Back to the Roots: The Rediscovery of Gregory of Tours in French Historiography*

Today Gregory of Tours (538-594) is considered the father of Frankish history.[1] It is not, however, his style and language that have won him this distinction, but rather the fact that his Historiarum libri decem is the first and indeed the only extant primary source for early Merovingian times.[2] Yet only in the sixteenth century did historians of France begin to make direct use of Gregory in their work. A large, and perhaps the most decisive, role in Gregory’s rediscovery in French histor..