Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/96

 6o Readings in European History Procopius and his history of the wars of Justinian. Gregory of Tours and his Ten Books of Prankish History. One historical work at least was produced in the sixth century which possesses some of the fine traits of the classical Greek writers. PROCO- PIUS had little in common with the crude and unlettered Jordanes. In his History of his Own Time, which closes with the year 559, he gives an excellent account of Justinian's wars with the Persians, Goths, and Vandals. (See Bury's Gibbon, Vol. IV, p. 513.) (Procopius is rather inac- cessible. It is published with a Latin translation in the Corpus scrip- torum historiae Byzantinae, Bonn, 1833-1838. A new edition of the Gothic wars may be had with an Italian translation by Comparetti, Rome, 1895 s 1-> a complete edition, edited by Haury, is announced by Teubner.) As Cassiodorus was spending his last days in a monastery of southern Italy, where he brought his long life to an end, GREGORY OF TOURS (540-594) was beginning his celebrated history of the Franks, without which we should know practically nothing of Clovis and the earlier Merovingian period. Gregory's position as bishop of Tours gave him a very important place in the Frankish kingdoms, and he had ample opportunity to become acquainted with prominent men, to familiarize himself with public affairs, and to talk with the many pilgrims who flocked to the revered shrine of St. Martin of Tours. The first of his Ten Books of Frankish History hastily reviews the history of the world down to the death of St. Martin of Tours in 397. The two following books deal with Clovis and his successors. The remaining books, constituting the great body of the work and bringing the story down to 591, are really a history of his own time. Here Gregory made use apparently almost altogether of oral tradition and his own observations, for he himself must have witnessed, or had personal knowledge of, many of the things which he narrates. Gregory had little knowledge of the ancient writers, as he himself freely confesses ; his language is grammatically very incorrect, but is simple and direct, and is supposed by some to have nearly approached the spoken Latin of the period. As an ardent orthodox churchman, he hated the Arian Burgundians and West Goths, and too freely condoned the treacherous and bloody deeds of Clovis and others, whom he held to be God's instruments for the extension of the true Church. Yet in spite of his ignorance and his enthusiasm for his particular form of Christianity, Gregory's book remains the chief and almost sole historical monument of the Merovingian period. Moreover, he rarely fails to gain his readers' confidence by his unmistakable sincerity and his directness and freedom from artificiality. (Editions in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica; also in the Collection de Textes pour servir ^ V etude de