Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory’s hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory’s hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an “ecclesiastical history” (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.
- Cover
- Table of contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- The Cults of Saints
- Gregory of Tours and his Work
- East and West
- The Aims of this Study
- 1. Gregory of Tours
- The Life of Gregory of Tours
- Gregory of Tours and his Saints
- Martin of Tours
- Julian of Brioude
- Vita Patrum
- The Glory of the Confessors
- The Glory of the Martyrs
- Autohagiography
- Conclusion
- 2. ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’: Eastern Saints in Merovingian Gaul
- The Italian Evidence
- The Eastern Evidence: Glory of the Martyrs
- Polycarp
- The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus
- The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
- Sergius
- Cosmas and Damian
- Phocas
- Domitius
- George
- Isidore
- Polyeuctus
- The Eastern Evidence: Glory of the Confessors
- Conclusion: The Dissemination of the Cults of Saints
- 3. The Miraculous History of Gregory of Tours
- Libri Miraculorum Revisited
- Gregory of Tours’s Literary Approach
- Gregory of Tours’s Historiographical Perception
- From Hagiography to Ecclesiasticcal History
- A Brief History of ‘Ecclesiastical History’
- Historiographical and Literary Context
- 4. ‘By Romans They Refer To…’ (Romanos Enim Vocitant): History, Hagiography, and Identity
- Whose History Is It Anyway?
- Gallo-Christian Identity
- Gaul vs. Spain
- Gaul vs. the East
- Hagiography and Identity
- The Martyrologium Hieronymianum
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
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