Gregory of Tours, writing at the end of the sixth century, gives a vivid
picture of a bad count in the person of Leudast, a runaway slave who
rose through service in the royal kitchens and the patronage of Queen
Marcovefa. Arrogant and rapacious himself, it was appropriate, says
Gregory, that he should be appointed by King Charibert as count over
the sinful people of Tours, amongst whom he went about fully-armed
because he trusted no one. He sat in judgment along with the senior
citizens, both laymen and clergy, but he raged and spat abuse if some-
one came seeking justice at an inopportune moment, and he had no
scruples about fettering clerics and putting them to torture. Gregory was
made bishop of Tours in 573. Leudast behaved humbly towards him
and swore loyalty to his church many times on Saint Martin’s tomb—
all the while conspiring to get his own friends into the bishopric and the
archdeaconry, his candidate on to the throne (Charibert’s death being
followed by war between his sons), and a dukedom for himself. In 580,
Leudast’s scheming resulted in Gregory’s trial before King Chilperic and
a council of bishops on a charge of slandering Queen Fredegund. Out
of consideration for the king’s feelings, Gregory accepted the judgment
that he should swear to his innocence after saying masses at three
separate altars, though it was against the Church’s laws. By the judg-
ment of God and the grace of St. Martin and St. Medard, Gregory was
cleared and the king threatened with excommunication in his turn, until
he revealed Leudast as the source of the charge. The count fled, and
when he reappeared a few years later and tried (against Gregory’s
advice) to get back into the king’s favour, the queen had him tortured
to death.^66 Merovingian justice developed in a world of perjury and
torture because it relied on a potent mixture, most obvious when it
exploded into conflict, of supernatural judgments mediated by saints
and churchmen and the physical force possessed by the king and his
counts.
Everyone in the Frankish hierarchy of officials, from the king down
through his missiand the counts and their vicars to the hundredmen,
might preside intermittently over placita, but the count alone was
becoming the officer and president of a settled court with known times
of meeting. To the traditional function of the mallusin the settlement of
feuds were therefore added the holding of trials and the execution of
judgments in the greater placita which had been initiated in the
Keeping the peace 25A. R. Lewis, ‘The Dukes in the Regnum Francorum, A.D. 550–751’, Speculum, 51 (1976),
381–410; Jones, The Later Roman Empire, i. 366–73, ii. 566–86; Niermeyer, Lexicon Minus,
207–9.
(^66) Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum X, 257–63, 302–4 (V. 47–9, VI. 32); E. James,
‘Beati pacifici: Bishops and the Law in Sixth-Century Gaul’, in Disputes and Settlements: Law
and Human Relations in the West, ed. J. Bossy (Cambridge UP, 1983).