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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 10, Of Signs and Wonders, and of Doubt Concerning the Date of Easter

In this same year so great a splendour shone upon the earth in the night season, that you might deem it noonday; and in like manner fiery globes were seen often traversing the heavens and lighting up the earth. There was uncertainty as to the date of the Easter feast, because Victorius, in his cycle, wrote that it fell upon the fifteenth day after the new moon. But that Christians might not celebrate the feast on the same moon as the Jews, he added: ‘The twenty-second day for the Latins.’ Therefore, while many in Gaul kept the feast on the fifteenth day,¹ we for our part celebrated it on the twenty-second.² We made most careful inquiry, and found that the springs in Spain which are miraculously filled were replenished on the day chosen by us. There was a great earthquake at early dawn on Wednesday, the fourteenth of June,³ when the daylight was just beginning to reappear. In the middle of October there was an eclipse⁴ of the sun, and his brightness was so diminished that he gave no more light than the horned moon at five days old. In autumn fell most heavy rains, there were great thunderings, and the waters rose in flood. The plague⁵ ravaged the cities of Viviers and Avignon.

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