When the author titled this piece A History of the Franks, he wasn’t kidding around. Well, not about the history part, anyway. As for the “Franks” part of this history, maybe not so much. We are not talking a single volume history here. Not a two-volume history or even a trilogy. The History of the Franks is trotted out over the course of ten full volumes. That’s a lot of history, but there’s a kicker of a twist going on here.
Take a guess at which point in the history of the world the author commences as the starting point for The History of the Franks, keeping in mind, of course, that the dictionary definition of “Frank” refers to the ancient people who lived along the Rhine that would one day come together to create the nation of France. After all, The History of the Franks is really the history of France. So, naturally, the opening line of the history would only be expected to be something along the lines of the following:
“In the beginning the Lord shaped the heaven and the earth in his Christ, who is the beginning of all things, that is, in his son”
The first ten sections of Book I take the reader from Adam and Eve to the parting of the Red Sea. By section 20, Jesus is being crucified. The point being made here is that this is a full and rich exploration of history as long one is flexible in their definition of “history.” Some criticism leveled toward Gregory of Tours is that he is not exactly what one would identify as the most exacting of writers when it comes to the facts. (The leap from ancient Israelis to Gaul takes place in roughly the same blink of an eye as the ape throwing the bone in the air to the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Those who are okay with what can only be termed a natural and expected lapse in factual accuracy point to a completely difference absence as their problem with the text, suggesting that it expresses little in the way of aesthetic flourish. The result is something akin to a reading a history textbook.
But that interpretation is not entirely factual itself. The reality is that as history texts go, whether factually accurate or not, Gregory of Tours and those who have translated him over the centuries have served to produce a very readable work. And the number of volumes is misleading; full they may be, but long they are not. The History of the Franks actually moves along rather briskly and thanks to being written in lively and entertaining prose, should not take the average reader very long at all to consume in its entirety. As far medieval histories go, if presented with a multiple choice for a school assignment, this is the one to pick.
