legendary

In the mid-1970s as part of my studies in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, I read in translation The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. It’s quite a fat little volume in the series of Penguin Classics. A long and complex tale. I admit it required no little persistence on my part to complete my scrutiny from cover to cover. And right away the text bothered me.

Gregory writes in a sequence of episodes neatly ruled off from each other. I find myself reminded of Herodotus. Many – indeed, most – of Gregory’s episodes come across as reliable accounts of genuine historical events. This, after all, is Gregory’s prime purpose. By showing how the genealogy of the Frankish people fits smoothly and auspiciously into the patterns of the past – from the moment of Creation onwards - Gregory validates the authenticity of the Merovingian royal line which, in his own portion of linear time (Gregory died in the year 594 of our era), asserted its authority over the former Roman province of Gaul.

So much for the histories. But Gregory includes episodes belonging to a more intense perception : a perception where miracles and the interventions of the Holy Saints are as normal and expected as human mortality ; a perception where the sacred and the profane exist side by side in the same ambience, but where the sacred is to be regarded and approached with a special reverence and respect. I found myself asking : if we regard the mundane episodes as historically true, are we thereby to regard the miraculous episodes as historically true? On the other hand : if we regard the miraculous episodes simply as products of the imagination, what reliance can we place on the remainder of the material?

After more than three decades, I begin to see a possible resolution : a resolution which requires an exchange of categories, a setting aside of a current orthodoxy of historiography in favour of allowing an equal validity to legendary history for, in the middle of the first western millennium, the past was re-invented in ways which allowed, even ‘required’, genuine historical figures to be clothed in the raiment of legend : real mortal people enhanced with the attributes of immortality.

I am reminded of Tintagel where the tangible artefacts of history are subtly interpenetrated by the intangibles of legend. I am also reminded of Brocéliande where Merlin and Morgana still hold sway and where ‘the once and future king’ is worshipped as a saint and portrayed in the stained glass of sacred fenestration.

francis cameron

oxford, 25 june 2009