Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 4 (1897).djvu/549

 APPENDIX 525 c. A.B. 570, and was banished to Barcino by the Arian king Leovigild on account of his religious opinions. Exiled for ten j'ears (till a. p. 58tj), he was released by Leovigild's Catholic sixccessor Reccared, and founded the monastery of Biclarum (site unknown). Afterwards he became bishop of Gernnda, and there is evidence that he was still alive in a.d. 610. His chronicle differs from most others in that it can be studied by itself without any reference to sources. For he derived his knowledge from his own experience and the verbal communi- cations of friends {ex 'partc qvod oculata fide perridimvs et ex fiarte quae ex rclatu fideliuiii didicimus). He professes to be the continuator of Eiisebius, Jerome, Prosper, and Victor. At the outset he falls into the mistake which, as we saw, Victor made as to the date of .Justinian, and jjlaces it in the fifteenth in- diction. This led to a misdating of the years of Justin II., and he commits other serious chronological blunders. Mommsen, Chron. Min. ii. p. 209. His chronicle ends with the year a.d. 590. It is worthy of note that .John always speaks with the highest appreciation of the Gothic king Leovigild, who banished him. [Ed. Mommsen, Chron. Min. ii. p. 207 sqq.] Fragments of the Chronicle of Maximus of Cajsaraugusta have been preserved in the margin of Mss. of Victor and John of Biclarum, extending over the 3-ears A.D. 450 to 5G8 (perhaps to 580). Mommsen, Chron. Min. ii. p. 221-.3. Marius (c. A.D. .530-594), bishop of Aventicum (Avenches), wrote a chronicle extending from a.d. 455 to 581. Mommsen has shown that he made use of the Consularia Italica and the Chronica Gallica (cp. above, vol. iii., Appendix 1, ]>. 489). [Editions : Arndt, ed. maior, 187.5, ed. minor, 1878 ; Mommsen, Chron. Min. ii. p. 227 sqq.] IsiDORus Junior became bishop of Hispalis (Seville) c. a.d. 600-3, and died in the year a.d. 636. He wrote a History of the Goths, Vandals, and Sueves, coming down to the year a.d. 624. It is preserved in two recensions, in one of which the original form has been abbreviated, in the other avigmented. The sources of Isidore were Orosius, Jerome, Prosper (ed. of a.d. 553), Idatius, Maximus of Saragossa, John of Biclarum. He used the Spanish ?era (= Chris- tian rera + 38) ; Mommsen has drawn up a most convenient comparative table of the dates (Chron. Min., ii., p. 246-251). Isidore is our main source for the Spanish history of the last hundred years with which he deals. [Ed. Mommsen, Chron. Min., ii. 2ilsqq., to which are appended various Additamenta and Continuations. Monogra])h : H. Hertzberg, Die Historien und die Chroniken des Isidorus von Seville, 1874 ; Hertzberg's conclusions have been modified by Mommsen.] Gregory of Tours ui his Historia Francorum (best edition by Arndt and Krusch in the M.G.H.), although he wrote in the last quarter of the sixth century, throws some light on the great Hunnic invasion of Gaul and the career of Aetius, es])ecially by his citations from a lost writer, Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus. For the reigns of the Frank kings Childeric and Chlodwig he is our main guide. The sources of his history have been carefully analysed and its value tested by JI. Monod (in his Etudes Critiques sur les sources de I'liistoire nierorinf/irtine, 1872) and G. W. Junghans, whose history of the reigns of Childeric and Chlodwig has been ti-anslated into French by M. Monod, with additional notes. Gregory's narrative of these reigns is based in a small part on written documents,— consular annals, — and to a great extent on popular and ecclesiastical traditions. To the first class belong bk. ii., chaps. 18 and 19, on Childeric ; the account of the Burgundian war, a. d. 500, in chajjs. 31 and 33 ; and a few other facts and dates. Such a notice, for instance, as : Chlodovechus rex cum Alarico rege Gothoruin in campo Vogladense decimo ab urbe Pictava miliario convenit — clearly comes from a chronicle. On the other hand the story of Childeric's flight to Thuringia and marriage with Basina is clearly from an oral source and has undergone the influence of popular imagination. The Annals which Gregory used in chai)s. 18 and 1!) are conjectured to have been composed in Angers. The determination of the chronology of Chlodwig's reign would be impossible from Gregory's data alone ; it depends on certain data of his contemporarj', JNIarius of Aventicum, who made use of the lost South-Gallic Annals (see above). Thus