Gregory of Tours - Life

Life

Gregory was born in Clermont, in the Auvergne region of central Gaul. He was born into the upper stratum of Gallo-Roman society as the son of Florentius, Senator of Clermont by his wife Armentaria II, niece of Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons and a granddaughter of Florentinus, Senator of Geneva, and of Saint Gregory of Langres. Gregory was able to count several noted Bishops and saints as close relatives (indeed, his family effectively monopolised the Bishoprics of Tours, Lyons, and Langres at the time of his birth), and, according to Gregory, of the eighteen bishops of Tours who preceded him, all but five were connected with him by ties of kinship; in addition, an early Gallic martyr, Vettius Epagatus, was a paternal ancestor. His father evidently died while Gregory was young and his widowed mother moved to Burgundy where she had property. 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 culture of early medieval Europe. 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 periods of violence and turmoil in Merovingian politics.

Gregory struggled through personal relations with four Frankish kings, Sigebert I, Chilperic I, Guntram, and Childebert II and he personally knew most of the leading Franks.