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Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher

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Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher Cross, Crescent and Conversion Studies on Medieval Spain and Christendom in Memory of Richard Fletcher Editedby Simon Barton and Peter Linehan BRILL LEIDEN " BOSTON 2008 GREGORY OF TOURS, THE VISIGOTHS AND SPAIN Edward James(University CollegeDublin) Gregory, bishop of Tours from 573 to 594, mentions Visigothic Spain only a few dozen times in the course of his Ten Books of History, our major narrative source for post-Roman Gaul, but those few passages are important not only for Spanish history, but also for our own under- standing of Gregory's aims and attitudes. Even though the Visigoths of Spain had, nominally at least, converted to Catholicism two or three years before Gregory would have edited and completed the History, he seems to have done little to change the role he had devised for Visigothic Spain: that of a hostile neighbour whose manifold errors and evils helped to underline the general righteousness of the Catholic Church in Gaul. Apart from a brief mention when talking about the evangelization of Gaul, Spain does not appear in Gregory's narrative until he begins to discuss the "barbarian invasions"This happens near the beginning of Book 2, which, starting as it does with the repercussions of St Martin of Tours' death in 397 and ending with King Clovis's death in 511, is essentially devoted to what we, but not Gregory, think of as the fifth century. The passageimmediately established the dominant theme of Gregory's account of Spain, for it described how the Vandals came into Gaul and how, not long after, the Vandal king Thrasamund "began to persecute the Christians and by tortures and all sorts of executions forced the whole of Spain to accept the heresy of the Arian rite"' Arianism is central to Book II, which ends with the triumph of ortho- doxy in Gaul and the retreat of Arianism south of the Pyreneesand the Alps. Indeed, Ian Wood has claimed that the refutation of Arianism may have been one of Gregory's motives for the writing of the History; 2 and certainly Gregory is able, through his references to Spanish Arianism, to keep the subject alive in his readers' consciousnessright to the end ' Gregory of Tours, History 2.2. Text: Afonumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Aferovingicarun: (= AfGH, SSRAf)I, Part I (Hanover, 1951), p. 39; translation by Lewis Thorpe, Gregoryof Tours:History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, 1974) (hereafter cited as Thorpe), p. 107. 2 Ian Wood, Gregory of Tours (Bangor, 1994), p. 34. 44 EDWARD JAMES of his book. Arianism made its appearancein the Prefaceand very first chapter of the book, although not in name, when Gregory claimed it as his aim to describe the attacks of the heretics against the Church, and vice versa, and issued his own creed, which placed considerable weight upon the equality of the personsof the Trinity (which Arius denied), and upon the decisions of the Council of Nicaea (which condemned Arius). Arius himself is not mentioned until half-way through Book II, when a wicked priest died in the lavatory: from which "we may deduce that this man was guilty of a crime no lessserious than that of Arius, who in the same way emptied out his entrails through his back passagein the lavatory."3 Arianism-or, more precisely,the "perfidy of the Arian sect', perfidiam Arrianae sectae-is first mentioned under that name (rather than subsumedinto "heresy") in this passagein which King Thrasamund of the Vandals forced the inhabitants of Spain into Arianism. In other words, from early on in his History Gregory associatesSpain with this particular heresy; and, as here, is happy to give the totally false impres- sion that all inhabitants of Spain are tainted with it. It is difficult to know at any particular point when Gregory is just ignorant or whether he is deliberately and consciously twisting facts to suit his own ends. As we shall see, deliberate deception is not beyond him, but his whole chaotic approach to the fifth century certainly does suggest considerable ignorance. He has occasional written sources, which he makes use of as intelligently as possible, but he seemsto have a very hazy idea of chronology and to be capable of major errors. To take just one example: Thrasamund, the Vandal king who supposedly forced Spain into Arianism, actually became king of the Vandals only in 496, almost seventy years after the Vandals had left Spain for North Africa. Geiseric,the great Vandal king who led his people into Spain and who ruled them (and dominated the western Mediterranean) for fifty years, from 428 to 477, is not mentioned by Gregory at all. Indeed, as Andrew Cain has shown in his recent study of Gregory and the Vandals, the only Vandal king whom Gregory does situate properly within the fifth century is Huneric (477-484), and that is becauseGregory has a detailed story of the Arian persecution of Catholics which took place in that reign. Gregory,History2.22; b1GH, SSRM1.1, pp. 67-8; Thorpe, p. 135. Gregory mentions the manner of Arius's death in two other places: the Preface to Book 3 and 9.15. Andrew Cain, "Miracles, Martyrs, and Arians: Gregory of Tours' Sources for his Account of the Vandal Kingdom°, Vigiliae Christianae 59 (2005), 412-437, at p. 415. GREGORY OF TOURS, THE VISIGOTHS AND SPAIN 45 This story is worth repeating here, because (as Cain shows) it ties in with Gregory's picture of Arianism in Spain. Cyrola, the Arian bishop of Carthage, was a great champion of the heretics under Huneric, said Gregory. -' When Huneric unleashed a persecution of the Catholics, Cyrola arrested the Catholic bishop, Eugenius 6 The letter from Eugenius that Gregory quotes-the longest complete document that Gregory gives us earlier than Book IX of the History-is not known elsewhere, but it may well be genuine: in it the Catholic bishop exhorts his flock to remain firm in their faith, and not to submit to rebaptism, as the Arians wanted. Eugenius was led before King Huneric, and disputed success- fully with Cyrola, together with two other Catholic bishops who were, like him, famous miracle workers. Cyrola, according to Gregory, was so irritated that these bishops could work miracles that he bribed a fellow Arian with fifty gold pieces to sit in the plaza (platea) and pretend to be blind, so that Cyrola could "cure" him. But, as Gregory said, avarice had made this man blind in reality, and when Cyrola put his hand on the mans eyes, they began to hurt so much that the man revealed the trick to all present, and, in his pain, admitted that "the Holy Ghost is consubstantial and coeternal with the Father and the Son. '7 Huneric, however, responded by torturing and killing many saintly men. Eugenius he sent into exile (he died in Albi, years later), because, said Gregory, the king did not want to create another martyr. So many were the crimes committed by Huneric, that the sun went into eclipse three times. In the end Huneric tore himself to pieces with his own teeth, and, some time after this (Gregory is vague) King Gelimer was defeated by the Romans and "so perished the Kingdom of the Vandals. "8 As we know, but perhaps Gregory did not, God took precisely fifty years to wreak His vengeance on the Arian Vandals. Gregory's description of the whole process of the "barbarian inva- sions" is just as bizarre; and more bizarre, even, than that provided by some modern historians. He tells us of the invasion of the Vandals (in AD terms proceeding from 406 to the end of the North African S This whole story is in Gregory, History 2.3 (MfGH, SSRM I. 1, pp. 40-45). 6 Cain argues, very plausiblyy,that Gregory focussed on Eugenius because he had his own +vritten source for this episode, one which is now lost. This was, he argued, a History of the Persecutionof Huzzeric,similar to the surviving History of the Persecution by Victor of Nita, but not identical with it, since Victor's account of the persecution of Eugenius differs in a number of crucial ways from Gregory's. Gregory, History 2.3; HIGH, SSR1f, 1.1,p. 43; Thorpe, p. 112. * The last words of Gregory. History 2.3; MGH, SSR1f 1.1, p. 45; Thorpe, p. 113. 46 EDWARD JAMES kingdom of the Vandals in 534) at 2.3 in the History. He then says (2.4) "at this time" there were many persecutionsof Catholics, and talks about the persecution led by Athanaric of the Goths (which had hap- pened before the Goths had moved south across the Danube in 376). He then describes, in three chapters (2.5-7), the invasion of Gaul by Attila of the Huns, in the middle of the fifth century, isolating three separateevents, each of which concerned the intervention of a saint: Tongres was savedby St Aravatius, Metz was left to its destruction by St Stephen the Protomartyr, an event ordained by God becauseof the wickedness of its inhabitants, and Orleans was saved by Anianus, who prayed and, perhaps more practically, went to the Roman general Aetius to beg for military assistance.Finally, Gregory moved on to the arrival of the Franks, quoting (to the great joy of historians today) fragments of now lost late Roman historians, but doing so in a fairly haphazard way, firstly describing how Renatus Frigeridus dealt with the events following the death of the Emperor Honorius in 423, and then turning to Sulpicius Alexander on the events of the late 380s and early 390s, before returning to Renatus Frigeridus and the 420s and ending his orgy of quotation with a sentencefrom Orosius, relating to the defeat of the Franks by Stilicho (in 395).
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