completes the work with accounts of Gregory’s own times. The overall result is,
especially in the later books, frequently confusing. While perceptive and analytical,
Gregory often skips from episode to episode without obvious order or structure. Scholars
have tried to present Gregory as a beguiling storyteller, or as an advocate for the earlier
and sterner rule the Franks had enjoyed under Clovis, or as a provider of a cure for the
disorder of his times, or as the sincere author of an artless reflection of the chaos of
Merovingian society in general. A more charitable assessment sees Gregory as
intentionally presenting history as chaotic: the very nature of secular history, that is, the
story of fallen humanity, is chaos; true order and structure are divine.
Gregory’s other works treat the divine. Here, critics have viewed him as a credulous
hagiographer, devoid of the analytical intellect obvious in the Histories. For Gregory,
however, there could be nothing more concrete than God’s power evidenced in a miracle.
Particularly revealing of Gregory, and of the 6th-century Gallic episcopacy generally, is
his attitude toward St. Martin. Martin had been bishop of Tours two centuries before, and
that city guarded his relics. Gregory saw himself as Martin’s successor; Martin was his
present guide. Gregory protected Martin’s interests and Martin protected Gregory’s city.
His relationship to the saint is a poignant reminder that, though remembered largely for
having been a historian, Gregory was first and foremost a Christian bishop.
Richard A.Gerberding
Gregory of Tours. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, ed. Bruno
Krusch and Wilhelm Levison. Hanover: Hahn, 1951; and II-2, Hanover: Hahn, 1885.
——. The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
Goffart, Walter. “Gregory of Tours and The Triumph of Superstition.’” In The Narrators of
Barbarian History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 112–234.
Hellmann, Siegmund. “Studien zur mittelalterliche Geschichts-schreibung, I, Gregor von Tours.”
Historische Zeitschrift 107(1911):1–43.
Wallace-Hadrill, J.M. The Long-Haired Kings. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982, pp. 49–
70.
GRENOBLE
. First recorded in 43 B.C. as Cularo, and renamed Gratianopolis, whence modern-day
Grenoble (Isère), the city is situated on the confluence of the Drac and the Isère and is
surrounded by mountains on each side but the western. Though lacking navigable
waterways, Grenoble, with its situation on three Roman trade routes, continued to be a
center for trade throughout the Middle Ages. The city was surrounded by an oval
rampart, comprising some thirty towers, between A.D. 284 and 293. It was instituted as a
bishopric ca. 381, conquered by the Burgundians in the mid-5th century, and annexed by
the Franks ca. 543. The Treaty of Verdun (843) saw its acquisition by Lothair, and it was
incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire ca. 1032. Grenoble, receiving its first franchise
in 1225, was made capital of the Dauphiné in the course of the 13th century and was sold
to the king of France in 1349 by the last dauphin of the Viennois, Humbert II (d. 1349).
The cathedral of Notre-Dame (11th-15th c.) is noted for its tabernacle (1445–57) and
the magnificent Ciborium, a specimen of ornate Gothic stonework dating 1455–60. The
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