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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 4, 12. Of Anastasius the Priest

Now Cautinus, after his succession to the see, so demeaned himself as to be held in general loathing. He was given to wine beyond measure, and was often so far gone in drink that four men might scarce carry him from table; the result was that at a later time he became epileptic. These excesses frequently occurred in public view. He reached, moreover, such a pitch of avarice that it seemed almost death to him if he failed to get at least some part of any lands marching with his own. If the owner was a person of standing, Cautinus picked a quarrel and robbed him with abuse; if he was of less account, he seized the property by force. As our own Sollius says: ‘In his arrogance he did not pay the money due, and when he received no title-deeds he was in despair.’

There was at this time in Clermont a priest named Anastasius, a man of free birth, who owned a property by grant of Queen Clotild of glorious memory. At several interviews the bishop had earnestly begged him to give him the queen’s grant, and cede him the land. He was slow in yielding to the desire of the bishop, who sometimes sought to obtain his object by cajolery, at other times by threats; but at last ordered him to be brought to the city against his will, and there in the most shameless manner had him detained, commanding that if he refused to surrender the documents he should be roughly used and starved to death. Anastasius resisted like a man, and would not give up the deeds, affirming that he would rather himself waste away for want of food than leave his children destitute. He was then by the bishop’s orders placed under guard to meet death by starvation unless he consented to produce the documents. Under the church of the holy martyr Cassius there was a most ancient crypt, far removed from sight; it contained a great sarcophagus of Parian marble in which lay the remains of some person dead long ago. The priest was buried alive above the dead man in this tomb, and the stone which had previously covered it was replaced; guards were then posted at the crypt door. But the men, satisfied that he was safe under the stone lid, lit a fire (for it was winter) and fell asleep under the influence of the wine which they warmed at it. Then the priest, like a new Jonah,¹ from the confinement of his tomb, as from the bowels of hell, kept beseeching the mercy of the Lord. Now the sarcophagus, as I have said, was spacious; and though he was unable to turn his whole body, he was free to stretch out his hands at will. The remains of the dead man, as he used afterwards to relate, gave out a mortal stench which caused a tremor not alone in his external organs of sense, but in his very vitals. As long as he could close his nostrils with his mantle he escaped the worst; but as soon as he moved the cloak a little, when he felt half stifled, the pestilential odour penetrated him through the mouth, through the nose, and, one might almost say, through the ears as well. To be brief, at the moment when, as I believe, the Lord had compassion on him, he stretched out his right hand to the border of the sarcophagus and found an iron crowbar, which, at the letting down of the lid, had remained between it and the rim of the tomb beneath. He moved this little by little, and, God’s aid working with him, he felt the stone shift. When it was so far pushed aside as to let him put out his head, he widened the opening until his body could pass too. The shades of night were now obscuring the daylight, though they were not everywhere diffused. Anastasius sought another door of the crypt; it was secured by exceeding strong locks and by great nails, but was so ill fitted together that he could see out between the planks. The priest bent his head to the chinks, and perceived a man passing by. He called to him, though with a faint voice. The man heard him, and at once grasped his axe, cut through the planks to which the bolts were fixed, and opened a way out for the prisoner, who, coming up out of the darkness, proceeded home, first earnestly enjoining on the man to say nothing to any one of his adventure. Entering his house, he found the deeds given him by Queen Clotild, and took them with him to King Lothar, to whom he told the story of his burial alive by the bishop. All present were astounded, declaring that not even Nero or Herod had perpetrated such a crime as to put a man alive into the grave. While they still spoke, Bishop Cautinus appeared before the king; but on the accusation of Anastasius he went away vanquished and confounded. Anastasius received diplomas from the king enabling him easily to defend his property, which he continued to possess, and bequeathed to his descendants. In Cautinus was neither piety nor consideration; he was wholly unversed in letters, whether sacred or profane. With the Jews, to whose influence he submitted, he was on familiar terms, not for their conversion, which should have been his care as a good shepherd, but to buy of them precious objects. He was easily flattered, and they gave him gross adulation. Then they sold him the things at a higher price than they were worth.

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