2 - ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’: Eastern Saints in Merovingian Gaul

Summary

The miracle collections by Gregory of Tours, the Glory of the Confessors and the Glory of the Martyrs, differ from the rest of his hagiographical corpus in shape and content. Whereas the Virtutibus Sancti Martini, Virtutibus Sancti Juliani, and Vita Patrum offer a short description of a saint's life and death and then relate some miracles the saint performed, the Glory of the Confessors and the Glory of the Martyrs provide short miracle accounts, each ascribed to a different saint or martyr, and nothing else. Moreover, in contrast to Gregory's other hagiographical works, which focus entirely on Gallic saints, here we are dealing with hagiographical collections that include accounts of Gallic saints and martyrs but also accounts of Spanish, Italian, North African, and eastern martyrs and saints. The inclusion of so many stories about non-Gallic saints counters the traditional scholarly perspective on the Merovingian cult of saints. In this view, the people of Merovingian Gaul preferred to venerate local Gallic saints. Indeed, most of the shrines and written records from the Merovingian period are dedicated to Gallic saints, including Gregory of Tours's hagiographical corpus. Gregory's choice, then, strikes one as peculiar, meriting further discussion.

The inclusion of foreign martyrs in the Glory of the Martyrs has not yet received the scholarly attention it deserves. In his English translation of the Glory of the Martyrs, Raymond van Dam devoted only a few sentences to these saints, identifying their origins and major cult sites. He neither discussed their cults in the broader context of Merovingian religious culture nor considered Gregory's decision to refer to them in his writings. Later, Danuta Shanzer, following Van Dam's footsteps, overlooked the question of why Gregory had included foreign accounts and whether they were venerated in Merovingian Gaul. Similarly, when Yitzhak Hen suggested that Gregory's hagiographic collections were used in a liturgical context, as their stories were ‘the ideal reading portions, for they are short, concise and clear’, he did not distinguish between the accounts of Gallic and foreign saints. Hen's suggestion makes sense as far as the Gallic saints are concerned, and the fact that most of these accounts contain didactic and moralistic material strengthens his argument.