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 INTRODUCTION xxi and Poitiers, the inhabitants of these cities were all ready to fight for his body, when the people of Tours managed to secure it by stealth. This was because of the sanctity and mystic "virtue" inherent in it. It was carried to Tours and buried there and proved the greatest asset of the city. The mystic potency resided in the tomb and the area about it, and was transmitted to the dust accumu-. la ted on it, the wine and oil placed on it for the purpose, and was carried in these portable forms to all parts of Gaul. Gregory him- self, for example, carried rehcs of St. Martin on his journeys and records that they kept his boat from sinking in the river Rhine. The system of superstition just outHned is the greater and more real part of Gregory's rehgion. There was the right mystery and the wrong mystery; and both were of a low order; men had to deal with capricious saints and malignant demons. It was a real, Kve, local religion comparable with that of savages. By the side of this and intertwined with it the elements of traditional Chris- tianity in a more or less formalized and ritualized shape were re- tained. Here the great stress was laid on the creed, not, however, that it amounted to anything in Gregory's mind as a creed. He was no theologian. His acceptance of it and insistence on it was ritualistic. However, although he accepted it as he tells us with pura credulitaSj^ that is, without a critical thought, it was not mere formality. He felt, no doubt, that it was a sort of mystic formula, especially the Trinitarian part of it, — for putting men into the right relation with the supernatural. If they believed in the creed they had the right "medicine" ; if they did not, they had not. This system of superstition was not calculated to nourish deli- cate moral sensibilities. Life had gone too far back to the primi- tive. The word applied to the adept in this religion was sanctus, and it indicated not moral excellence at all but a purely mystic quality. The "virtue" which this person possessed was mystic potency, which was not moral but a supernatural force. The orthodox of course called the saint good, but this was merely because they were on the same side, just as Cicero for example six centuries before called the members of his political party the boni. Greg- ory's moral praise or blame is distributed in the same way. When he praises a man we must look for the service done by this man to »^.<P., I, Pref.