02 — Family and Formation

The making of a bishop: Gregory’s birth into one of the great Gallo-Roman senatorial families of Gaul — a clan so saturated with bishops that he could claim all but five of his predecessors at Tours as kin — and the childhood illness and vow at the tomb of St. Illidius that set him on the road to the clergy.

Tradition: Western (pre-Schism Gaul; father of Western hagiography)

Gregory did not become a bishop by accident. He was born, as he tells us himself, into a network of Gallo-Roman episcopal families for whom the office of bishop was very nearly a family inheritance; and he was turned toward the clergy, on his own account, by illness and a vow at a saint’s shrine — the very kind of relic-cure that would fill his later books. This section traces both: the aristocratic-episcopal lineage that made him, and the formative episode of the vow. Both are known largely from Gregory himself, and the section pins them to his own texts.

Files in This Section

File Description
the-episcopal-aristocracy.md The senatorial-episcopal clan of Clermont and Langres: his great-grandfather St. Gregory of Langres, his uncle St. Gallus of Clermont, his uncle Nicetius of Lyon, the martyr-ancestor Vettius Epagathus, and the claim that all but five of his predecessors at Tours were his kin.
illness-and-the-vow.md Born Georgius Florentius; the near-fatal illness of his youth, the vow at the tomb of St. Illidius (Allyre) at Clermont, the taking of the name Gregory, and the diaconate — the shrine-cure at the root of his own vocation.

See Also

References

  • Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
  • Gregory of Tours. Life of the Fathers. Trans. Edward James. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2nd ed. 1991.
  • Wood, Ian. Gregory of Tours. Bangor: Headstart History, 1994.