Littera Scripta (Jan 2017)
Hispania Motives and their Function in the Chronicle of Gregory of Tours
Abstract
The study analyses the importance of the Hispania discourse in the Ten Books of Histories (Historia Francorum) by Gregory of Tours on the “Frank state ideology”. The Frank chronicler uses the topics of the Visigoth Kingdom and the Iberian Peninsula on three interpretational levels (antique, heretic, and orthodox) and in several contexts – the most important being the dynastical, state, and religious. In all cases, Hispania, or rather the Visigoth Kingdom, plays the role of an “unconquered” foreign area or an area under Frank dominance. The function of such an approach and the creation of tradition is clear: to affirm that the Franks were the chosen ones in God’s Plan of Salvation and to affirm their superiority. However, it is important to state that this focus was common among chroniclers in the Middle Ages; the chronicle does not deviate from the characteristics of a “state chronicle.”
