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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 2, 21. Of Bishop Eparchius

On the decease of Namatius in Auvergne, Eparchius, a man of holy and religious life, succeeded him. Now as at this time the Church had only a small property within the walls of the city, the bishop had his lodging in the part of the church called the sacristy, and was wont to rise at night to give thanks to God before the altar. It befell that one night as he entered the church, he found it full of devils, whose chief, in the guise of a woman richly bedecked, was seated upon his throne. The bishop said to him: ‘O execrable whore, is it not enough for thee to infect other places with thy pollutions, but thou must needs defile this seat, consecrated of the Lord, by the loathsome contact of thy body? Go forth from the house of God, and let it no longer be polluted by thy presence.’ The demon answered: ‘And dost thou call me whore? I will prepare many a snare for thee through desire of women.’ As he spoke these words, he vanished like a smoke. And the bishop was indeed tempted by the stirring of fleshly lusts, but he was protected by the sign of the holy Cross, and the enemy could in no wise do him harm. He is said to have built a monastery on the summit of the hill of Chantoin, where the oratory now is, and there he went into retreat during the holy days of Lent. But on the day of the Lord’s Supper, escorted by citizens and clerics with great chanting, he returned to his church. On his death, he was succeeded by Sidonius, the ex-prefect, a man of most noble birth as the world counts distinction, and among the first of the senatorial rank in Gaul, so that the emperor Avitus gave him his daughter in marriage. In his time, when the above-mentioned Victorius was still at Clermont, there was in the monastery of the blessed Cyricus in the same city an abbot named Abraham, who shone with the faith and works of the patriarch his namesake, as we have written in the book recording his life.¹

Notes

V. P. 103.