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LIFE Gregory was born into the upper stratum of Gallo-Roman society, of senatorial rank on both sides as he tells us, in Clermont , in the Auvergne region of central Gaul. Of the eighteen bishops of Tours who preceded him, all but five were connected with him by ties of kinship. He spent most of his career at Tours, though he travelled as far as Paris . The rough world he lived in was on the cusp of the dying world of Antiquity and the new barbarian culture of early Medieval Europe (the " Dark Ages " according to 19th Century historians). Gregory lived also on the border between the Frankish culture of the Merovingians to the north and the Gallo-Roman culture of the south of Gaul. At Tours, Gregory could not have been better placed to hear everything and meet everyone of influence in Merovingian culture. Tours lay on the watery highway of the navigable Loire . Five Roman roads radiated from Tours, which lay on the main thoroughfare between the Frankish north and Aquitania, with Spain beyond. At Tours the Frankish influences of the north and the Gallo-Roman influences of the south had their chief contact (see Map ). As the center for the popular cult of St Martin, Tours was a pilgrimage site, hospital, and a political sanctuary to which important leaders fled during the violence and turmoil of Merovingian disorder. Gregory struggled through personal relations with four Frankish kings, Sigebert I , Chilperic I , Guntram , and Childebert I and he personally knew most of the leading Franks. WORKS The ''Historia Francorum'' is in ten books. Books I to IV recount the world's history from the Creation but move quickly to the Christianization of Gaul, the conversion of the Franks and the conquest of Gaul under Clovis , and the more detailed history of the Frankish kings down to the death of Sigebert in 575 . At this date Gregory had been bishop of Tours for two years. The second part, books V and VI, closes with Chilperic's death in 584 . During the years that Chilperic held Tours, relations between him and Gregory were tense. After hearing rumours that the Bishop of Tours had slandered his wife, Chilperic had Gregory arrested and tried for treason - a charge which threatened both Gregory's bishopric and his life. The most eloquent passage in the ''Historia'' is the closing chapter of book VI, in which Chilperic's character is summed up unsympathetically. The third part, comprising books VII to X, takes his increasingly personal account to the year 591 . An epilogue was written in 594 , the year of Gregory's death. One must decide when reading the ''Historia Francorum'' whether this is a royal history, and whether Gregory was writing to please his patrons. It is likely that one royal Frankish house is more generously treated than others. He was also a classics. Though he had read Virgil , he cautions us that "''We ought not to relate their lying fables, lest we fall under sentence of eternal death.''" EXTERNAL LINKS Primary sources
Secondary material
FURTHER READING The following represent key modern texts on Gregory of Tours, including the most recent translations of his work. While Thorpe's translation of ''The History of the Franks'' is more accessible than Brehaut's, his introduction and commentary are not well regarded by contemporary historians. Primary sources
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