Gregory of Tours wrote memoirs which "are those of a man who has played a great part in the State. At the same time he has the sense for interesting {52} things, miracles, and adventures, which is sometimes wanting in historians." [11] [Sidenote: Gregory of Tours.] We learn from his books that he had been trained in classic learning, and that the bishops of the day did not turn aside from the pagan classics. It is quite clear that his education was not merely theological or even exclusively Christian. Other writers he refers to, but with Vergil he certainly was familiar. And it is difficult to believe that he stood alone, bitterly though he complained of the ignorance of his contemporaries. The very fact that Gregory the Great denounced the custom of bishops studying and teaching classical grammar and classical fables, shows that the education of those days was not very closely confined. And of its results, seen also in a goodly list of clerical men of letters, Gregory of Tours is perhaps the best example. He was before all things a bishop; he wrote indeed, as a French writer has happily said, "en eveque"; but he was also a statesman and a very keen observer of life. From his pages we learn how slight had been the impression that Christianity had yet made on the lives of barbarous men. We see kings still wondering that God's power could be greater than their own, yet when they were awoke to terror by the thought of death flying in craven fear to the feet of the minister of God. The whole history is a tale of treacheries and murders, of quarrels and of sins among men and women pledged to God; and yet it is evident that behind the cruelty and crime there was a new spirit at work, slowly transforming society by the conversion of individuals. It was a transformation {53} which was going on all over Europe; nowhere at this time, perhaps, more conspicuously than in Gaul and in Ireland. There are many parallels between the Celtic "age of saints" and the Merwing age of sinners. It is difficult to learn the full truth about either; but out of the darkness comes the conspicuous witness of individual saints. Of one or two of these a word may be said. Most notable is one who served both Ireland and Gaul. [Sidenote: S. Columban (540-615).]