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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 10, 24. Of the Destruction of the City of Antioch

In the sixteenth year of King Childebert and the thirtieth of King Guntram, a certain bishop named Simon, from the parts beyond the sea, arrived at Tours. He told us of the destruction of Antioch, affirming that he had been led captive from Armenia into Persia. For the king of the Persians had invaded Armenia,¹ carried off plunder, and burned the churches; this bishop, as I have said, was led away captive with all his people. The Persians had on this occasion tried to burn the church of the holy forty-eight martyrs, mentioned by me in one of my books of Miracles,² who suffered in that region. They filled it with piles of wood mingled with pitch and fat of swine, and set blazing torches to the pile. But this inflammable matter would nowhere take fire; and seeing in this the wondrous work of God, they departed from the place. A certain other bishop, learning that the aforesaid bishop was taken into captivity, sent some of his men with a ransom to the king of the Persians. The king accepted it, and released the prisoner from the chains of servitude. Departing therefore from those regions the bishop came to Gaul, seeking support from the faithful, and thus it was that I heard the story from him, as I have above related.

There was a man in Antioch, having a wife and children, and exceeding charitable; never in all his life did he suffer a day to pass, from the time when he first had possessions of his own, on which he did not invite some poor man to his table. Upon a day he had gone about the city until the evening without being able to find a single person in need, with whom to share his meal. When night was coming on he went out of the gate, and there found a man in white raiment standing with two other men, at whose aspect he felt an awe pass into him, like Lot in the ancient scripture,³ and said: ‘Peradventure my lord is a stranger; let him deign to visit his servant’s house; let him eat, and rest himself upon a bed, and in the morning let him go upon his way whithersoever he will.’ The foremost of the men, who held a kerchief in his hand, answered: ‘And wert thou not able, O man of God, together with thy Simeon, to save this city from destruction?’ Then, lifting up his hand, he shook out the kerchief which he held towards one half of the city. And straightway all the buildings fell down, and every structure therein, and there were crushed to death old men and infants, husbands with their wives, and persons of either sex; all perished together. At sight whereof, dazed by the presence of the stranger and by the noise of that destruction, he fell to the ground and became as a dead man. Once more the stranger lifted up his hand with the kerchief as it were over the other half of the city; but the two companions who were with him laid hold upon him and conjured him by a terrible oath to spare the half of the city from ruin. Then was his anger abated; he stayed his hand, and, raising up the man who had fallen to the ground, said to him: ‘Go thou to thy home; fear not, for thy wife and thy sons and all thy house are safe, nor hath one of them perished. Thy constant prayers and thy daily almsgiving to the poor have saved thee.’ As he said this, they departed from his sight, nor were they seen of him afterward. He returned to the city, and found half of it destroyed and overthrown, with all the people and all the animals; of whom many were later taken out of the ruins dead; only a few were found alive, and they were grievously hurt. But the promise was not vain which was made to this man, so to say, by the lips of an angel of the Lord. For when he came home he found all his household intact; they were only mourning the death of those among his own people who had been at the time in other houses. For the right hand of the Lord was a protection to him and to his house in the midst of the unrighteous, and he was saved from peril of death, even as once was the aforesaid Lot in Sodom.

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