After 573 Gregory lived at Tours in the lower Loire valley. This city with its pleasant climate and moderately productive territorial background had more than a local importance in this age. It lay on the main thoroughfare between Spain and Aquitania and the north. Five Roman roads centered in it and the traffic of the Loire passed by it. The reader of Gregory's history judges that sooner or later it was visited by every one of importance at the time. It was here that the Frankish influences of the north and the Roman influences of the south had their chief contact.
However the natural advantages of Tours at this time were surpassed by the supernatural ones. Thanks to the legend of St. Martin this conveniently situated city had become "the religious metropolis" of Gaul. St. Martin had made a great impression on his generation.[1] A Roman soldier, turned monk and then bishop of Tours, he was a man of heroic character and force. He had devoted himself chiefly to the task of Christianizing the pagani or rural population of Gaul and had won a remarkable ascendancy over the minds of a superstitious people, and this went on increasing for centuries after his death. The center of his cult was his tomb in the great church built a century before Gregory's time just outside the walls of Tours. This was the chief point of Christian pilgrimage in Gaul, a place of resort for the healing of the sick and the driving out of demons, and a sanctuary to which many fled for protection.[2] In a time of dense superstition and political and social disorder this meant much in the way of securing peace, influence, and wealth, and it was to the strategic advantage of the office of bishop of Tours as well as to his own aggressive character that Gregory owed his position as the leading prelate of Gaul.
Gregory does not neglect to tell us of his family connections and status in society.[3] He belonged to the privileged classes. Of his father's family he tells us that "in the Gauls none could be found better born or nobler," and of his mother's that it was "a great and leading family." On both his father's and his mother's side he was of senatorial rank, a distinction of the defunct Roman
- ↑ In France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there are at the present time three thousand six hundred and seventy-five churches dedicated to St. Martin, and four hundred and twenty-five villages or hamlets are named after him. C. Bayet, in Lavisse, Histoire de France, 21, p. 16.
- ↑ C. Bayet, in Lavisse, Histoire de France, 21, pp. 13 ff.
- ↑ Monod, op. cit. pp. 25 ff. See pp. 13, 84, 109, 140.
