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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 5, How Merovech Was Tonsured, and Took Sanctuary in the Church of the Holy Martin

After this Merovech,¹ who was kept under a guard by his father, was tonsured, forced to change his garb for that used by clerics, ordained priest, and sent to a monastery of Le Mans called Aninsula, to be instructed according to priestly rule. Boso, who, as I have related,² was then living in the church of the holy Martin, heard of this, and sent the sub-deacon Riculf secretly to advise the prince to take refuge in this church. Merovech set out to do so, and met his servant Gailen coming from another direction. As his escort was weak, Gailen succeeded in getting him away on the road, and the prince, covering his head and putting on layman’s clothes, reached the church of the blessed Martin. I was celebrating Mass when he entered, finding the door open. After Mass he asked me to give him some bread of oblation. Ragnemod, bishop of Paris, successor of the holy Germanus, was with me at the time. When we refused, Merovech cried out against me, saying that I had no right to suspend him from communion without first obtaining the consent of our brother bishops. Upon this assertion we discussed the bearing of the canons upon the case; then, with the consent of the one brother who was present besides myself, he received the bread. I was moved by the fear that in maintaining the suspension of one person I might become the slayer of many, for he threatened to kill some of our people if he was not held worthy of communion equally with them; yet this matter proved a cause of much disaster for the country of Tours. At this time Nicetius, husband of my niece, went on a private affair to King Chilperic, and was accompanied by our deacon, who was to tell the king of the flight of Merovech. As soon as Queen Fredegund saw them, she cried: ‘These men are spies; they have come to find out the king’s intent and report what they learn to Merovech.’ And forthwith she ordered them to be stripped of their possessions and sent into banishment, from which they were only released at the end of seven months.

Chilperic sent messengers to me with this command: ‘Cast thou out that apostate from the church of Martin; if thou do it not, I will set all thy country in flames.’ And when I wrote in answer that it was impossible in Christian times to do a thing which had not been done even in the days of the heretics, he levied an army and sent it against Tours.

In the second year of King Childebert,³ Merovech, seeing his father set upon his purpose, began to think of going to Queen Brunhild, and of taking Duke Guntram with him. ‘Far be it from me’, said he, ‘that the church of our lord Martin should suffer violence on my account, or his country be enslaved through my fault.’ And entering the church during vigils, he brought all the possessions that he had with him to the tomb of the blessed Martin, praying the saint to succour him and grant him his favour, that he might win the kingdom. Leudast, then count of Tours, seeking the favour of Fredegund, laid many snares for him, and finally entrapped and slew with the sword some of his servants who had gone out into the country: he was eager to kill Merovech himself if he could come upon him in a convenient place. But by counsel of Guntram, and to revenge himself, Merovech ordered Marileif, the royal physician, to be seized on his return from the king’s presence; he was sorely beaten, his gold and silver and all else that he had upon him were taken away, and he was left stripped of everything. Nor would even his life have been spared, had he not slipped out of the hands of his assailants and got away into the cathedral. Afterwards I gave him fresh raiment, and getting a pledge that his life was safe, sent him home to Poitiers.

Merovech made many charges against his father and his step-mother.⁴ These may have been partly true; but in my opinion it is not acceptable in God’s sight that a son should publish such things abroad, as was clear to me in the sequel. One day I was invited to his table, and as we were sitting together, he urgently besought me to read him something for the instruction of his soul. I opened the book of Solomon, and took the first text I found, which contained these words: ‘The eye that looketh a father in the face, may the crows of the valleys pick it out.’⁵ Though he did not understand, I considered this text was prophetic and given to us by the Lord.

At this time Guntram⁶ sent one of his servants to a certain woman having a spirit of prophecy, known to him from the days of King Charibert, that she might tell him what things should befall him. He used to declare that she had proclaimed before the event not only the year, but the day and the hour when King Charibert should die. This was the prediction which she now sent him through his servants: ‘It shall come to pass that King Chilperic shall die this year, and Merovech shall shut out his brothers and possess himself of the whole kingdom. As for thee, for five years thou shalt be duke of all his dominion. But in the sixth year, in one of the cities on the right bank of the Loire, thou shalt obtain the dignity of bishop by favour of the people, and thou shalt pass away from this world an old man, full of days.’ When his servants returned with this message, he was straightway puffed up with vanity, as if already he sat on the throne in the cathedral of Tours; and he came to tell me the prediction. I laughed at his folly and said: ‘Of God alone are these things to be obtained; the promises of the Evil One may not be believed.’ When he had withdrawn in much confusion, I laughed heartily at this man who deemed such tales worthy of belief. One night, after vigils had been celebrated in the church of the holy bishop,⁷ I had fallen asleep, stretched upon my bed, when I saw an angel flying through the air. As he passed over the holy church, he cried with a loud voice: ‘Woe, woe! God hath stricken Chilperic and all his sons; nor shall one survive from among the issue of his loins to govern his kingdom for ever after him.’ At that time the king had four sons by different wives, to say nothing of his daughters. When, at a later date, these words were fulfilled, I clearly perceived how false were the promises of the soothsayers.

Now while they two abode in the church of the holy Martin, Queen Fredegund, who in secret protected Guntram Boso on account of his part in the death of Theudebert,⁸ sent him a message in these terms: ‘If thou canst drive Merovech from the church that he may meet his death, thou shalt receive a great reward at my hands.’ Guntram thought that assassins were posted in readiness; he therefore said to Merovech: ‘Why sit we here like slothful men or craven? Why are we such dull fools as to slink privily about this church? Let our horses be brought; let us take our hawks, and go hunting with the hounds; let us delight our eyes with view of the open lands!’ He said this of his craftiness, to get him forth from the holy church. Guntram in other ways had his good qualities, but he was too prone to break faith, and he never took an oath to any of his friends which he was not at the first moment ready to break. They therefore left the church, as I have said, and went as far as Jocundiacus, a country house in the neighbourhood of Tours; but no man did harm to Merovech.

And because Guntram was accused, as I have said,⁹ of the death of Theudebert, King Chilperic sent messengers with a letter for the tomb of the holy Martin, in which he wrote a request that the blessed Martin should write back to him, whether it might be lawful for Guntram to be dragged out of his church or not. The deacon Baudegil,¹⁰ who brought this letter, put on the holy tomb, as well as the written sheet, a piece of blank paper. But after waiting three days and getting no answer, he went back to Chilperic. Then the king sent other messengers to exact a solemn oath from Guntram that he would not leave the church without his knowledge. Guntram readily swore on the altar-cloth never to go out thence without the royal sanction.

But Merovech, distrusting the prophetess,¹¹ placed three books upon the saint’s tomb, the Psalter, the Book of the Kings, and the Gospels, and passed the whole night in prayer, beseeching the blessed confessor to declare the future, and show forth to him whether or not he should be able to win the kingdom. After three days of fasting, vigil, and supplication, he returned to the blessed tomb and opened one of the books, which was the Book of the Kings. The first verse on the opened page was this: ‘Because ye have forsaken the Lord your God, to go after strange gods, and have not walked uprightly before Him, the Lord your God shall deliver you into the hand of your enemies.’¹² The verse which he found in the Psalms was this: ‘But by reason of their deceit didst Thou set evil in their way; Thou castedst them down, until they be raised up. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they have ceased and have perished because of their iniquities.’¹³ In the Gospel he found this: ‘Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of Man is betrayed to be crucified.’¹⁴ He was dismayed by these replies, and wept a very long time at the tomb of the holy bishop; then, taking with him Duke Guntram, with five hundred men or more, he departed. But after leaving the holy church, as he was making his way through the territory of Auxerre, he was taken by Herpo, a duke of King Guntram. By him he was held prisoner, but by some means or other escaped, and entered the church of the holy Germanus. When King Guntram heard this, he fined Herpo seventy pieces of gold, and removed him from his office, saying: ‘My brother saith that thou didst hold his enemy prisoner. If thou wert minded so to do, thou shouldst first have brought him before me; if not, thou shouldst not even have laid a finger on one whom thou wert not resolved to hold.’ The army of King Chilperic now advanced as far as Tours,¹⁵ spoiling, burning, and ravaging all the country, and not sparing the property of the holy Martin; whatsoever the hand touched, that it carried off; there was neither respect nor fear of God

Merovech abode about two months in the aforesaid church, and then fled, making his way to Queen Brunhild; but the Austrasians would not receive him. His father led his army against the people of Champagne, believing him to be concealed in those parts; but he did no mischief there, nor did he discover his son.

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