Tales of Morality and Consequence- Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks

I found that morality and the consequences that occur if one does not live up to a moral standard run deep within the pages of this book. For instance, in Book II vii, a poor man over heard a secret conversation between two men in a church that they are going to bring back Aetius from battle alive so that his wife will not be in such misery, but he is told not to tell her the secret. Unfortunately, the man does go and tell Aetius' wife the news and is instantly struck with blindness. There are many more instances of this in the book where people do not follow the instructions or wills of others, including God, so they are punished by blindness or death for this indiscretions. I believe that one purpose for these tales of consequence are to in still in the people who read them a sense of caution in the life choices they make. Perhaps he is trying to direct his readers into a path of life that is God fearing and moral, so that he can keep order in among the people in his society. Consequently, the events and people that reside in Gregory's histories do not have an sense of free will for their lives are directed by the will of leaders and ultimately by God. I believe that this common of this age where Church and state were one entity and God was the leader and sovereign of the people of the Middle Ages, thus this is an integral part of the lives of the readers of Gregory's histories.

The first two books of The History of the Franks are of varying styles and content. The beginning of the first book is appears to be a summary of the Bible. The structure of this book was also very similar to the way the Bible is formatted, in a series of numbered verses. Albeit, in my opinion, as well as noted by Goffart in his response to Gregory's histories, this structuring choice left the narrative as a whole very fragmented. It appears that Gregory was melding together various snippets of history and putting them under numbered verses, but many of them had no connection with the one previous. There was so much history put into such a small volume, which perhaps resulted in the loss of fluidity throughout the prose.

Furthermore, I find it very intriguing that in order to tell the history of a specific people who live in a specific time period that Gregory of Tours thought it necessary to tell the history from the beginning of time. He starts the first book off with the birth of Adam and Eve, and ends it the death of Saint Martin. This could perhaps have been written in this manner because it clearly demonstrated the importance that Gregory placed on the Church, the Bible, and God's will over the people, whom would be the readers of his history. Nonetheless, this choice of “introduction” into the history of the Franks still did leave me with a few unanswered questions: 1) Was he trying to put the history into context by starting it from the beginning of time? 2) Did this have something to do with the fact that the people in the Middle Ages had a teleologic view on the world, thus it only seemed logical for him to create the linear trail of history for his audience. Also, was this influenced by the reader's fear of the end of the world that was detailed in the Book of Revelations?

For the most part, Gregory's histories are very much based on narratives and mystically occurrences, and it would be hard to decipher what is actual fact and what is a stretch of the truth. However, they are very informative in that they are a detailed description on how societies in the 6th century were run, the key players who shaped the events, wars, and society of that time period, as well as the core societal values of the time.