Gregory of Tours and Spain
Gregory’s narrative about Spain and Spanish matters is focused largely on religious issues, even when these involved diplomacy and warfare. Distinctions like these, however, were not those the bishop of Tours would have made or recognized. A good example of his approach is his description of the campaign conducted in 531 by Childebert I (ca 511–558) against the Visigothic king Amalaric (a. 526–531), prompted by the latter’s ill-treatment of his wife, Chlothild, who was the Frankish monarch’s sister.1 While recording the death of Amalaric in Barcelona in a version that conflicts with Spanish accounts, Gregory gives very few details of the military events, which are almost incidental to his narrative, but instead includes precise figures for the 60 chalices, 15 patens and 20 gold and bejeweled Gospel covers that Childebert carried off as loot to distribute amongst various episcopal and monastic churches in Francia.2 Similarly, Gregory reports on how the Arian bishop of Narbonne died of despair when he failed to prevent the inhabitants of the province of Narbonensis accepting Catholicism following the conversion of the Visigothic king Reccared in 587 (Hist. 9.15). However, the Spanish hagiographic text known as the Vitas Patrum Emeretensium indicates that this episcopal bitterness took the more concrete form of a revolt, in which Bishop Athalocus joined the Narbonese counts Granista and Wildigern in a failed rising against the king – a dimension