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The Horizons of Gregory of Tours

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Erin Dailey discusses the world as Gregory of Tours saw it, links that world to Gregory’s worldview, and unsettles our own established views about what mattered to the bishop of Tours.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 22, 2024

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This video video discusses Gregory of Tours, a bishop and historian from the city of Tours in modern-day France, during the time of Barbarian Kings following the fall of the Roman Empire. Gregory, who had a Roman background, is noted for his engaging writings, particularly his ten books of histories, which blend contemporary and past events, showcasing his unique perspective on the world. His historical works reveal a mix of personal anecdotes, gossip, and societal commentary, contrasting with his writings on saints and miracles, which reflect a sense of wonder and a more spiritual perspective.

Gregory's understanding of the medieval world distinguished him from modern interpretations, as he felt closer to regions like North Africa and Syria than to places like Britain. His writings, including a notable trial for gossiping about a queen, illustrate the potential dangers of contemporary historical writing.

This video video emphasizes the importance of understanding historical authors within their worldviews, cautioning against imposing modern categorizations on medieval thinkers. It advocates for fresh examinations of historical sources to appreciate their unique perspectives and interconnectedness across regions. Overall, it underlines the complexities of interpreting history through the lens of an author’s lived experience and societal context.

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00:00.000 --> 00:01.485
Gregory of Tour is someone I've

00:01.485 --> 00:02.565
been interested in a long time.

00:03.105 --> 00:06.285
Um, he was a bishop of the City of Tour,

00:06.415 --> 00:07.845
which is in modern day France.

00:07.955 --> 00:09.525
They called it Gaul at the time.

00:10.385 --> 00:11.445
Um, and it was

00:11.445 --> 00:14.685
after the fall of the Roman Empire when Gaul was ruled

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by Barbarian Kings, the Franks.

00:17.785 --> 00:20.165
But Gregory himself was from a Roman backward.

00:20.545 --> 00:22.525
Um, so he is in an unusual situation.

00:22.715 --> 00:25.525
He's a very interesting figure, not only for the details

00:25.525 --> 00:27.325
of his life, but because of what he wrote.

00:27.665 --> 00:30.845
Um, he wrote several works, most famously 10 books

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of histories, and you can really see Gregory's

00:33.795 --> 00:35.045
personality in these works.

00:35.705 --> 00:36.805
Um, he's entertaining.

00:37.505 --> 00:39.885
He has an eye for interesting anecdotes.

00:39.995 --> 00:42.645
He's a little bit of a snob, I have to say.

00:43.185 --> 00:45.205
Um, and he also likes some gossip, you know,

00:45.205 --> 00:47.725
so it's the perfect kind of, perfect kind of book

00:47.725 --> 00:49.205
to get interested in and, and to read.

00:49.355 --> 00:51.565
Gregory also wrote, hey, geographic works

00:51.565 --> 00:53.725
that are about miracles and about saints.

00:53.825 --> 00:56.805
So, he is a, he is a kind

00:56.805 --> 00:58.645
of well-rounded author to work.

00:59.205 --> 01:01.765
I mean, the article i I produced here on the Horizons

01:01.765 --> 01:05.005
of Record Tour was part of a collection of works,

01:05.035 --> 01:06.845
that we're looking at the way

01:06.845 --> 01:08.925
that medieval people thought about their own world,

01:09.235 --> 01:10.885
because we tend to categorize them

01:10.905 --> 01:13.325
as this is a medieval European author.

01:13.665 --> 01:17.165
And then we assume they had a concept of Europe that aligns

01:17.165 --> 01:19.965
with our own, and that they're familiar for that reason.

01:20.585 --> 01:24.645
So in the collection, several authors were included,

01:24.755 --> 01:26.205
primary source authors

01:26.425 --> 01:28.605
who had a different worldview than we might expect.

01:28.785 --> 01:31.165
And Gregory was a great case study in that,

01:31.165 --> 01:33.205
because Gregory's understanding of

01:33.205 --> 01:35.805
what his world looked like was very different from ours.

01:36.025 --> 01:39.485
Um, he felt much closer to people who were as far away

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as North Africa or Syria than he did to people who were in,

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say, Britain,

01:44.905 --> 01:46.645
or even Britney, which was actually

01:46.645 --> 01:47.685
very close to where he lived.

01:48.065 --> 01:51.685
So that can really give you an opportunity to think,

01:52.185 --> 01:53.885
how do we think about these concepts?

01:53.915 --> 01:55.605
Like what is medieval Europe

01:55.865 --> 01:58.405
and how did medieval Europeans actually see their world,

01:58.665 --> 01:59.885
the 10 books of histories?

02:00.545 --> 02:05.525
Um, Gregory purports to explain a long, a large amount

02:05.525 --> 02:07.365
of history going back very far in the past,

02:07.465 --> 02:09.125
but really what he wants to do is give

02:09.725 --> 02:11.685
a contemporary history of his own times.

02:12.545 --> 02:14.805
And, within those 10 books,

02:14.865 --> 02:17.805
the last six books really deal with his lifetime.

02:18.105 --> 02:20.085
Um, and he's a, he's an interesting author

02:20.085 --> 02:23.735
because he is writing about things that are happening,

02:23.895 --> 02:25.215
contemporary to himself,

02:25.215 --> 02:27.015
which very few other people were prepared to do.

02:27.475 --> 02:31.015
And it was in fact, potentially a dangerous thing to do

02:31.085 --> 02:32.895
because it could get you in a lot of trouble

02:33.475 --> 02:35.695
if you said the wrong thing about the wrong person, and,

02:35.755 --> 02:37.535
and you were found out for it.

02:37.715 --> 02:40.935
Um, and in fact, Gregory was put on trial

02:41.115 --> 02:43.135
for spreading rumors about the queen,

02:43.755 --> 02:45.175
and in the end he was okay,

02:45.635 --> 02:48.655
but, he learned just how dangerous it was,

02:48.955 --> 02:51.215
and you can actually sort of see that in his histories

02:52.065 --> 02:54.525
at certain times he's dancing around subjects

02:54.905 --> 02:57.445
or he's waiting for someone to die,

02:57.545 --> 02:58.725
so he can then tell you how he

02:58.725 --> 02:59.725
Really feels.

03:00.555 --> 03:03.285
Yeah, I mean, Gregory was a bishop,

03:03.385 --> 03:05.885
and he saw himself as being part of this universal church,

03:06.625 --> 03:09.885
and he saw himself as having an affinity, not only

03:09.885 --> 03:13.605
with other Christians, Catholics like himself,

03:13.745 --> 03:15.125
but really with people who belong

03:15.125 --> 03:18.045
to this single institutional, organized church.

03:18.945 --> 03:23.165
So when he talked about, people who might be Christian,

03:23.165 --> 03:25.405
but who didn't really fit into that organized structure,

03:25.945 --> 03:27.445
he didn't really know what to make of it,

03:28.265 --> 03:31.285
or when he talked about areas that were beyond,

03:31.585 --> 03:36.045
the reach of this, institution, he started to get a

03:36.565 --> 03:38.045
little bit worried and a little bit anxious,

03:38.105 --> 03:40.605
and he, he followed them as very strange places.

03:40.985 --> 03:45.205
Um, so his world really is defined by this,

03:46.635 --> 03:49.485
this sort of spiritual ecclesiastical

03:49.835 --> 03:51.085
institutional structure.

03:51.745 --> 03:55.325
You know, Gregory was, was not a very well traveled person,

03:55.515 --> 03:58.285
even though he talked about places as far away as Indian.

03:58.705 --> 04:00.005
Um, he never left Gaul.

04:00.305 --> 04:03.045
And when he got close to the orders of Gaul,

04:03.045 --> 04:04.925
he got a little bit, anxious

04:04.995 --> 04:08.525
because across, the frontiers that he surveyed,

04:08.665 --> 04:12.165
you know, if he didn't see, a society

04:12.165 --> 04:15.955
that he recognized, he might talk about omens,

04:15.975 --> 04:17.635
he might talk about strange events,

04:17.695 --> 04:19.315
he might see signs of the heavens.

04:19.315 --> 04:21.395
You know, he had some anxiety about that.

04:21.495 --> 04:24.435
So there's a, there's an alignment between the world

04:24.435 --> 04:26.535
that he lived in and the conceptual

04:26.805 --> 04:28.095
landscape that he described.

04:28.355 --> 04:32.055
No. So he gets, he gets invited to Royal court in bl,

04:33.165 --> 04:34.865
which is right on the edge of Ga.

04:34.865 --> 04:39.385
And beyond that, there had not been, an,

04:39.485 --> 04:41.265
the expansion of the institutional church.

04:41.265 --> 04:43.665
There were people with Christian practices out there,

04:43.725 --> 04:44.825
but they didn't have bishops.

04:44.825 --> 04:46.745
They didn't have church at these companies in the same way.

04:47.525 --> 04:50.345
And what he says when he gets there, you could tell he's,

04:50.375 --> 04:53.545
he's worried, he's scared, he's clutching his relics.

04:53.645 --> 04:57.265
Um, he gets on a boat and it, it, it sinks.

04:57.605 --> 05:00.065
And he thinks, you know, he's had this near death experience

05:00.085 --> 05:01.985
and sw to the shore and barely survived.

05:02.285 --> 05:03.785
He decides to go home after that.

05:04.405 --> 05:08.625
Um, he sees comets in the sky, he reports on it.

05:08.965 --> 05:11.705
And in another of his works where he talks about,

05:11.725 --> 05:13.585
the motions of heavenly bodies,

05:14.245 --> 05:15.425
he talks about these comments

05:15.485 --> 05:17.985
and how they signal things like the death of a king.

05:18.605 --> 05:21.385
Um, so he had some of his most,

05:22.445 --> 05:26.505
uneasy experiences, when he's physically gone

05:26.505 --> 05:28.185
beyond the area that he's comfortable.

05:28.685 --> 05:30.825
And that's surprising because,

05:31.385 --> 05:34.585
Copeland is not a place it's thought of as on any kind

05:34.585 --> 05:36.545
of border land, even in this time.

05:36.775 --> 05:39.025
It's, it, it had been on the borders of the Roman Empire,

05:39.045 --> 05:40.385
but by this point it was at the

05:40.385 --> 05:41.665
heartland of the Frankish kingdom.

05:42.225 --> 05:43.385
I mean, the royal court is there.

05:44.405 --> 05:47.025
Um, and so it's not, it's not the kind

05:47.025 --> 05:48.705
of place you would necessarily expect someone

05:48.845 --> 05:52.315
to have these feelings, but Gregory did, for one, you have

05:52.315 --> 05:53.395
to think about the histories

05:53.395 --> 05:56.755
that he wrote alongside the age geographic works that

05:56.755 --> 05:57.755
He wrote. So biographies

05:57.755 --> 05:59.725
of saints and collections of miracles.

06:00.505 --> 06:03.445
And one of the temptations as a historian

06:03.475 --> 06:05.965
that you might have is to just focus on the histories,

06:05.965 --> 06:07.965
because that's the familiar kind

06:07.965 --> 06:09.005
of text you're interested in.

06:09.505 --> 06:13.045
But actually Gregory himself didn't see history in that way,

06:13.425 --> 06:16.725
is collection of books of history have plenty

06:16.725 --> 06:20.085
of miracles in them, and his works of miracles have history.

06:20.385 --> 06:22.885
So you have to take them both together to try

06:22.885 --> 06:25.565
and really understand his complete view of the world.

06:25.905 --> 06:27.165
Um, and a different side

06:27.165 --> 06:29.485
of his personality comes out in the Books of Miracles.

06:29.665 --> 06:31.285
Um, he has a certain sense of wonder.

06:32.245 --> 06:35.305
Um, he has a sense of an enchanted world.

06:35.765 --> 06:37.545
You don't necessarily get into histories.

06:38.045 --> 06:40.305
And also, you know, I have to say a few more

06:40.305 --> 06:42.265
of his prejudices can leak out there as well,

06:42.265 --> 06:44.345
because you does certainly have people he didn't like.

06:45.005 --> 06:47.465
Um, and he found opportunities to talk about that.

06:47.525 --> 06:50.065
And in the geography, you get a different understanding of

06:50.065 --> 06:51.265
that than its historical.

06:52.285 --> 06:54.065
One takeaway message is that we have

06:54.065 --> 06:57.665
to understand historians that when we pick an area of study,

06:58.245 --> 07:01.505
you know, we are at risk of imposing those boundaries upon

07:01.525 --> 07:02.545
our authors, right?

07:02.965 --> 07:05.305
So you have to start fresh, you have to go right back to

07:05.305 --> 07:07.465
what the sources say, and you have to go in there really

07:07.575 --> 07:10.105
with attention to where the authors horizons were,

07:10.815 --> 07:12.425
what did they think their world looked?

07:13.155 --> 07:15.735
Um, so if you go in for example, with an assumption

07:15.805 --> 07:18.855
that there's this division between say, Western Europe

07:18.915 --> 07:20.935
and Eastern Europe, you might miss the fact

07:20.935 --> 07:22.495
that medieval people didn't think about

07:22.495 --> 07:23.735
that in that way at all.

07:23.955 --> 07:27.495
Um, or if you think there's a division between North Africa

07:27.875 --> 07:30.575
and Southern Europe, you might be surprised to learn that,

07:30.595 --> 07:32.815
people saw themselves as part

07:32.815 --> 07:34.095
of one interconnected world.

07:34.845 --> 07:37.385
So I think the most important thing here,

07:37.405 --> 07:40.745
the takeaway really, is to try and take an author

07:40.965 --> 07:44.025
and their worldview for its own sake rather than to think,

07:44.135 --> 07:45.545
okay, I know who this person was,

07:45.705 --> 07:47.305
I know the world they were situated in.

07:48.085 --> 07:50.425
Now let me go ask you my questions

07:50.425 --> 07:51.705
that I've already determined.

07:51.845 --> 07:53.945
And by doing that, you're kind of determining

07:53.945 --> 07:55.985
what answers you can get and what answers you can't.

00:00 - Gregory of Tour is someone I've been interested in a long time. he was a bishop of the City of Tour, which is in modern day France. They called it Gaul at the time. and it was

00:11 - after the fall of the Roman Empire when Gaul was ruled by Barbarian Kings, the Franks. But Gregory himself was from a Roman backward. so he is in an unusual situation. He's a very interesting figure, not only for the details of his life, but because of what he wrote. he wrote several works, most famously 10 books of histories, and you can really see Gregory's personality in these works. he's entertaining.

00:37 - He has an eye for interesting anecdotes. He's a little bit of a snob, I have to say. and he also likes some gossip, you know, so it's the perfect kind of, perfect kind of book to get interested in and, and to read. Gregory also wrote, hey, geographic works that are about miracles and about saints. So, he is a, he is a kind of well-rounded author to work. I mean, the article i I produced here on the Horizons

01:01 - of Record Tour was part of a collection of works, that we're looking at the way that medieval people thought about their own world, because we tend to categorize them as this is a medieval European author. And then we assume they had a concept of Europe that aligns with our own, and that they're familiar for that reason. So in the collection, several authors were included, primary source authors who had a different worldview than we might expect.

01:28 - And Gregory was a great case study in that, because Gregory's understanding of what his world looked like was very different from ours. he felt much closer to people who were as far away as North Africa or Syria than he did to people who were in, say, Britain, or even Britney, which was actually very close to where he lived. So that can really give you an opportunity to think, how do we think about these concepts?

01:53 - Like what is medieval Europe and how did medieval Europeans actually see their world, the 10 books of histories? Gregory purports to explain a long, a large amount of history going back very far in the past, but really what he wants to do is give a contemporary history of his own times. And, within those 10 books, the last six books really deal with his lifetime. and he's a, he's an interesting author

02:20 - because he is writing about things that are happening, contemporary to himself, which very few other people were prepared to do. And it was in fact, potentially a dangerous thing to do because it could get you in a lot of trouble if you said the wrong thing about the wrong person, and, and you were found out for it. and in fact, Gregory was put on trial for spreading rumors about the queen, and in the end he was okay,

02:45 - but, he learned just how dangerous it was, and you can actually sort of see that in his histories at certain times he's dancing around subjects or he's waiting for someone to die, so he can then tell you how he Really feels. Yeah, I mean, Gregory was a bishop, and he saw himself as being part of this universal church, and he saw himself as having an affinity, not only with other Christians, Catholics like himself,

03:13 - but really with people who belong to this single institutional, organized church. So when he talked about, people who might be Christian, but who didn't really fit into that organized structure, he didn't really know what to make of it, or when he talked about areas that were beyond, the reach of this, institution, he started to get a little bit worried and a little bit anxious, and he, he followed them as very strange places. so his world really is defined by this,

03:46 - this sort of spiritual ecclesiastical institutional structure. You know, Gregory was, was not a very well traveled person, even though he talked about places as far away as Indian. he never left Gaul. And when he got close to the orders of Gaul, he got a little bit, anxious because across, the frontiers that he surveyed, you know, if he didn't see, a society that he recognized, he might talk about omens,

04:15 - he might talk about strange events, he might see signs of the heavens. You know, he had some anxiety about that. So there's a, there's an alignment between the world that he lived in and the conceptual landscape that he described. No. So he gets, he gets invited to Royal court in bl, which is right on the edge of Ga. And beyond that, there had not been, an, the expansion of the institutional church.

04:41 - There were people with Christian practices out there, but they didn't have bishops. They didn't have church at these companies in the same way. And what he says when he gets there, you could tell he's, he's worried, he's scared, he's clutching his relics. he gets on a boat and it, it, it sinks. And he thinks, you know, he's had this near death experience and sw to the shore and barely survived. He decides to go home after that. he sees comets in the sky, he reports on it.

05:08 - And in another of his works where he talks about, the motions of heavenly bodies, he talks about these comments and how they signal things like the death of a king. so he had some of his most, uneasy experiences, when he's physically gone beyond the area that he's comfortable. And that's surprising because, Copeland is not a place it's thought of as on any kind of border land, even in this time.

05:36 - It's, it, it had been on the borders of the Roman Empire, but by this point it was at the heartland of the Frankish kingdom. I mean, the royal court is there. and so it's not, it's not the kind of place you would necessarily expect someone to have these feelings, but Gregory did, for one, you have to think about the histories that he wrote alongside the age geographic works that He wrote. So biographies

05:57 - of saints and collections of miracles. And one of the temptations as a historian that you might have is to just focus on the histories, because that's the familiar kind of text you're interested in. But actually Gregory himself didn't see history in that way, is collection of books of history have plenty of miracles in them, and his works of miracles have history. So you have to take them both together to try and really understand his complete view of the world.

06:25 - and a different side of his personality comes out in the Books of Miracles. he has a certain sense of wonder. he has a sense of an enchanted world. You don't necessarily get into histories. And also, you know, I have to say a few more of his prejudices can leak out there as well, because you does certainly have people he didn't like. and he found opportunities to talk about that. And in the geography, you get a different understanding of

06:50 - that than its historical. One takeaway message is that we have to understand historians that when we pick an area of study, you know, we are at risk of imposing those boundaries upon our authors, right? So you have to start fresh, you have to go right back to what the sources say, and you have to go in there really with attention to where the authors horizons were, what did they think their world looked? so if you go in for example, with an assumption

07:15 - that there's this division between say, Western Europe and Eastern Europe, you might miss the fact that medieval people didn't think about that in that way at all. or if you think there's a division between North Africa and Southern Europe, you might be surprised to learn that, people saw themselves as part of one interconnected world. So I think the most important thing here, the takeaway really, is to try and take an author

07:40 - and their worldview for its own sake rather than to think, okay, I know who this person was, I know the world they were situated in. Now let me go ask you my questions that I've already determined. And by doing that, you're kind of determining what answers you can get and what answers you can't.

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