GREGORY OF TOURS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1939, Page 8

GREGORY OF TOURS

FATHER OF FRENCH HISTORY. Preparations are being made to celebrate in France the fourteenth centenary of Gregory of Tours, the father of French history, who was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, in 539. This son of Auvergne, when he had become Bishop of Tours, in the last quarter of the sixth century, wrote a work in ten books on the history of France. It is thanks to his work that so much is known today about France of the Merovingian period. Gregory of Tours, as an ecclesiastic, was in constant contact with pilgrims who came from all parts of France to pray at the tomb of St Martin of Tours. Thus he was in a position to learn much about the whole kingdom. He also had access to manuscripts which, have long since disappeared. His Historia Francorum in ten books is on of the most important works in the world. The first four books cover the earliest known period to the year 575. The fifth and sixth books deal with matters within his own experience and>carry the history to the year 584, and books seven to ten were written in the form of a diary, each event recorded as it occurred.

Commemorative celebrations will be held at Clermont in May, and the French Academy will be represented by a delegation.