Early Medieval Narrative: The Political Ideas of Gregory of Tours

EARLY MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE: THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF GREGORY OF TOURS Gregory of Tours is best known to the English speaking world as the author of the History of the Franks, the great narrative history of sixth century Gaul. Yet Gregory's reputation as a serious historian languished while the view of those w h o considered him merely a good story teller held sway. It is only in the latter half of the twentieth century that various approaches to the study of text have installed Gregory as an exemplar of early medieval narrative rather than an inferior exponent of classical historiography.2 The rehabilitation of hagiography brought a new respectability to Gregory while insights from semiology have informed the historian's understanding of text.3 Although Auerbach established Gregory as the master of the new form above Gregory of Tours, Historiarum Libri X, Monumenta Germaniae historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum I, i, ed. by B. Krusch and W . Levison, (Hannover, 1951). Readily available translations are The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, trans, by O. M. Dalton, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927); The History of the Franks, trans by L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974): Gregoire de Tours, Histoire des Francs traduite de Latin, trans, by R. Latouche, 2 vols (Paris: Le Belles Lettres, 1963-1965). In this paper, the Ten Books of the Histories, Gregory's name for his work, is abbreviated to Histories. 2 Jean Jacques Ampere, Histoire litteraire de la France avant le douzieme siecle (Paris: Hachette, 1839; John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings (London: Methuen, 1962): Giselle de Nie, Views from a Many-windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the work of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987); Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550-800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon, 0?rinceton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Adriaan H.B. Breukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994); Martin Heinzelmann, Gregor von Tours (538-594):"zehn Bucher Geschichte" Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994). 3 Paul Fouracre, 'Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography', Past and Present, 127 (1990), 3-38; Marc Uytfanghe, 'L'hagiographie et son public a l'6poque merovingienne', Texte und Untersuchungen, 129, Studia Patristica 16 (1985), 54-62: Raymond Van Dam, 'Hagiography and History: the Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus', Classical Antiquity, 1 (1982), 271-308; J. L Derouet, 'Les Possibility d'interpretation semiologique des textes hagiographiques', Revue d'histoire de I'eglise de France, 62 (1976), 153-162; Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: the Development of Christian Discourse (Berkely: University of California Press, 1991). P A R E R G O N ns 14.2 (January 1997) 130 AvrilKeely Caesarius of Aries and Gregory the Great, he retreated from an assessment of Gregory as an historian.4 While in recent times, serious efforts have been made to understand the aims and methods of Gregory the historian, Gregory's episodic style, the absence of any grand over-arching themes, and the dearth of mannered prefaces make it difficult for us to uncover Gregory the thinker. This paper will argue that w e have been unable to identify the political ideas of Gregory because w e have not known what to look for. W e have overlooked the potential of early medieval narrative, which, though not amenable to abstraction, nevertheless provides an adequate vehicle for the transmission of political ideas. T w o questions will be explored: was Gregory of Tours interested in political ideas and, if so, how is this interest manifested in the Histories? A key tool in the analysis is the concept of scenic representation derived from the work of Pizarro, a specialist in English literature.5 It is one of his achievements to teach us that, by analysing an author's scenic representation, w e can more easily probe the mind and historical ideas of that author. Applied to the Histories of Gregory of Tours, this means that analysis of scenic representation will help us to understand Gregory's ideas even in the absence of their abstract formulation. Hence w e are brought to consider the fundamental...