History of the FranksGregory, Bishop of Tours, Saint
History
History of the Franks
Gregory, Bishop of Tours, Saint
France -- Church history -- To 987; France -- History -- To 987; Franks -- History -- To 768
Some mention should be made of the transmissibility of the mystic
potency. The case of St. Martin is a good example. During his
lifetime he acquired this power in a large degree. When he died on
November 8, 397, at a village half-way between Tours and Poitiers,
the inhabitants of these cities were all ready to fight for his body,
when the people of Tours managed to secure it by stealth. This was
because of the sanctity and mystic “virtue” inherent in it. It was
carried to Tours and buried there and proved the greatest asset of
the city. The mystic potency resided in the tomb and the area about
it, and was transmitted to the dust accumulated on it, the wine and
oil placed on it for the purpose, and was carried in these portable
forms to all parts of Gaul. Gregory himself, for example, carried
relics of St. Martin on his journeys and records that they kept his
boat from sinking in the river Rhine.
The system of superstition just outlined is the greater and more
real part of Gregory’s religion. There was the right mystery and the
wrong mystery; and both were of a low order; men had to deal with
capricious saints and malignant demons. It was a real, live, local
religion comparable with that of savages. By the side of this and
intertwined with it the elements of traditional Christianity in a
more or less formalized and ritualized shape were retained. Here the
great stress was laid on the creed, not, however, that it amounted
to anything in Gregory’s mind as a creed. He was no theologian. His
acceptance of it and insistence on it was ritualistic. However,
although he accepted it as he tells us with _pura credulitas_,[24]
that is, without a critical thought, it was not mere formality. He
felt, no doubt, that it was a sort of mystic formula, especially the
Trinitarian part of it,--for putting men into the right relation with
the supernatural. If they believed in the creed they had the right
“medicine”; if they did not, they had not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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