor Clovis's sons, but Clovis's grandsons, and eventually their heirs as well.

And while the first five books of the history of the Franks, the ones we read last time,

rocket through centuries and centuries of history, in the final five, Gregory spends an incredible

350 pages chronicling the events of just 10 years, the decade between 581 and 591.

During this decade, Gregory himself had become a fixture of the Frankish world,

a wealthy churchman from a family of wealthy churchmen. As the Bishop of Tour, Gregory found himself

squarely in the middle of various Merivindian intrigues and squabbles for power. His bishopric was

at one of the main junctures of the

Marevindian world, and it held the church and relics of the great St. Martin, attracting goodly

pilgrims and reprobate refugees and criminals alike over the course of Gregory's career. During the

years between 581 and 591, Gregory observed some of the worst and best of human nature.

The many heinous acts of violence in Gregory's book have left posterity with a somber picture of 6th century gall,

a picture of a place where the powerful used torture, mutilation, and murder readily for

personal advancement, and servants and peasants were especially vulnerable to the ready

brutality of kings, queens, and nobles. At the same time, though, Gregory shows us a world in

which an intelligent and literate clergy could,

and often did, step in to arbitrate with the aristocracy, in order to bring peace and stability

...