Library › St Gregory of Tours › History of the Franks
History of the Franks
St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927
Book 2, Prologue
I FOLLOW farther the order of the times, relating indiscriminately as they befell the miraculous deeds of holy men and the calamities of peoples. I think it will not be held unreasonable that I recount the happy lives of blessed men amid the disasters of the unfortunate, since this follows not from the carelessness of the writer but the course of events as they befell. For if an eager reader inquire with diligence, he will discover, even in the histories of the children of Israel, that sacrilegious Phineas perished under Samuel the just; and that Goliath the Gentile fell under that David who was called the strong of arm. Let him remember how many disasters befell the nations, how many famines and droughts oppressed the unhappy earth even in the days of the noble prophet Elias, who removed the rains at will or caused them to pour upon the parched ground when he pleased, and by his prayer transformed the poverty of the widow into riches; then how many ills Jerusalem endured in the time of Hezekiah, whose life God increased by fifteen years. And even in the days of the prophet Elisha, who restored the dead to life and wrought many other miracles among the peoples, how many were the massacres and miseries which oppressed the people of Israel. Thus Eusebius, Severus, and Jerome in their chronicles, likewise Orosius, have inwoven together the wars of kings and the miracles of the martyrs. Therefore we also have written in such wise, that the order of the centuries and the computation of the years down to our own day may be learned in their completeness. Having therefore followed to this point the histories of the above-named authors, we will now, by God’s will, proceed to the relation of subsequent events.