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
[G][11. The Israelites spend forty years in the wilderness. 12. From
the crossing of the Jordan to David. 13. Solomon. 14. Division of
the kingdom into Judæa and Israel. 15. The captivity. 16. From the
captivity to the birth of Christ.]
17. In order not to seem to have knowledge of the Hebrew race
alone[43] we shall tell what the remaining kingdoms were in the
time of the Israelites. In the time of Abraham Ninus ruled over the
Assyrians; Eorops over the Sitiones; among the Egyptians it was the
sixteenth government, which they call in their own tongue dynasty.
In Moses’ time lived Trophas, seventh king of the Argives; Cecrops,
first in Attica; Cencris, who was overwhelmed in the Red Sea, twelfth
among the Egyptians; Agatadis, sixteenth among the Assyrians; Maratis
was ruler of the Sicionii….[44]
[18. Beginning of the Roman empire; founding of Lyons, a city
afterwards ennobled by the blood of martyrs. 19. Birth of Christ.
20. Christ’s crucifixion. 21. Joseph is imprisoned and escapes
miraculously. 22. James fasts from the death of the Lord to the
resurrection. 23. The day of the Lord’s resurrection is the first,
not the seventh. 24. Pilate transmits an account of Christ to
Tiberius. The end of Pilate and of Herod. 25. Peter and Paul are
executed at Rome by order of Nero, who later kills himself. 26.
The martyrs, Stephen, James and Mark; burning of Jerusalem by
Vespasian; death of John. 27. Persecution under Trajan. 28. The rise
of heresy. Further persecutions. 29. The martyrs of Lyons. Irenæus,
second bishop, converts the whole city. His death and that of “vast
numbers,” of whom Gregory knows of forty-eight.]
30. Under the emperor Decius many persecutions arose against the
name of Christ, and there was such a slaughter of believers that
they could not be numbered. Babillas, bishop of Antioch, with his
three little sons, Urban, Prilidan and Epolon, and Xystus, bishop of
Rome, Laurentius, an archdeacon, and Hyppolitus, were made perfect by
martyrdom because they confessed the name of the Lord. Valentinian
and Novatian were then the chief heretics and were active against
our faith, the enemy urging them on. At this time seven men were
ordained as bishops and sent into the Gauls to preach, as the history
of the martyrdom of the holy martyr Saturninus relates. [H]For it
says: “In the consulship of Decius and Gratus, as faithful memory
recalls, the city of Toulouse received the holy Saturninus as its
first and greatest bishop.” These bishops were sent: bishop Catianus
to Tours; bishop Trophimus to Arles; bishop Paul to Narbonne; bishop
Saturninus to Toulouse; bishop Dionisius to Paris; bishop Stremonius
to Clermont; bishop Martial to Limoges.
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