[28. Baptism of Clothar. 29. Miracles of the abbot Aridius. 30. The plague. 31. The bishops of Tours from the beginning to Gregory.]
The nineteenth was I, unworthy Gregory, who found the church of Tours,[FW] in which the blessed Martin and the other bishops of the Lord were consecrated in the pontifical office, shattered and ruined by fire. I rebuilt it larger and higher, and dedicated it in the seventeenth year after being ordained; and in it as I learned from the old priests the relics of the blessed Maurice and his companions had been placed by the ancients. I found the very box in the treasury of the church of St. Martin, and in it the relics, greatly decayed, which had been brought because of their miraculous power. And while vigils were being kept in their honor I wished to visit them again by the light of a torch. And I was examining them intently when the keeper of the church said to me: “Here is a stone with a cover, but I don’t know what it has in it and I haven’t been able to learn from my predecessors who have had charge here. Let me bring it and you look carefully to see what it contains.” I took it and opened it of course,[FX]—and found a silver box containing relics of the witnesses of the blessed legion as well as of many saints both martyrs and confessors. We also found other stones hollow like this one, containing relics of the holy apostles and the rest of the martyrs. I wondered at this bounty divinely given and after giving thanks, keeping vigil, and saying mass, I placed them in the cathedral. I placed the relics of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian in St. Martin’s cell close to the cathedral. I found the walls of the holy church consumed by fire and ordered skilful workmen to repaint and adorn them with their former splendor. I had a baptistery built close by the church, where I placed the relics of the holy martyrs John and Sergius, and in what had been the baptistery I placed the relics of the martyr Benignus. And in many localities in the territory of Tours I dedicated churches and oratories and glorified them with relics of the saints, but I think it tiresome to speak of them in order.
I wrote ten books of Histories, seven of Miracles, one on the Lives of the Fathers; a commentary in one book on Psalms; one book also on the Services of the Church.[FY] And though I have written these books in a style somewhat rude, I nevertheless conjure you all, God’s bishops who are destined to rule the lowly church of Tours after me, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and the judgment day, feared by the guilty, if you will not be condemned with the devil and depart in confusion from the judgment, never cause these books to be destroyed or rewritten, selecting some passages and omitting others, but let them all continue in your time complete and undiminished as they were left by us. And bishop of God, whoever you may be, if our Martianus[FZ] has trained you in the seven disciplines, that is, if he has taught you by means of grammar to read, by dialectic to apprehend the arguments in disputes, by rhetoric to recognize the different meters, by geometry to comprehend the measurement of the earth and of lines, by astrology to contemplate the paths of the heavenly bodies, by arithmetic to understand the parts of numbers, by harmony to fit the modulated voice to the sweet accents of the verse; if in all this you are practiced so that my style will seem rude, even so I beg of you do not efface what I have written. But if anything in these books pleases you I do not forbid your writing it in verse provided my work is left safe.
I am finishing this work in the twenty-first year after my ordination.
Although in what I have just written of the bishops of Tours I have told their years, still this calculation does not agree with the [total] number of years, because I have not been able to learn accurately the length of time between the different ordinations. Now the grand total of years of the world is as follows:
| From the beginning to the flood | 2242 years |
| From the flood to the crossing of the Red Sea by the children of Israel | 1404 years |
| From the crossing of this sea to the resurrection of the Lord | 1538 years |
| From the resurrection of the Lord to the death of St. Martin | 412 years |
| From the death of St. Martin to the year mentioned above, namely, the twenty-first year after my ordination, which is also the fifth of Gregory, pope of Rome, the thirty-first of king Gunthram, and the nineteenth of Childebert the second | 197 years |
| The grand total of which is | 5792 years |
Here Ends in Christ’s Name the Tenth Book of the Histories.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Affecting the groin (inguen). The bubonic plague.
[67] Lugano.