Gregory of Tours: The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle 9789042949669, 904294966X

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d a l l a s m e d i e va l t e x t s a n d t r a n s l at i o n s

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Gregory of Tours The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle Introduction by Burnam W. Reynolds Translation by Randy R. Richardson With a Foreword by Raymond Van Dam

PEETERS

Gregory of Tours The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle

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DALLAS MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

EDITORS

Kelly Gibson (University of Dallas) Philipp W. Rosemann (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) EDITORIAL BOARD

Charles S. F. Burnett (Warburg Institute); Marcia L. Colish (Yale University); Kent Emery, Jr. (University of Notre Dame); Hugh Bernard Feiss, O.S.B. (Monastery of the Ascension); Donald J. Kagay (University of Dallas); Theresa Kenney (University of Dallas); James J. Lehrberger, O.Cist. (University of Dallas); James McEvoy (†); Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago); James J. Murphy (University of California, Davis); Jonathan J. Sanford (University of Dallas); Francis R. Swietek (University of Dallas); Baudouin van den Abeele (Université catholique de Louvain); Nancy van Deusen (Claremont Graduate University); Bonnie Wheeler (Southern Methodist University)

SPONSORED BY

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DALLAS MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

29

Gregory of Tours The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle

INTRODUCTION BY

Burnam W. Reynolds (Asbury University) TRANSLATION BY

Randy R. Richardson (Asbury University) with a foreword by

Raymond Van Dam

PEETERS LEUVEN - PARIS - BRISTOL, CT 2022

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Cover illustration: “Saint Andrew healing Maximilla.” Patras, Cathedral of Saint Andrew. Photo credit: Dr. Benjamin Lewis.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. © 2022 – Peeters – Bondgenotenlaan 153 – B-3000 Leuven – Belgium. ISBN 978-90-429-4966-9 eISBN 978-90-429-4967-6 D/2022/0602/114 All rights reserved. No part of this publiction may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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For my wife, Machel, and her unstinting love and support throughout this project. ⁓ Burnam For my wife, Debbie, for always loving and supporting and believing in me. ⁓ Randy

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Frontispiece: The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle in MS. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1274, fol. 79v. By kind permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

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Table of Contents Forewordix Acknowledgmentsxv Abbreviationsxvii Introduction1 I. The Text and Its History 4 II. Gregory the Man 11 III. The Blessings and Curses of Hagiography 21 IV. Gregory’s World of Saintcraft 31 V. The Matter of Miracles 38 VI. Glossary 48 VII. Annotated Bibliography 51 Primary Sources for Gregory’s Writings 51 Translations of the MA51 Translations of Gregory’s Other Writings 52 Analyses of Gregory’s Other Writings 52 Critical Analyses of the MA53 Setting the Work in the History of the Period 54 Secondary Sources Illuminating the Period 55 Hagiography and Its Uses 55 The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle60 Notes111 Appendix: The Geography of Hagiography121 Map125 Indices127

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Foreword “Two Fishermen” In modern scholarship Gregory of Tours is always associated with the cult of St. Martin of Tours. For Gregory their relationship was initially a family inheritance because many of the previous bishops of Tours had been his ancestors. Then it became an intimate personal bond. In his mid-twenties, suffering from a fever, Gregory trekked to Tours and celebrated vigils in the saint’s church. His steadfastness proved that he was worthy to approach the saint’s tomb and be healed. Finally, once Gregory himself was elevated as bishop at Tours in 573, he became the guardian and promoter of the cult of St. Martin. He distributed the saint’s relics, founded new shrines, repaired churches at Tours, and boldly defended the saint’s prerogatives against the bullying of Frankish kings. In return, the saint repeatedly healed his ailments. Once, when a fish bone was caught in his throat, Gregory felt the saint’s hand remove the obstruction.1 Gregory’s most enduring tribute to St. Martin was his compilation of stories about the miracles performed by the saint. Half of the eight books in his Miracles, his vast anthology of miracle stories, were devoted to St. Martin. This collection was more than a memorial to the saint, however, because in these stories about the saint’s miracles Gregory also narrated the two decades of his own episcopacy. During his tenure as bishop Gregory had essentially merged his identity with that of St. Martin. Gregory had also identified closely with other saints and their cults. Since boyhood he had made annual pilgrimages to the tomb of St. Julian, a martyr who had been buried at Brioude, a village south of Clermont. During an outbreak of the plague, he had travelled again to Brioude “so that I might be shielded by the protection of the blessed martyr Julian.”2 Gregory thought of St. Julian as “my own special patron,” and he also identified himself as the saint’s alumnus.3 An alumnus was a   Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), Book 3, chap. 1, p. 182; Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 260. 2   Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), chap. 46a, p. 132; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 191. 3   Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris, chap. 2, p. 114; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 165. 1

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x Foreword

foster son, a ward, a disciple, in an affiliation established by choice rather than by blood but still with all the expected overtones of mutual affection and care. This was a deeply emotional and intense relationship. St. Martin and St. Julian were local saints who had made careers and died in Gaul. In early medieval Gaul there were many cults and shrines, and most were dedicated to local Gallic saints. But despite this focus on parochial cults and native saints, the memory and reputation of one other saint, an outsider who had few connections with Gaul, was especially dear to Gregory. In Christian history St. Andrew was notable as one of the original twelve apostles and the brother of St. Peter. Subsequently his career was associated primarily with Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, and medieval traditions claimed he had introduced Christianity at Byzantium, which later became Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire. Andrew had been martyred and buried at Patras, on the coast of the Gulf of Corinth, and in the mid-fourth century his relics were moved to Constantinople. Since this Greek apostle had had no contact with regions in western Europe, it is not a surprise that his cult was hardly recognized in early medieval Gaul. Some relics had been brought to Rouen in the late fourth century; in the sixth century relics were located in the cathedral at Agde,4 a church in Neuvyle-Roi,5 a monastery in the Jura Mountains, and an unnamed site in Burgundy. Yet Gregory still hoped to become an alumnus of St. Andrew. Gregory’s relationship with St. Andrew was an accident of his birth. As he phrased the coincidence, he was born on the day St. Andrew had suffered martyrdom. They shared a dies natalis, a “birthday”—Gregory’s the usual happy day of family celebration, Andrew’s the blessed day when he had entered heaven and “shines in glory.”6 November 30 was their shared festival day. As a cleric and a bishop Gregory relied on the support of St. Martin and St. Julian. In contrast, in his Histories, his extended narrative of his times, he never mentioned St. Andrew as a patron who had backed him in perilous political moments. In his Miracles he highlighted St. Andrew in only one chapter of one book. His account noted some of the saint’s posthumous miracles, including the medicinal e­ ffectiveness of the oil that flowed from his tomb in Patras and the healing of a Frankish envoy who visited the tomb. According to the local bishop, St. Andrew had become a   Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), chap. 78, p. 90; Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 101. 5   Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, chap. 30, p. 56; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 50. 6   Chap. 38, p. 109 in this volume. 4

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Forewordxi

“celestial doctor.”7 Yet Gregory, despite his ailments, never claimed any personal remedy from St. Andrew. Perhaps it was only toward the end of his life that Gregory revived his interest in his birthday saint. At some point he obtained a book about the miracles of St. Andrew. It is possible to speculate that Gregory had acquired this book from Rome. In 589 one of his deacons travelled to Rome to visit the “tombs of eastern martyrs,”8 and on his return he transported relics that he had received from two popes, including pope Gregory the Great. This deacon may also have brought back documents about “eastern” saints such as St. Andrew. Gregory thought that St. Andrew’s miracles were marvelous; he also thought that the book was long and verbose. This opinion, by the way, came from an author who had himself written enough to fill several ordinary modern books. His contribution to the cult of St. Andrew would be a revised version of the book that condensed some episodes and omitted the boring sections. Gregory’s The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle differed from his books about the miracles of St. Martin, St. Julian, other martyrs, and other confessors. First, most of the stories collected in those books had focused on the afterlives of saints, not their lives, and had described miracles that occurred at saints’ tombs. In contrast, in his book about St. Andrew Gregory described miracles that the saint had performed during his lifetime, and the saint’s death and burial marked the end of his narrative. His revised book about the living Andrew’s miracles was effectively a prequel to the chapter about the miracles that St. Andrew had performed at his tomb. Second, the cults of saints were always celebrated annually on their festival days. St. Julian’s festival day was August 28; St. Martin had two festival days, one on July 4 to celebrate his consecration as bishop and another on November 11 to commemorate his death. During these festivals the Lives of the saints were read during the liturgy, almost like a theatrical performance. But Gregory never mentioned any celebration of St. Andrew’s festival day, and it was not included in the liturgical calendar at Tours. As a result, there was no opportunity for Gregory’s revised book about St. Andrew to be read aloud to a congregation of listeners. His collection of the miracles of St. Andrew was not deeply grounded in Gallic society, either through memories or through liturgical commemoration.   Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, chap. 30, p. 57; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 50.   Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), Book 8, chap. 6, p. 246; Edward James, trans., Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 57.

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xii Foreword

At the conclusion of the revised collection Gregory apologized for his unworthy speech and his provincial prose. This was another example of his self-deprecating modesty, perhaps even fake humility, because while his Latin was indeed drifting away from classical grammar and spelling toward more vernacular forms and pronunciation, Gregory was in fact a talented author. As a historian he highlighted important themes and a consistent interpretive viewpoint in his Histories. As a hagiographer he researched material from earlier accounts and recorded other people’s oral anecdotes in the various books of his Miracles. His work on the Miracles of Andrew allowed him to display yet another facet of his skill as a writer, this time as a copy editor. The greatest of Gregory’s talents was his skill as a storyteller. Gregory was a raconteur, similar to the adviser at a royal court, who had a reputation as a “delightful storyteller.”9 Another courtier, after St. Martin healed his deafness, was especially pleased that he could now hear Gregory’s stories: “When I spoke with you, I felt that my ear was immediately opened.”10 Gregory had a knack for constructing marvelous vignettes of human behavior that captured the emotions of the participants and appealed to the sympathy of his readers—or listeners. He had presumably honed his skill as a preacher, and many of his miracle stories were designed for use in sermons. His book about St. Andrew provided a whole new series of exemplary miracle stories: resurrections, healings, the casting out of demons, confrontations with hostile officials, all interwoven with citations of biblical verses. Andrew’s miracles seemed to reenact some of Jesus’s miracles, and his travels in the Greek world mimicked the journeys of the apostle Paul. Gregory’s book about his patron saint was a complement to the New Testament, but with a bit more effervescence. In all of Gregory’s books, historical and hagiographical, every story was like a noteworthy scene in a fresco or a specific episode in a panoramic mural. In this case, Gregory had transformed a long, boring book into the equivalent of an illuminated manuscript in which the pages would “shine with the saint’s sparkling miracles.”11 The vivid anecdotes, the memorable stories, even the sly humor have continued to sustain Gregory’s reputation. All professors who teach undergraduate courses on late Roman and early medieval society are grateful to assign such captivating   Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, Gregorii episcopi ­ uronensis libri historiarum X, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 1 (Hanover: Hahn, T 1951), Book 2, chap. 32, pp. 78–80; Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1974), 145–47. 10   Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, Book 3, chap. 17, p. 187; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 267. 11   Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, Book 1, preface, p. 136; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 201. 9

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Forewordxiii

r­eadings. These really are delightful stories. Reliable translations of Gregory’s Histories have long been available and English translations of the books in his Miracles were published during the 1980s and early 1990s. Burnam Reynolds and Randy Richardson have now done a great service by adding The Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle to this roster of translations. Their translation should also encourage scholars to incorporate this book into studies of Gregory and his world. Already in their comprehensive introduction Reynolds and Richardson hint at topics that would benefit from further research, such as the definitions of saints and their miracles, the importance of memories in constructing the past, and Gregory’s own contribution to the development of medieval theology. In the New Testament Andrew and his brother Peter are described as fishermen, casting their nets in the Sea of Galilee when Jesus invites them to become his disciples. This Gospel account was a great comfort to Gregory because it allowed him to cope with his own insecurities as a writer: “the Lord selected fishermen instead of orators to destroy the emptiness of this world’s wisdom.”12 St. Andrew had converted people by performing miracles; Gregory now used miracle stories as bait for his readers and listeners. Gregory had one more special connection with St. Andrew: he too liked to fish. He once asked a boatman on the Loire River to suggest a good fishing hole;13 he reported that the trout in a Swiss lake weighed one hundred pounds.14 Apparently even a talented historian, a devoted hagiographer, and an energetic bishop had a weakness for an irresistible fish story. St. Andrew and bishop Gregory not only shared the same birthday, but the same calling: the apostle and his foster son were both fishermen and fishers of men. Raymond Van Dam September 17, 2021

 Ibid.   Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, Book 2, chap. 16, p. 164; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 235–36. 14   Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, chap. 75, p. 89; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 99. 12 13

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Acknowledgments It has become almost cliché to admit that a book is not the sole product of its author or authors, for there are many who play a role in a finished volume. In our case, such individuals fall into two groups: those who assisted by providing their technical expertise in the execution of this task and those whose contribution to each of us on a more personal level nourished our efforts and put us in their debt. We must first acknowledge Dr. Kelly Gibson, editor for the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations series’ early medieval projects, who has diligently and patiently guided this volume through to its completion. Her keen eye and valuable suggestions have only made this work stronger. We would be remiss, however, if we did not thank Dr. Philipp Rosemann, who recognized the merit of this project and served as our initial editor. Additionally, we appreciate the helpful comments of our external reader, as well as the careful copyediting of Dr. Rebecca Straple-Sovers. Any remaining deficiencies or errors in this book should be ascribed to the authors alone. We are indebted to Mr. Clemens Radl of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica for his kind permission to use Max Bonnet’s edition of the Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli, as well as the Vatican Library for the use of the image of a page of Gregory’s MA. Our great gratitude goes out to Dr. Benjamin Lewis, our former student, who went above and beyond expectations in helping us obtain the beautiful cover photo that connects so well with our volume. A word of acknowledgment is also due to Erin Greb Cartography for the fine map to illustrate Andrew’s often confusing travels. We are thrilled to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Raymond Van Dam to this volume. In addition to some astute observations and suggestions regarding our manuscript, Dr. Van Dam’s engaging Foreword serves in many ways more as an invitation to the reader to take a tour of Gregory’s world and then to draw up a chair alongside of our Bishop of Tours, as it were, and peer over his shoulder while he pens his vivid narratives of the miracles of the saint with whom he felt such an irresistible connection. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the unfailing support and sacrifice of our families, to whom this expression of our deepest gratitude is anything but cliché.

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Abbreviations GC GM LH MA PI

VM VP

Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria confessorum, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), 294–370. Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), 34–111. Gregory of Tours, Libri historiarum X, ed. Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, Gregorii episcopi Turonensis libri historiarum X, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888; reprinted, 1951). The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle Gregory of Tours, Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), 112–34. Gregory of Tours, Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), 134–211. Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum ­ Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), 211–94.

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Introduction In the waning years of the sixth century, a work appeared in Gaul titled Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli (The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle, hereafter denoted as MA). Internal evidence in the text, such as the author’s birthdate and an account of the miracles at Andrew’s tomb matching almost exactly the description in the Liber in gloria martyrum by Gregory of Tours (538–594), suggests that the MA was also the product of Gregory, noted historian and hagiographer of the post-Roman West.1 For years there was a division of opinion as to Gregory’s authorship of the MA, since he failed to list it in the bibliography of his works that closed his famous Libri historiarum X, or Ten Books of History, often cited as either the Historiae or the Histories and commonly known as The History of the Franks.2 Consensus now exists that Gregory was indeed the author of the MA, and scholars have attempted to date the composition of the text to late in his career as an explanation for its omission from the Histories.3 The MA is based upon the Acts of Andrew, a third-century apocryphal account of the missionary efforts of Christ’s first-called apostle during the years after the Resurrection. The Acts of Andrew is now mostly lost, existing only in fragments, but seems to have once been known in a quite lengthy version. Gregory’s professed intent was to take this longer, earlier material and rework it into a more manageable form. As he did this, he necessarily made the earlier text conform to his own worldview, choosing to include and omit as it suited his plan. Therefore, the MA is a sixthcentury recension of a third-century work about a first-century apostle, and as such can be viewed through multiple chronological and historical prisms. Although Jean-Marc Prieur produced a complete translation of the MA in French, our present volume will be the first full English translation of Gregory of Tours’s work, also using the 1885 Latin edition of Max Bonnet for the Monumenta G ­ ermaniae  In MA, chap. 38, p. 109, the author mentions that he was born on St. Andrew’s Day (November 30), which is also thought to be Gregory of Tours’s birthday. Concerning the description of the miracle at Andrew’s tomb in MA, chap. 37, p. 109, see GM, chap. 30, pp. 55–57; Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 48–51. 2   LH, Book 10, chap. 18, pp. 535–36; Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1974), 602–3. 3   Raymond Van Dam, introduction to Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 3–5. 1

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2 Introduction

­ istorica (MGH).4 Earlier renderings of the MA into English were either paraphrases H that left out portions of the story, such as that of Montague Rhodes James,5 or translations that presented the text shorn of Gregory’s introduction and concluding chapters, such as that of Dennis R. MacDonald.6 As MacDonald’s objective was to reconstruct the now lost Acts of Andrew, his editorial choice is understandable in that he viewed the MA only in light of its relationship to the earlier work. If one looks at the MA solely for these connections, the sixth-century portions are not germane. But if one looks at the MA as a window on the sixth century concerning miracles and sainthood, the work has much to say. Our translation and commentary will present a complete version of Gregory’s MA with an eye to setting it in its sixth-century context with some perspective on the man Gregory and his era. This introduction examines how the material resonated with its sixth-century audience and the medieval readers of subsequent generations. As our objective is to provide readers with an accessible version of Gregory’s MA, we have not sought to create a new critical edition but rather a readable English translation based on Bonnet’s pioneering work. Endeavoring to stay true to the Latin text while at the same time desiring to offer an English translation that is sensible to the modern reader, the translator was guided in general by the following principles: (1) A more literal translation is preferred. This approach has the advantage of allowing the reader to compare more easily the Latin and the English. Without being excessively slavish to the Latin word order, sentence structure and divisions, and punctuation, the translator tried to be as faithful as possible in retaining those aspects of the Latin in the English translation. The reader will no doubt notice passages where a “looser” translation was necessary, in order for the English to flow more naturally. (2) Consistency in the translation is the aim. While no small amount of attention has been given to ensuring as much consistency as possible, there are, however, places in the translation where this principle could not be rigidly adhered to in light of the context. For example, the reader will notice that puer is variously translated as “boy,” “young man,” “adolescent,” or even “slave.”7 Or in the case of ecce, consistency was sacrificed in an attempt to make the translation capture the sense of the narrative and to avoid the   Jean-Marc Prieur, ed., Acta Andreae (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 564–651, includes an edition and translation of the MA with the French and Latin on facing pages, also using Bonnet’s edition in the MGH: Gregory of Tours, Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli, ed. Max Bonnet, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1885), 371–96. 5   Montague Rhodes James, trans., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 337–49. 6   Dennis R. MacDonald, The Acts of Andrew, vol. 1, Early Christian Apocrypha (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 2005), 43–76. 7   For further discussion, see the glossary and the translation’s notes. 4

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Introduction3

common but potentially tedious “behold!” One final example of what might seem to be a lack of consistency involves dominus in the vocative case. The English “lord” is used most of the time, especially when Jesus or an angel is being addressed, or when the word is part of a title, as “Lord Proconsul” in chapter 4; however, domine is rendered as “master” in chapter 26, when the slave Leontius is speaking to his owner Sostratus, and as “sir” when used more out of courtesy or respect for Andrew in chapters 1, 11, and 12 (see John 20:15, where Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener). The translator asks the reader’s indulgence for straying from the consistency principle in the instances mentioned above and a few other places. (3) Clarifying words and phrases have been inserted into the translation in square brackets to avoid pronoun-antecedent ambiguity (which has a tendency to occur more often in English than it does in Latin), to limit the close repetition or succession of pronouns, to identify the understood noun of a substantival adjective, and, in some instances, simply to clarify who or what is being referred to. Similarly, proper names (not enclosed in square brackets) occasionally appear in the translation where they are not found in the Latin text. Although such insertions in the translation have been kept to a minimum as much as possible, it may benefit the reader to know that these occur with the names Andrew (chaps. 3, 5, 7, 15, 18, and 24), Sostratus (chap. 4), Philionedis (chap. 15), Lisbius (chaps. 22 and 23), Trofima (chap. 23), Philopater (chap. 24), Nicolaus (chap. 28), and Egeas (chaps. 30 and 34). (4) Concerning the spelling of proper names, where no orthographical variation exists, whether in the Latin text or its chapter headings, the spelling used in the text is used in the translation. Where variations do occur, the spelling best suited for English is used consistently in the translation. Variations of spelling between the MA and other apocryphal writings about Andrew are decided in favor of the spelling in the MA. In some instances, certain place names have been updated to follow the spelling that occurs most frequently in English. (5) Passages from the Vulgate are italicized. While only the exact words (although sometimes differing in tense or case) appearing in the Vulgate are italicized in the Latin text, the reader will notice that synonyms in the corresponding English translation are also italicized. The translation also includes the scripture citation enclosed in square brackets. (6) The use of variant readings in the translation is limited. With the nature and scope of this project as articulated in the first sentence of this paragraph ever in mind, a variant reading has been taken into account in only three places, once in chapter 15 and twice in chapter 23. The former involves r­eading manibus for manus and is of little consequence to the translation itself. The latter are of greater significance, and brief discussions on those variant readings and their effect on the translation can be found in the notes to chapter 23 of the t­ranslation. (7) The notes at the end of the translation are primarily there to explain and illuminate historical and scriptural points rather than linguistic, stylistic, or textual ones.

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4 Introduction

I.  The Text and Its History The origins of the MA are to be sought in the swale of spurious writings that developed in the Late Antique world concerning the career of the apostles beyond the first-century book of Acts and the selected Epistles that complete the New Testament. Natural human curiosity sought to follow the apostles into their subsequent ministries. This allowed the faithful to fill the unknown with acceptable, but legendary, tales of apostolic travels and exploits. Thus, St. James, executed in Palestine ca. AD 44, was made to rest in Spain, and other disciples were territorially assigned throughout the Roman world and even beyond. Part of this genre was the now lost Acts of Andrew, which chronicled Andrew’s post-resurrection activities in Greece and Asia Minor until his eventual martyrdom at Patras. It was this lengthy, and no longer extant, work that the author of the MA sought to refashion into a more suitable form for a sixth-century audience. As a recension of an apocryphal work, the MA seemed merely a copy of a fable, and therefore not worthy of extended serious study by modern scholars. And yet, it was not as if the MA was discarded. It was copied frequently during the Middle Ages and is preserved today in some twelve manuscripts, eleven listed in Bonnet’s edition and a twelfth now residing in the Vatican Library,8 yet its eponymous ancestral text, the Acts of Andrew, failed to survive intact.9 8   John J. Contreni, “Gregorius Turonensis,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum. Mediaeval and Renaissance Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides, vol. 9, ed. Virginia Brown, James Hankins, and Robert A. Kaster (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 55–71, at 61. Also, Contreni, “Reading Gregory of Tours in the Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 419–34, at 428–29, mentions that among the surviving manuscripts, “most … seem to have come from French centers.” Bonnet’s list of the eleven manuscripts is found in Gregory of Tours, Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli, 373–75, and the twelfth-century Vatican manuscript is MS. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 8565, cols. 241a–266b, available https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.8565. Contreni, “Gregory’s Works in the High Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 566–81, at 574: the twelfth-century manuscript in a Cluny lectionary is “the only one that attributes the work to the bishop.” Prieur, Acta Andreae, also includes an index of the surviving manuscripts of the MA (pp. 764–66) and an index of the Latin words appearing in the work (pp. 794–818). Ian Wood, The Transformation of the Roman West (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018), 115–16, notes that even Gregory’s famous Histories survives only in five preCarolingian manuscripts, and further holds that there were multiple ways that these early manuscripts were interpreted and even extrapolated: “every recension (practically each manuscript) is effectively a different work and deserves study in its own right.” The dearth of pre-Carolingian manuscripts is not confined to the Histories, as Contreni, “Gregory’s Works,” 574, has pointed out: “Gregory’s reworking of the old version of Andrew’s miracles was hugely successful, on a par with the Histories and VM [Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi]. Most of the sixty manuscripts that survive are post-Carolingian.” 9  MacDonald, Acts of Andrew, 1:1, acknowledges the Acts of Andrew “now exist only in fragments, epitomes, and derivative recensions.”

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While the MA survives in multiple manuscripts, presumably because it offered medieval readers a properly salubrious story of sainthood and devotion, the question that has occupied modern scholars is the attribution of authorship. Its sixth-century origin places it in a period that has seen its fair share of misattribution of written works. The sermons of the great bishop of Arles, Caesarius (ca. 470–542), were thought to have been written by St. Augustine, and a treatise on miracle theory that circulated in Ireland under the Bishop of Hippo’s name still leaves us puzzled as to its true author.10 While the manuscripts may suggest that Gregory of Tours was the author of the MA, his preeminence as the surest voice from sixth-century barbarian Europe and his voluminous personal writing catalogue make him a ready candidate for authorial misattribution. There has been understandable reluctance to accept Gregory as the legitimate author of a diminished copy of an apocryphal work. This reluctance was reinforced by Gregory’s omission of the MA from the proud listing of his written works in the tenth, and last, book of his famous Histories.11 Thus, when an edition from the pen of noted Merovingianist and Latinist, Max Bonnet (1841–1917), held that Gregory of Tours was indeed the author of the MA, it was not greeted by scholarly consensus. But in 1958, Francis Dvornik’s investigation of the growth of the St. Andrew legend firmly placed Gregory of Tours as the author of the MA, as did František Graus’s 1961 classification of hagiographical texts exploring the relationship between lordship, incipient feudal concepts, and hagiography in the Merovingian world.12 By the 1970s, there was a slowly building crescendo of scholarly opinion concluding that Gregory was the author of the MA. In 1975, when William C. McDermott translated another of the works debatably assigned to Gregory’s authorial pen, a retelling of The Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus, he noted that, like the MA, it “was not included in Gregory’s list of his own works” but acknowledged that it is now known to be his.13 Klaus Zelzer’s 1977 study, using the same stylistic analysis he employed in evaluating an early work on St. Thomas, ­demonstrated  “Augustine”/Anonymous, De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae, PL 35:2149.   LH, Book 10, chap. 31, pp. 535–36; Thorpe, History, 603. 12   Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 183: “For the purpose of the present study the most important of all the Andrew texts just mentioned is the Book of Miracles of St. Andrew. This was written by St. Gregory of Tours toward the end of his life, in 591 or 592”; František Graus, “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefangenenbefreiungen’ der merowingischen Hagiographie,” Jahrbuch fur Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1961): 61–156, at 109, 123, 137. 13   William C. McDermott, trans., The Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus, in Monks, Bishops, and Pagans: Christian Culture in Gaul and Italy, 500–700, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 197–206. 10

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that the MA was Gregory’s.14 In the 1980s, Prieur took it as a given that Gregory wrote the MA and lauded him for preserving a record of the activity of Andrew before his ultimate arrival and martyrdom at Patras.15 By 1988, Raymond Van Dam noted only “lingering skepticism” concerning Gregory’s authorship, and in 1994, Ian Wood concluded that “modern historians have tended to attribute [the MA] to Gregory.”16 By 2011, John J. Contreni could see Gregory’s authorship as a generally accepted one.17 Despite his failure to list the MA as his own, Gregory’s authorial hand has slowly moved from a tentative possibility to an acknowledged premise. Given the absence of a statement of authorship from the Bishop of Tours, what convinced this growing legion of scholars of his creative input? There were embedded clues in the text that suggested the identity of its author. The most obvious one is the author’s assertion that he was born on November 30, St. Andrew’s Feast Day. Tradition has held that Gregory of Tours was born on that day as well. While it is quite possible that multiple young men shared that birthday, the plausibility of them being literate, deeply conversant with theological and ecclesiastical affairs, and productive of a work that survived this sparsely documented era made the conclusion that the author was Gregory a powerfully appealing one. But another clue reinforced this tantalizing hint: in chapter 37, the author of the MA included mention of the yearly miracle appearance of “manna” and oil at St. Andrew’s tomb, a story told almost verbatim in Gregory’s Glory of the Martyrs, leading Wood to note Gregory’s penchant for cross-reference in his works.18 The author of the MA also mentioned that the miracles at Andrew’s tomb were described “just as I have written in the first book of the Miracles.”19 Gregory himself claimed the Glory of the Martyrs as his “first 14   Klaus Zelzer, “Zur Frage des Autors der Miracula B. Andreae apostoli und zur Sprache des Gregor von Tours,” Grazer Beiträge 6 (1977): 217–41; his earlier work on St. Thomas is “Zu den lateinischen Fassungen der Thomasakten: 2. Überlieferung und Sprache,” Wiener Studien 85, n. s., 6 (1972): 185–212. 15   Jean-Marc Prieur, “La figure de l’apôtre dans les Actes apocryphes d’André,” in François Bovon, et al., Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres: Christianisme et monde païen (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 121–39; Prieur expanded on this in volume five of his editing of a later work, Acta Andreae (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 8: “Cette Vie de André est l’oeuvre de l’évêque Grégoire de Tours,” and he praised the MA as “un document unique pour tout ce qui précède l’arrivée de l’apôtre à Patras.” 16   Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 67; Ian Wood, Gregory of Tours (Bangor, Eng.: Headstart History, 1994), 1. 17   Contreni, “Gregorius Turonensis,” 61. Contreni, “Reading Gregory,” 420 n. 6, had apparently concluded earlier that Gregory was the author of the MA, simply including the MA among Gregory’s works without explanatory comment. By 2020, Contreni, “Gregory’s Works,” 574 n. 28, stated flatly “The attribution [of the MA] to Gregory is secure.” 18   GM, chap. 30, p. 55; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 48–49; Wood, Gregory of Tours, 2. 19   MA, chap. 37, p. 109.

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book” when he listed his works in the opening pages of the Glory of the Confessors.20 The assertion that this evidence might bear an alternative interpretation is cast into doubt by the mounting internal clues in the MA. It might be that Gregory’s recounting of the miracle at Andrew’s tomb was based upon his reading of the Acts of Andrew, a type of reversal of cause and effect. But the existence of several elements make a compelling circumstantial case for Gregory’s authorship of the MA: the recounting of the manna miracle at Andrew’s tomb is more than a simple retelling of a miracle story in that the MA author connects it to his “first book of miracles,” Gregory’s own Glory of the Martyrs; the MA author’s birth date of November 30, St. Andrew’s Day, is also Gregory’s traditional birthday; and there are multiple studies of the affinity of Gregory’s Latin with that of the MA, a process begun by Bonnet in the 1890s.21 However, the argument that Gregory’s birthdate was November 30, St. Andrew’s Day, can appear a somewhat circular one. This traditional date seems to be a product of the MA, the only place where that date is mentioned in a possible connection to Gregory.22 But a stronger case for Gregory’s authorship is the story of the miracle at Andrew’s tomb. The MA author flatly states that it was told there just as in his own first book of miracles. In his preface to the Glory of the Martyrs, Gregory proudly lists that work as his first book of miracles. If Gregory authored the MA, as this clue suggests, we would have a direct assertion from the Bishop of Tours that he was born on St. Andrew’s Day. This linkage apparently gave rise to the traditional date for Gregory’s birth. Taken then as a body, these markers argue for Gregory’s involvement in the MA. With these materials at hand and absent disqualifying evidence about Gregory’s authorship, the MA has been accepted as his, albeit with caution. Given the embedded clues in the MA, why was there resistance to naming Gregory as its author? Why this caution? To state the obvious, he did not identify the MA as his, as he did in the introductory matter of many of his other works. Gregory was generally not shy about acknowledging his authorship. He famously began his Histories with the proud assertion that, “In the name of Christ here begins the first book of the Ecclesiastical History of Georgius Florentius, known as Gregory, Bishop   GC, preface, p. 298: “Igitur in primo libello inseruimus aliqua de miraculis Domini ac sanctorum apostolorum reliquorumque martyrum”; Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Confessors (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 17. 21   Max Bonnet, Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1890; reprinted, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968). 22  Wood, Gregory of Tours, 2, does hold that the birthdate is largely a matter of tradition rather than attested fact. 20

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of Tours.”23 His Life of the Fathers begins with the statement that it is “the work of Georgius Florentius Gregorius of Tours,” as does his Glory of the Martyrs.24 However, he did not open his Glory of the Confessors with a similar statement, only later in the text mentioning that this work was “the eighth book” that he wrote.25 It seems that occasionally he allowed the thematic structure of the work to identify the author. Still, the omission of the MA from his literary curriculum vitae does linger and produces theories. One explanation for the missing attribution is a chronological one. Both Van Dam and Wood follow Bonnet in believing that Gregory frequently revised his writings, leaving open the possibility that the MA may have been composed in 593, perhaps a year before Gregory’s death, traditionally dated to November 17, 594.26 Given Gregory’s apparent tendency to revise his works over the years,27 this date for the MA would place it after the completion of his Histories, thus excusing the omission of the MA from his listing of writings at the end of that famous work.28 The consequent fluidity of the chronology does make the issue subject to further speculation.   LH, Book 1, preface, p. 3; Thorpe, History, 65. It is curious that the MGH editors chose to include this authorial assertion only in a footnote designated “a.” 24   VP, 211: “Incipit liber vitae patrum opere Georgi Florenti Gregori Toronici”; Edward James, trans., Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 1. Also GM, 37: “Incipit liber primus miraculorum in gloria martyrum beatorum opere Georgi Florenti Gregori”; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 18. 25   GC, preface, p. 298: “Octavum hunc scribimus de miraculis confessorum”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 17. 26   Raymond Van Dam, introduction to Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Confessors (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 5: “But as with most of his books, Gregory also constantly supplemented and revised what he had already written.” Wood, Gregory of Tours, 3, notes that our only source for Gregory’s death date of November 17 is the tenth-century Vita sancti Gregorii, by the second abbot of Cluny, Odo, PL 71:128C, with a mention of “[Gregory] obit autem decimo quinta kalendas Decembris.” It too seems based more on tradition than fact. 27  Wood, Gregory of Tours, 4. Also, Richard Shaw, “Chronology, Composition, and Authorial Conception in the Miracula,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 102–40, at 103 n. 2, believes that works such as the MA are unhelpful in the question of dating: “Since the PS [Passio sanctorum martyrium septem dormientum] and the MA are both translations … they reveal little about the question of dating either of themselves or of other works of Gregory. They will therefore be dealt with only tangentially here.” This has the effect of bypassing close examination of the MA. 28   LH, Book 10, chap. 31, p. 536; Thorpe, History, 603, where Gregory states: “I finished writing this History in the twenty-first year after my consecration” (“Hos enim libros in anno XXI ordinationis nostrae perscripsimus”). As Gregory was consecrated bishop of Tours in 573, this would place the conclusion of the Histories in 593–594. 23

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Perhaps an alternative explanation may be found in Gregory’s need to list his works in the first place. Gregory felt a strong sense of proprietary pride in his personal catalogue, as evidenced by his stern warning against any future editorial rearrangement. In the final book of his Histories, right after listing his various writings, he summoned the ultimate malediction against future tampering with his work: I conjure you all, I say, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Judgment Day feared by all sinners, that you never permit these books to be destroyed, or to be rewritten, or to be reproduced in part only with sections omitted … keep them in your possession, intact, with no amendments and just as I have left them to you.29

Gregory did allow future authors to “rewrite them in verse, if you wish to,” perhaps as a nod to his friend and contemporary, the poet Venantius Fortunatus, but he seems adamant that they remain intact. Anyone this protective would seem unlikely to casually forget to list a work. However, Gregory’s fierce pride can be reconciled with the failure to list some of his works because he differentiated between those of his writings that were original and those that were recensions, or retellings, such as the MA, as well as his version of The Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus. Both are now seen to be his. Gregory may not have minded adjusting an earlier work such as the Acts of Andrew, but he had strong opinions about his own works suffering a similar fate. It might have been a matter of classification that caused Gregory to omit the MA from his written works. While Gregory did not originate the material in the MA, the text can still tell us much about its refashioner. Martin Heinzelmann has observed that while Gregory’s stated intention for rewriting the Acts of Andrew does involve creating a more concise text, he was most concerned about the underlying textual truth and its facility in the furtherance of his primary objective: the edification of the Church.30 Therefore, as   LH, Book 10, chap. 31, p. 536: “Quos libros licet stilo rusticiori conscripserim, tamen coniuro omnes sacerdotes Domini, qui post me humilem ecclesiam Turonicam sunt recturi, per adventum domini nostri Iesu Christi ac terribilem reis omnibus iudicii diem, sic numquam confusi de ipso iudicio discedentes cum diabolo condempnemini, ut numquam libros hos aboleri faciatis aut rescribi, quasi quaedam eligentes et quaedam praetermittentes, sed ita omnia vobiscum integra inlibataque permaneant, sicut a nobis relicta sunt … si in his omnibus ita fueris exercitatus, ut tibi stilus noster sit rusticus, nec sic quoque, deprecor, ut avellas quae scripsi. Sed si tibi in his quiddam placuerit, salvo opere nostro, te scribere versu non abnuo”; Thorpe, History, 603. 30   Martin Heinzelmann, “La réécriture hagiographique dans l’œuvre de Grégoire de Tours,” in La réécriture hagiographique dans l’Occident medieval: Transformations formelles et ideologiques, ed. Monique Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), 15–70, at 69–70. Jamie Kreiner, “Merovingian Hagiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 508–30, at 516, points out the need for 29

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the MA is a recension, crafted to accomplish a mission, what Gregory chose to leave in and what he chose to leave out are equally important.31 However, any certainty we might muster concerning Gregory’s editorial discretion is impaired greatly by the fact that the Acts of Andrew is lost. Reverse engineering might work with machines, but it has limited use in a textual issue like this. This raises the question as to why Gregory would choose this apocryphal work for his attention. Apart from his supposed birth date on St. Andrew’s Feast Day and his capacity to claim multiple “special” patron saints, the MA represents classic Gregorian structure. As Erich Auerbach long ago observed about Gregory’s writings: “There is room in his heart for everything that can impress the people— legends of the saints, relics, and miracles to feed the imagination, protection against violence and oppression, simple moral lessons made palatable by promises of future rewards.”32 The MA checks almost all of these boxes, as do his other, more famous works. The lingering doubts about the authorship of the MA explain why it has been neglected. Without a firm attribution to Gregory of Tours, it seemed just another anonymous pseudepigrapha among many. During the decades of uncertainty, while the study of Gregory and his world advanced greatly, the MA was relegated to a bystander role. With the tardy assignment of the MA to the Bishop’s body of work, the time is right to view it through the lens of his life and contribution to Western culture, rather than merely as a means to reconstruct a lost work. Who was this man who now appears as the author of the MA, and what was the socio-political and religious milieu that he inhabited?

reducing verbosity and holding the audience’s attention, which may have prompted Gregory to edit down the earlier Acts of Andrew: “But hagiographers also saw the advantages of narrative economy. They were wary of boring their audiences. They also knew that a handful of well-edited episodes could be a rhetorically powerful form of representation.” 31   Both Van Dam and MacDonald believe Gregory made significant changes in the original. Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, chap. 30, pp. 48–49 n. 32, says, “Gregory deleted or changed most of the theological implications and doctrines that churchmen had found objectionable.” One objectionable aspect was encratism, the opposition to marriage that apparently surfaced in the Acts of Andrew concerning Maximilla’s refusal of Egeas’s husbandly requests in MA, chap. 35, p. 107. But Gregory had already inserted, in MA, chap. 11, p. 77, a full-throated approval of marriage. MacDonald, Acts of Andrew, 1:1, takes a far less charitable view of such emendations: “much of the content is represented only by a tendentious and frequently garbled sixth-century Latin epitome by Gregory of Tours.” Prieur, Acta Andreae, 9, lists the things that Gregory left out, and blames “l’allergie professée par Grégoire à l’endroit de la verbosité de sa source” for these omissions. 32   Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), 91.

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II.  Gregory the Man The man the world knows as Gregory of Tours was born Georgius Florentius on St. Andrew’s feast day, November 30, a marker revealed in chapter 38 of the MA and, therefore, a key piece of evidence establishing Gregory as the author. While we must rely on tradition to give us the month and the day, the exact year may be reconstructed from other chance references in Gregory’s writings. These are due in part to the Christian emphasis on the death date, not the date of physical birth, as the truly important natalicia, or “birthday,” that permits passage to heaven. Gregory mentioned that his mother, Armentaria, was healed from a leg malady in the year of his consecration as bishop and that the pain had plagued her since his birth thirtyfour years earlier.33 As we know that Gregory was made bishop in Tours in 573, his birth year can be calculated as 539. However, a cautionary point must be made that early medieval authors were notoriously imprecise when dealing with chronology,34 and thus the finality of the dates is subject to modern differences of opinion. Our subject was named Georgius after his paternal grandfather, once a late Roman senator who died sometime after 502, and Florentius after his father, who passed away when Gregory was young, perhaps no more than eight years old. His birthplace is uncertain but seems firmly placed in the Auvergne, perhaps not far from the episcopal city of Clermont. He took the name Gregorius upon his installation as bishop of Tours in 573 in honor of his maternal great-grandfather, the famed Bishop Gregory of Langres, who held that see from 506–539. Taking an additional, official name based upon a respected predecessor, much as popes still do, would not be unheard of in an era where all bishops were called pater, or “father,” as were the bishops of Rome. It is also of interest to note that Gregory was born in the same year that the revered bishop of Langres died, perhaps giving an added cachet of familial succession to the name.   VM, Book 3, chap. 10, p. 185; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 264. This occurred after Gregory’s ordination (post ordinationem) in 573 and it ended thirty-four years (triginta quattour annos) of suffering only after seeking help from the blessed Martin for two or three months (per duos aut tres menses). 34   Jonas of Bobbio, Vita sancti Columbani, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (2), MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), Book 1, chap. 6, p. 72. The biographer of the Irish saint and monastic founder Columbanus misplaced his arrival in Gaul as being prior to 575, during the reign of King Sigibert, when in fact he arrived there in 590, some fifteen years after Sigibert’s assassination and during the reign of King Guntram. For a fine modern translation of this text, see Alexander O’Hara and Ian Wood, trans., Jonas of Bobbio: Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), with discussion of the chronological issues at 20–21. 33

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Gregory’s lineage contained at least two ancestors who still claimed senatorial rank in the afterglow of Roman rule following the barbarian invasions. His ancestry also stretched back to the persecution of Christians in Lyon in AD 177 via his forbear, the martyr Vettius Epagatus. But it seems that Gregory was genetically disposed to be a cleric. His family tree spread its branches over most of central Gaul, with many in his ancestry even beatified as saints. Although his upbringing was in the diocese of Clermont, his relatives on his mother’s side at one time or another had been bishops in Autun (Eufronius, 451–475), Langres (Armentarius, 479; Gregory, 506– 539; Tetricus, 539–572), Lyon (Sacerdos, 552; Nicetius, 552–573), and Tours (Eufronius II, 556–573). Even his father’s side, somewhat less clerical overall, produced his uncle, Gallus, bishop of Clermont (525–551), as well as Gregory’s own niece, Justina, who became prioress at the Convent of the Holy Cross.35 Ralph Mathisen has analyzed the importance of family connections in Gregory’s day, concluding that for the church it could almost rise to the level of a “family monopoly.”36 The farther one journeys into Gregory’s ancestry, the more impressive the ecclesiastical way stations become. It was no idle boast when Gregory mentioned, while listing the eighteen bishops who preceded him on the cathedra at Tours, “apart from five, all the other bishops who held … the see of Tours were blood-relations of my family.”37 It must be noted that this astonishing assertion is for the diocese of Tours alone! After his father’s death, he lived for a time in the episcopal household of his uncle Gallus in Clermont and attained the diaconate by 563. It was surely no surprise when he succeeded his mother’s cousin Eufronius as bishop of Tours in the summer of 573. The poet Venantius Fortunatus wrote an adventus poem that well captured the seeming inevitability of the moment: “His merits have brought him to this honor, and his very name has destined him to be a pastor of a flock.”38 It would have been more surprising had Gregory not become a bishop than that he did.   Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 10, gives a fine genealogical chart. Heinzelmann also provides a full explanatory list of the bishops of Tours in “Gregory of Tours: The Elements of a Biography,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 5–34, at 15–16. 36   Ralph Mathisen, “The Family of Georgius Florentius Gregorius and the Bishops of Tours,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n. s., 12 (1984): 83–95, at 83. 37   LH, Book 5, chap. 49, p. 262; Thorpe, History, 321; also see Mathisen, “Family,” 85, where he doubts that all these relations were close ones, noting that Gregory used expansive language to describe kinship: “parentum nostrorum prosapiae sunt coniuncti,” or “they were related to the stock of my ancestors.” 38   Edward James, introduction to Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), x. 35

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Gregory’s deep roots in Gallo-Roman society and the traditional mischaracterization of his most famous work, the Histories, as The History of the Franks leads one to assume that the good bishop lived in a bicultural world of Franks and GalloRomans. This is deceptive. Gregory’s world, including those who were either his parishioners or recipients of his miracula accounts, was a multicultural one. Burgundians, Alamanni, Visigoths, Alans, and even Huns existed in pockets of settlement and political control throughout Gaul. Gregory records that King Guntram’s visit to Orléans in July of 585 was met with “a vast crowd of citizens … singing songs in his praise” in a polyglot chorus including Syrian, Hebrew, Frankish and the morphing Latin of the Gallo-Romans.39 Helmut Reimitz has pointed out that early oaths of loyalty to the Merovingian king included a roster of nationalities: Franks, Romans, Burgundians and others.40 This multiculturalism is also evident in the law codes of the sixth century. The great legal historian Katherine Fischer Drew has noted the existence of a concept termed “the personality of the law,” wherein each was judged according to the laws of his respective ethnicity. This differs from “the territoriality of the law,” where subjects are judged according to the “law in force in the territory in which they happen to be.”41 This peculiar system, so at odds with Roman law, had a window of effectiveness consisting of the years immediately after the fifthcentury dissolution of the Western Roman Empire and was in use during the sixth century.42 This chronological window coincides with Gregory’s immediate forbears and his own career. The shift from the personality of the law to the territoriality of the law was delayed in Gaul by the Merovingian royal habit of partible inheritance, the tradition of dividing up the kingdom rather equally among the surviving princes. This division included more than just regions, such as Austrasia (northern Gaul into the Rhineland), or Neustria (a more central portion of Gaul), or even Burgundy (conquered in the 530s by the Franks and consisting of eastern Gaul); it also involved key cities with their territoria, or surrounding countryside. This was important because during this sixthcentury transition period between the Roman and early medieval world, the city   LH, Book 8, chap. 1, p. 370; Thorpe, History, 433.   Helmut Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 100: the oaths specified “Franci, Romani, Burgundiones vel reliquae nationes.” 41   Katherine Fischer Drew, “The Barbarian Kings as Lawgivers and Judges,” in Life and Thought in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Robert S. Hoyt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 7–29. 42   Katherine Fischer Drew, The Burgundian Code (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 3. Also see Drew’s translation of The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). This law code was overseen by Clovis and presumably was to govern judicial matters for those of Frankish ethnicity. 39 40

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retained its economic and political power, acting as “not only the focus of any civilized life [but also as] the centre of power … Its essence was this: an urban centre [that] ruled the surrounding territory.”43 Key cities, such as Paris, became major bones of contention in the divisions and redivisions of Gaul, even resulting in some cities being sub-divided among the royal heirs. The result was a patchwork of holdings made even more kaleidoscopic by recurring fratricidal contests for control among the kingly heirs. The barbarian successor kingdoms that emerged in the various lost provinces of the Roman Empire often are seen as proto-national entities such as “Merovingian Gaul,” or “Visigothic Spain.” The union of disparate tribal subgroups into unified kingdoms was a slow process, delayed in Gaul by repeated royal redivisions. In this situation, the Church operated as the one trans-ethnic and trans-tribal organization, a “surrogate state” culturally as well as administratively. Thus, Gregory’s writings advocating saints such as the Apostle Andrew served a broader social purpose, not just as exhortations to a personal holiness, but as an agency for the early formulation of a European Christian cultural identity: “Christendom.” Gregory’s views on the emerging idea of Christendom and its relationship to his writings both historical and hagiographical have been the subject of much recent scholarly analysis. It is Thomas F. X. Noble’s view that this incipient Christendom was supra-ethnic and supra-national and consisted of “a continual striving towards the morals and values of his Christendom,” and, despite Gregory’s justifiable pride in his Roman heritage, “his self-fashioned identity was more Christian than Roman or Roman-Christian.”44 Reimitz believes that Gregory sought to redefine “Christendom” away from its obvious Roman roots: “The emphasis on the discontinuity of Frankish and Roman history in particular was a deliberate strategy to establish the continuity of Christianity in Gaul as a determining factor in the history and future of the kingdom.”45 Robert Bartlett sees this spiritualized surrogacy as an anodyne to the rapid, and pervasive, changes in the early Middle Ages. These disruptions were mitigated by “the continuities in cult [that] are in contrast with the big changes in political and   Nancy Gauthier, “From the Ancient City to the Medieval Town: Continuity and Change in the Early Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 47–66, at 50. 44   Thomas F. X. Noble, “Gregory of Tours and the Roman Church,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 145–61, at 159. 45  Reimitz, History, 87. Magali Coumert, “Transformations of Identities: Barbarians and Romans in the Merovingian Realm,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 99–116, at 104, also emphasizes Gregory’s supra-ethnic stance: “To be certain, Gregory of Tours acknowledged that he lived in the Frankish kingdom, but he did not identify himself as a member of the Frankish people.” 43

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religious life that took place between the fifth and the eighth centuries,” creating “a common culture … that included saint, shrine, and miracle” and that was exportable into the formerly barbarian lands from Ireland to Saxony, Russia, and Lithuania.46 However, as Reimitz judges, “Galliae … functions as a spiritual topography delimiting the Christendom that Gregory sought to advocate.”47 Yet what began in Gaul became in the Carolingian age an enlarged reality. As Janet L. Nelson has observed, Gaul was a seedbed of Western Christendom: “A polyethnic clerical elite helped forge a new kind of unity, a Church under the benevolent dominion of Frankish rulers. But … a Frankish Church? No—any more than Gregory of Tours’s Church was a Frankish Church … Instead, there were many churches, and the churches of many provinces, which came together to make one Church.”48 Gregory envisioned a Church unity comprised of all the peoples of Gaul, and yet one that might be a model for other regions and cultures. Gregory might not have had so much contact with all the pieces of this multicultural mosaic, nor a chance to advocate for a more unified Christendom, were it not for his rise to prominence in the Gallic church. Despite his powerful family tradition, Gregory may have spent his life in a smaller, less consequential parish or even episcopal see. Indeed, his frequent admissions of severe health problems make it somewhat surprising that he lived to his mid-fifties, dying on the traditionally accepted date of November 17, 594. His older brother Peter, perhaps as promising a candidate for historical notoriety, or perhaps not, was murdered in 574,49 indicating how perilous the completion of a long and significant career could be. Despite the vagaries of the era, Gregory did become bishop of Tours before his thirty-fifth birthday and that post was, at the time of his accession, decidedly no small, insignificant one. Tours could have been an insignificant settlement except for the fortunate presence of the tomb of St. Martin. When Martin died on November 8, 397, he was on a pastoral mission to a parish downriver in Candes. News of his death brought the citizens of Poitiers and Tours quickly to the scene. Whichever city could claim and entomb a famous saint would grow in stature, as Frans Theuws has demonstrated   Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013), 27. 47  Reimitz, History, 46. 48   Janet L. Nelson, “The Merovingian Church in Carolingian Retrospective,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 241–59, at 259. Yitzhak Hen, “The Church in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 232–55, at 234, goes so far as to credit this sixth-century Church with “the origin and development of those attitudes and assumptions that still underline most forms of contemporary Christian life in the West.” 49   LH, Book 5, chap. 5, p. 201; Thorpe, History, 261. 46

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with his examination of the rise of Maastricht in the early Middle Ages.50 The Tours delegation spirited the body away “in the middle of the night” while the Poitevins were asleep and hurriedly brought Martin to Tours for entombment and the subsequent civic power that would generate.51 This action rescued Tours from being “a one-horse town” and allowed bishops such as Gregory a platform for influence.52 Tours was a metropolitan see, perhaps due to its location on the Loire River, a frontier zone separating the Frankish north from the Romanized south; its possession of the tomb of St. Martin; and its prior Roman status. In sixth-century terms, the metropolitan oversaw other bishops of important cities. The metropolitan of Tours was in charge of the bishops of the major cities of the greater Loire Valley and northwest to the border with Brittany: Le Mans, Rennes, Angers, Nantes, and four other lesser sees.53 Having metropolitan status, Gregory occupied an important position in Gaul, not only because his see contained the tomb of St. Martin, who was well on his way to becoming the preeminent saint in the West, but also because of Tours’s strategic location as a border city on what was emerging as a north-south division. The Loire River, during this era known as the Liger, represented a dividing line between Frankish-controlled territories of the north and the southern regions once ruled by Visigoths and Burgundians. Every division and redivision of inheritances among the Frankish kings would feature Tours as a coveted, and contested, possession. The bishop of Tours would, in almost an ex officio way, be a participant in royal intrigue, as when Gregory offered sanctuary to insurgent royals54 or when he was tried for his alleged opposition to Merovingian misrule.55 It may be fair to say Gregory’s Histories have a way, due in part to the simple fact of their survival from this scantily sourced era, of focusing too much on his career and his role in major events. Yet he must be seen as an important participant in the larger affairs of state primarily due to his almost offhanded recounting of his exploits, what Heinzelmann terms “his typical reservation.”56 He seems innocent of the charge of gratuitous self-promotion.   Frans Theuws, “Maastricht as a Centre of Power in the Early Middle Ages,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 155–216. 51   LH, Book 1, chap. 48, pp. 32–34; Thorpe, History, 97–99. 52   Ian Wood, “Topographies of Holy Power in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 137–54, at 140. 53   Lewis Thorpe, introduction to Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1974), 12. 54   LH, Book 5, chaps. 4 and 14, pp. 198–200 and 207–8; Thorpe, History, 258–59 and 267–68. 55   LH, Book 5, chap. 49, pp. 258–63; Thorpe, History, 316–21. 56  Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 23. Ian Wood, “The Individuality of Gregory of Tours,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 29–46, at 31, 50

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Gregory was a major player in several decisive events in sixth-century Gaul, but his lasting fame rests upon his writings. There were other contemporary bishops who were involved in the central action of the age who are quite unknown to the general public today. One thinks of Bishop Ragnemod of Paris, surely a key person in a key city, who left behind no corpus of literature that enshrines him in the historical record.57 What preserves Gregory in the historical canon is largely his Histories. Gregory’s writings, both historical and hagiographical, have been criticized down through the years for their style of language. His Latin is often faulty and frequently confusing, existing as it does in an age of linguistic flux from the classical to the early medieval world. Yet, it may be that this deficiency has been a beneficial characteristic in that his works pulse with the vitality of the common man rather than the arid structures of learned prose. Gregory, who apologized often for his perceived deficiencies of style, apparently got confirmation for his writing style in a dream. His late mother, Armentaria, appeared to him and exhorted him thus: Do you not know that because of people’s ignorance the manner in which you can speak is considered [to be] more comprehensible to us? Therefore, do not hesitate and do not stop recording these events, because you would commit a crime if you were silent about them.58

believes that Gregory’s influence has been overstated: “Rather than looking consistently at the world of sixth-century Gaul through Gregory’s eyes, it is worth occasionally trying to understand some of the moments when his detachment slips, in order to question his position as commentator, and, additionally, to consider the extent to which some of the places, or rather cult-sites, which he privileges may not be representative of the Merovingian kingdom.” 57   Ragnemod was bishop from 577–591 and baptized royal offspring as well as participated in the trial of Gregory before King Chilperic, among other events. Ragnemod appears multiple times in LH: Book 5, chap. 14, p. 208, chap. 18, p. 219, and chap. 32, p. 237; Book 6, chap. 27, p. 295; Book 7, chap. 4, p. 328 and chap. 16, pp. 337–38; Book 9, chap. 6, pp. 417–20; and Book 10, chap. 14, pp. 500–501 and chap. 26, p. 519. 58   VM, Book 1, preface, p. 136: “Et nescis, quia nobiscum propter intelligentiam populorum magis, sicut tu loqui potens es, habetur praeclarum?”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 200. Gregory’s Latinity has drawn scholarly analysis. Lewis Thorpe deems it a type of “vernacular language moving fast from” the classical and believes “there is no particular point in comparing his Latin with … the tongue of Caesar or Cicero” nor that of the major figures of the Carolingian Renaissance (Thorpe, introduction to History, 38–39). Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 195, notes Gregory’s faulty Latin but believes it a useful tool to “necessarily influence social conduct.” Apart from grammatical issues, Gregory does use the occasional word only sensible to his time, e.g., ballomer, possibly meaning “pretender,” a Frankish word appearing in LH, Book 7, chap. 14, p. 335, chap. 36, p. 357, and chap. 38, p. 361, as well as Book 9, chap. 28, p. 447. For a full examination of Gregory’s Latin, see Bonnet, Le Latin. Concerning the vexed ballomer, see Marc Widdowson, “Gundovald, ‘Ballomer’ and the Problems of Identity,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 86 (2008): 607–22.

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This relatable writing style was at the heart of Gregory’s motivation for recording the events of his day, whether history or hagiography, for the improvement of the Church and the society in which it resided. Using faulty Latin and the occasional localism in terminology would more easily convey his admonitions and instructions concerning saints and their role in the Church. As Benedicta Ward has pointed out, the public reading of such literature was key in preserving the story for the public: a way to avoid Armentaria’s charge of criminal omission.59 Gregory’s renown as an historian largely is a product of the nature of the surviving sources from his era, which are few. So slim is the roster of historians from the sixth century that the poet Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 530–600), Gregory’s contemporary and acquaintance who later in his career became bishop of Poitiers, is sometimes included as an historian due to his occasional references to key historical events such as the scandalous uprising of the nuns at St. Radegund’s convent of the Holy Cross.60 More traditionally recognized as historians are Marius of Avenches (ca. 530–594), who offers little additional material in his brief history, and John of Biclar (d. 621), whose short chronicle offers a bare-bones recounting of events from 567–590 from a Spanish point of view. Neither of these provides the depth of material and explanation to be found in Gregory’s massive Histories. Eastern historians of the era do little more than touch upon affairs in the West. Procopius of Caesarea (ca. 500–ca. 560), who recounted the Emperor Justinian’s reconquest of Italy in his History of the Wars, and Agathias (ca. 536–ca. 582), who continued Procopius’s work into the 550s, compare poorly with Gregory’s personal perspectives on the barbarian West. Gregory was interested “in finding ways to define a common world and history for the successors of the Roman Empire in the East and the West.”61 This perspective,   Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 30: “They were to be written down and read aloud for conversion and for the increase of faith.” 60   See Thorpe, introduction to History, 36–37, who classes him as one of the “other historians of the period,” although Thorpe admits Fortunatus’s poems “really add little to our knowledge of the major events of the period.” For an accessible translation of a selection of Fortunatus’s works as well as a study of his contribution to the sixth century, see Judith George, trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), and Michael Roberts, ed. and trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017). George’s Venantius Fortunatus: A Latin Poet in Merovingian Gaul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), places Fortunatus’s career in historical context. Reimitz, History, 88–97, has a good examination of that historical context and uses of Fortunatus’s poetry. As an example of the poems’ historical utility, Reimitz, History, 88–90, dates the marriage of Sigibert of Austrasia and Brunhilda, his Visigothic queen, to 566 rather than the traditional date of 567. 61  Reimitz, History, 83. Reimitz demonstrates that Gregory’s historiographical view, deliberately not privileging any one ethnic or collective group other than Christian, added depth to his narrative: “We 59

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coupled with his personal involvement with the subjects of his writings, gives him status as a valuable source for the sixth-century West. Other sources that relate to Gaul are the Chronicle of Fredegar, composed in the early seventh century, which uses Gregory’s material for its sixth-century narrative,62 and a later volume, the Liber historiae Francorum, which draws heavily on Gregory but also extends the story into the seventh century.63 In neither case do these works measure up to the depth of Gregory’s master work the Histories, erroneously labeled the History of the Franks as early as the tenth century, and filled with so much information, both incidental and deliberate, that Thomas F. X. Noble has labeled it an “absolutely overwhelming flood of information.”64 The story of the sixth-century West is “substantially Gregory’s narrative with only occasional corroborations from other sources.”65 Lewis Thorpe summed up the consensus that still pertains: “As an historian he stood alone in his own century.”66 Gregory occupies a well-deserved position as the preeminent historian of the postRoman West. Yet we are concerned here with one of his other writings, the MA. How and why did this historian come to expend so much effort on books describing the miracles of saints? A clue may be found in his explanation of why he wrote his famous Histories. He wrote “to describe the wars waged by kings against hostile peoples, by martyrs against the heathen and by the Churches against the heretics.”67 This triumvirate of wars includes the political, social, spiritual, and ecclesiastical struggles of his day. The modern tendency is to reflexively separate the spiritual and the political—Gregory did not. Consequently, the tendency is to view Gregory find many instances in which Gregory describes the deeds and wars of the Merovingian kings without mentioning the name of the Franks, and yet the corresponding entries in other chronicles do ascribe agency to the Franks” (75). Oddly, this over-arching historical view provided more information: “In fact, among all the extant sources up to the end of the sixth century, we do not have any names for Frankish kings that Gregory of Tours does not mention himself” (78). 62   J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, trans., The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar (London: Thomas Nelson, 1960). Wallace-Hadrill chose to translate only the fourth book since it was original and not simply a version of Gregory’s Histories. 63   See Bernard S. Bachrach, trans., Liber historiae Francorum (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1973). 64   Noble, “Gregory of Tours,” 146. His work has also produced an equal level of academic disagreement. Pascal Bourgain, “The Works of Gregory of Tours: Manuscripts, Language, and Style,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 141–88, at 141: “The work of Gregory of Tours is both a mine of information for historians of 6th-century Gaul and the subject of innumerable debates.” Also see Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 2. 65   J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West: The Early Middle Ages, A.D. 400–1000 (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962), 70. 66   Thorpe, introduction to History, 38. 67   LH, Book 1, preface, p. 3: “Scripturus bella regum cum gentibus adversis, martyrum cum paganis, ecclesiarum cum hereticis”; Thorpe, History, 67.

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through a modern prism that emphasizes his secular life, dealing with the political machinations of kings and their seemingly incessant wars. The ecclesiastical and spiritual side of his career is either ignored or scorned for its naiveté. This dichotomy forces a judgment on Gregory’s writings, first in a separation of his secular from his spiritual topics,68 and secondly in the expectation that his spiritual writings cannot illuminate his era except as examples of credulity. Yet his Histories are dotted with instances of the miraculous and judgments based on religious convictions. While this may confuse, or even annoy, modern readers seeking straightforward history, it is to be expected from Gregory. He saw events as a monism, consisting of equal parts of faith and action, yet a whole nevertheless.69 Nowhere was this more evident than in his treatment of Arianism. This theological position, which involved the belief that God the Father had preceded God the Son, had been rejected at the Council of Nicea in the fourth century but lingered on as a basis for Christianity among several Germanic tribes, notably the Visigoths, Vandals, Burgundians, and Lombards. Gregory’s works are suffused with vitriolic refutations of this heresy. His animus was best expressed in his preface to book three of his Histories, where he made explicit comparison between “the happy outcome of the Christians who have believed in the Holy Trinity and the disasters which have befallen those who sought to destroy it.”70 Heresy, history, and hagiography combine readily into an organic whole for the Bishop of Tours. Therefore, separating out his history from his hagiographical miracula is to pull threads out of whole cloth. Yet his Histories have received the bulk of attention down   For example, Alexander Callander Murray, ed. and trans., Gregory of Tours: The Merovingians (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006), x, believes the separation is necessary to remedy the “complicated, tangled, and fractured narrative of secular and spiritual history.” 69  Reimitz, History, 49–50: “In their stories [of saints and kings], successes and conflicts Gregory defined the spiritual traditions of his Christendom on which the success of the social and political integration of his society depended.” 70   Ibid. It is important to note that recent studies concerning Arianism choose to denominate that theological position as “Homoian,” indicating their emphasis on the humanity of Christ. Cf. Ralph W. Mathisen, “‘Alors Commença La France’: Merovingian Expansion South of the Loire, 495–510,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 3–31. For examples of Gregory’s anti-Arian animus, see LH, Book 3, preface, pp. 96–97 (Thorpe, History, 161), Book 2, chap. 23, p. 68 (Thorpe, History, 135) and Book 9, chap. 15, p. 430 (Thorpe, History, 498), where he twice recounts the death of Arius “who lost his entrails in the lavatory.” Also in Book 5, chap. 43, pp. 249–52 (Thorpe, History, 307–10) and Book 6, chap. 40, pp. 310–13 (Thorpe, History, 371–74), he describes long disputations with Arian emissaries of the Visigothic king Leovigild (r. 569–586). See GC, chaps. 13–14, pp. 91–93; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 29–30, describing Arian bribery to obtain false miracles, and GM, chaps. 79–81, pp. 305–6; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 103–6, listing a series of vignettes on the hostility of the Arians and God’s vindication of the Catholic position. 68

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through the years. We, however, are concerned with his miracula, and in particular the work on the Apostle Andrew. If we pull that thread from the cloth, what may we expect to gain? III.  The Blessings and Curses of Hagiography The MA falls into the literary category of hagiography, literally “holy writing.” Such works consist generally of stories of the life and work of saints.71 Gregory devoted about half of his substantial literary output to hagiography, writing eight books of miracles on various saints as well as the volume on Andrew.72 As a work of hagiography, the MA neither provides the details nor the motivation that a regular historical source would. This section examines the shortcomings of this type of source as well as its usefulness. While the MA is not an accurate account of the postResurrection career of St. Andrew, it is a window on the received wisdom of the sixth century concerning the apostle. Consequently, the classification of the MA as hagiography opens up multiple interpretive questions. First among these is the question of purpose: What was Gregory trying to accomplish with the MA? Here we encounter what Noble has called “a chiasmic paradox.” Concerning the flood of information that Gregory provides, Noble describes its possible use: “We use Gregory’s details to puzzle out his larger purposes and we use our own sense of Gregory’s larger purposes to manage our understanding of the details.”73 Thomas Head has defined the hagiographer’s purpose as “to advance the cause of his own salvation and to educate his audience in the proper practice of Christianity.”74 This accords well with Gregory’s own words from the preface to his book on the Glory of the Martyrs: “Hence it is proper for me to follow this … by writing and proclaiming what edifies the church of God and what enriches barren minds to recognition   For a useful definition of hagiography, see A Dictionary of Saints, ed. Donald Attwater and Catherine Rachel John, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1996), 24: “The field of learning concerned with the writings and study of the Lives of the saints.” 72   Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 50, notes that Gregory’s Histories “constituted less than half of his writings,” leaving his miracula to occupy the majority of his corpus; also see LH, Book 10, chap. 31, pp. 535–36; Thorpe, History, 602–3, where he lists them but omits mention of the book on Andrew. For an excellent historical overview of the origins and development of hagiography as both literature and institution during the Middle Ages see Guy Philippart, “Hagiographes et hagiographie, hagiologes et hagiologie: Des mots et des concepts,” Hagiographica: Rivista di agiografica e biografia della Società internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo Latino 1 (1994): 1–16. 73   Noble, “Gregory of Tours,” 146. 74   Thomas Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (London: Garland Publishing, 2000), xiii. 71

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of perfect faith by means of holy teaching.”75 In other places he expressed the belief that these miracula writings would “strengthen the church.” This strengthening would include stories of “Eastern miracles through translations he commissioned and adapted,” such as the MA.76 There is a strong element of the spiritually pedagogical in the hagiographical writings of Gregory of Tours, which Richard Fletcher has called “the most overtly didactic narrative literature of the period.”77 Gregory used, however, different means to convey these teachings. His writings sometimes take a biographical approach, recounting in a mostly chronological way the events of the subject saint’s life. Other times he concentrated on the miracles performed posthumously at the saint’s tomb. It seems that Head was right to identify more than one genre of hagiography, particularly so in the case of Gregory.78 This dual emphasis on the seemingly historical along with the heavily repetitive inclusion of the miraculous has led many to a derisive dismissal of Gregory’s miracula as overly credulous and predictably prescriptive. Indeed the very word “hagiography” has become, in many circles, a negative epithet.79 Even scholars known for their judicious analysis of medieval texts have used phrases like “monotonous and less significant” to describe Gregory’s miracula80 and cited his “inability to impose 75   GM, preface, p. 37: “Ergo haec nos oportet sequi, scribere atque loqui, quae eclesiam Dei aedificent et quae mentes inopes ad notitiam perfectae fidei instructione sancta faecundent”; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 19. Also see a similar statement in the preface to the MA, p. 65 below. 76  James, Life of the Fathers, 1; Contreni, “Reading Gregory,” 428. Felice Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113, at 95, wisely observed that while historians “have ceased dismissing reworkings out of hand, the fact that ‘hagiographical’ narratives (both original and revised versions) have frequently been stigmatized as ‘untrue’ can still blind us to their function as historical writing, despite their increasingly enthusiastic rehabilitation as historical sources.” The enduring and ramifying nature of hagiography does seem to have historiographical import as well as spiritual significance. 77   Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 10. 78  Head, Medieval Hagiography, xiii. Examples of this literary diversity are vitae (saints’ lives), miracula (accounts of miracles worked by the saints or their relics), and martyria (descriptions of the passion and death of the saint), to name a few. The genre encompassed several forms in order to accomplish its desired ends. Ian Wood, “The Use and Abuse of Latin Hagiography in the Early Medieval West,” in East and West: Modes of Communication. Proceedings of the First Plenary Conference at Merida, ed. Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 93–109, at 108–9, calling it “an infinitely flexible medium,” explains that “Hagiography, then could be history as much as it could be liturgy, theology, edification and propaganda, whether spiritual, cultic or political.” 79   Attwater and John, Dictionary, 24: “Because of the excesses and credulity of many hagiographers the word is sometimes used in a depreciatory sense.” 80   William C. McDermott, “The World of Gregory of Tours,” in Monks, Bishops, and Pagans: Christian Culture in Gaul and Italy, 500–700, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

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order on his subject matter” leading to a type of “incoherence” of narrative.81 The end result of these negative judgments is, as Felice Lifshitz has pointed out, that Gregory’s miracula are discredited: “in the latter works Gregory is generally deemed to be writing ‘hagiography’ and therefore does not have to be believed, for the connotations of ‘hagiography’—as the category was constructed in the nineteenth century—have predetermined that any vision of the past believed to have been generated within its purview would either be dismissed completely, or understood as an expression of mendacious vanity.”82 More recently, an appreciation for the unity of Gregory’s works, both the miracula and his Histories, has emerged. This renewed appreciation has taken two tacks: finding an underlying historical plan within what traditionally has been seen as randomly fragmented narrative and approaching Gregory’s works from the perspective of general medieval historical practice. Taking the first approach, Heinzelmann has gone to great lengths to illustrate a biblical plan for Gregory’s writings, particularly his Histories.83 Walter Goffart, noting that Gregory’s miracula “have more often been deemed an embarrassment, to be disregarded, than a precious clue to Gregory’s outlook and identity as a historian,” concludes that it “makes little sense” to treat the miracula and Histories differently, primarily arguing an affinity on stylistic grounds.84 Goffart believes both multi-book works use the same method of storytelling and display the same worldview centered on pastoral concerns.85 If so, we may Press, 1975), 117–218, at 123. McDermott judges Gregory’s miracula negatively: “These works are by their very nature more monotonous and less significant than his history.” 81   Charles M. Radding, A World Made by Men: Cognition and Society, 400–1200 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 60–62. 82   Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 211–28, at 212. Patrick J. Geary’s Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 18, contains trenchant observations on hagiography noting that scholars “have lumped hagiography into a fairly homogeneous group of authors whose collective ‘mind’ we purport to study, and we are seduced by our created text and invented author into thinking that they represent an equally fictitious society.” Criticism of hagiography concerning its use as history is a part of a larger critique of Christian literature. John N. Oswalt, The Bible Among the Myths (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2009), 138, lays out the principal objections: “the accounts are by no means exhaustive, often leaving large gaps; divine causation is frequently referred to; the standard by which progress or lack of progress in events is judged is the outworking of divine purpose; and the style is more anecdotal than analytical.” These complaints mirror the charges against hagiography and Gregory’s writings. 83  Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, esp. 94–201. 84   Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 130. 85   Ibid., 152.

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conclude that the same impetus that drove Gregory to compose his hagiographical works, the miracula, was a motivation for his refashioning of the MA. Whether discerning an unnoticed literary scheme or erasing the bright line between the miracula and the Histories, both these attempts at rehabilitation, while commendable and perceptive, seek to conform Gregory to contemporary understandings of history. Obviously, some of the MA is either patently unhistorical or, at best, difficult to label as historical. For example, the existence in the MA of the mysterious “Mermidona,” believed to be the territory of the cannibals, defies historical location. While this phantom place is merely a carryover from the Acts of Andrew, it exposes him to the charge of non-historicism.86 Further, the use of a form of chronology in the miracula entices the reader to view them as “historical” despite their vastly different purpose. The objective is to show God’s power and work through His chosen instrument, the saint. Any historical detail that assists this goal will be utilized, but a straightforward account of events is not to be expected. Thus, hagiography can offer incidental historical facts and insights while pursuing its professed goal of illustrating the greatness of God as He works through His saints. Virtus is a common word in early medieval hagiography and a difficult one to define—Edward James sees it as “one of the more ambiguous words used in late antique texts.”87 It is not, however, a word that can be avoided in Gregory’s writings. His work is shot through with the use of virtus and virtutes to describe miracles and the empowered status of the saints he reveres. As James notes, “For the Christian writer it is ‘power’ above all in the sense of ‘power to work miracles’ and that is how it came to mean ‘miracle’ itself, as the title of five of Gregory’s ‘books of miracles,’ VSJ [Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris] and VSM I–IV [Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi].”88 While virtus is a difficult word to define, it may be sufficient to say that for Gregory’s world it meant the power of God manifested in and through the saints, often translated as “holy deeds.” The focus was on God rather than humanity. This separates it from its classical meaning, perhaps best exemplified by Cicero in his

 Dvornik, Idea of Apostolicity, 201–7, wrestles with this mysterious place, eventually deciding it might have been in Crimea, near what was then called the Cimmerian Bosporus. But he notes that Gregory dodged the question by simply leaving the site vague and unnamed as well as not mentioning the legendary anthropophagites. Prieur, Acta Andreae, 68–72, also discusses the location of Mermidona and its relation to cannibalism but, contra Dvornik, he concludes that it cannot be precisely located but doubts it has a Scythian locus: “Certes, la region en question n’est pas localisée avec précision et n’est pas nécessairement à identifier avec la Scythie” (68). 87   James, introduction to Life of the Fathers, xvii. 88  Ibid. 86

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Philippics, who saw virtus as largely a product of human action.89 While hagiography can leave a bread-crumb trail for the historian seeking human agency, it can also mislead, for its purpose is to validate holiness, not to portray the deeds or actors for their own sake. As the MA is hagiography and, until recently, considered of dubious authorial provenance, it has been ignored among Gregory’s various works. His other miracula have been carefully examined as they are loaded with incidental nuggets of Merovingian history, largely describing saints and miracles sited in the sixth century. A more complete analysis of what hagiography can reveal about Gregory’s day is provided by Graus’s pioneering works in his detailed examination of Merovingian hagiography. Graus shows how hagiography could be used as a prism through which to observe the development of governance, law, and society as a whole.90 Peter Brown, building on these principles, describes the utility of this perspective of replication: Christian writers did not mindlessly create a mirror in Heaven that reflected, in rosy tints, the hard facts of patronage and prepotenza that they had come to take for granted on the late-Roman earth. The role of replication in late antiquity was subtly different: it enabled the Christian communities, by projecting a structure of clearly defined relationships onto the unseen world, to ask questions about the quality of relationships in their own society. The cult of the saints in late antiquity, therefore, did more than dress the ancient dead in contemporary upper-class costume. It was a form of piety exquisitely adapted to enable late-antique men to articulate and render manageable urgent, muffled debates on the nature of power in their own world, and to examine in the searching light of ideal relationships with ideal figures, the relation between power, mercy, and justice as practiced around them.91

 Cicero, Philippics, trans. Walter C. A. Ker (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926; reprinted, 1995), Book 4, chap. 13, pp. 246–48: “virtus is the badge of the Roman race and breed. Cling fast to it, I beg you men of Rome, as a heritage that your ancestors bequeathed to you … With this virtus your ancestors conquered all of Italy first, then razed Carthage, overthrew Numantia, brought the most powerful kings and the most warlike peoples under the sway of this empire.” It appears to be a central part of “Romanitas,” the Roman guiding self-perception that fueled their ascendancy in the Mediterranean world. 90   See Graus, “Die Gewalt,” 61–157, and especially his Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1965). 91   Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 63. Kreiner, “Merovingian Hagiography,” 512, agrees: “hagiography is not just a model for individuals to follow. It is also a normative discourse that attempts to change the measures by which an entire community or society sees and evaluates itself.” 89

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It is this line of investigation that scholars such as Jamie Kreiner and John Kitchen have fruitfully explored concerning issues of legal development, gender understanding, and the like.92 While the MA does not offer a window on the sixth century specifically, it acts as a necessary connective between the sixth and first centuries, between Gregory’s day and the time of the Apostle Andrew. The MA helps to explain much about Gregory’s worldview and, therefore, acts as a type of backlighting for his more famous works. Brown has remarked that one of hagiography’s main objectives was to “bring its long dead founders into the present,”93 and Gregory’s work is no exception. Perhaps owing to the MA’s apostolic subject matter, while the other miracula have been useful in illuminating early medieval Frankish history (although simultaneously criticized for their apparent non-historical organization94) the MA has languished in obscurity. This almost paradoxical situation derives from Gregory’s separation of the historical and the spiritually fanciful and credulous. Yet as the two forms, hagiography and history, ask different questions, one may wonder if they may both have correct answers. An equally effective angle of vision on the question of historicity, particularly for viewing miracula such as the MA, is summarized by Gabrielle Spiegel, who credits the impact of Christianity with making the natural and the supernatural an   Jamie Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), esp. 8, traces the impact of saints’ lives on developing systems of justice and mercy and holds that the “Merovingian vita was at its core a legalistic argument,” while John Kitchen, Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. vii, uses Merovingian vitae as a means to appreciate fully “the rich contributions women made to early medieval culture.” 93   Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 331. 94  Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours, 1–6, discusses this issue of historicity, calling the dismissal of Gregory’s works by modern scholars “an extraordinarily successful character assassination of a Merovingian author and his time,” and noting “Gregory’s apparent inability to follow a purposeful structure in his Histories became the accepted view, while his obsession with piety and his excessive veneration of saints was explained by his naïveté and limitations” (3). The only exceptions deviating “from this school of thought were presented by those who could show that this sixth-century historian had made some historical mistake” (3). Kathleen Mitchell, a current and sympathetic analyst of Gregory’s historicity relating to the distant past, in “Marking the Bounds: The Distant Past in Gregory’s History,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 295–306, at 296, is forced to conclude: “Were Gregory the only source of evidence about the ancient past, the reader would note assorted rulers and peoples but would have come away with no substantive information about them or their history.” As Gregory’s MA is an attempt to connect the Apostolic Age to contemporary sixth-century life, any disjunction between past events and chronology could undermine that effort. Also see Radding, World Made by Men, 61, for deprecatory remarks about Gregory’s chronology. 92

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“­admixture” that became a type of proscenium “upon which the drama of mankind is played out.”95 This paradoxically made history both more and less important than before: “More important, because history was a mirror through which to read God’s intentions … But also less important, for ultimately what mattered was not what ‘was done’—what really happened—but what could be learned about God from it.”96 This fluid perspective may explain some of the more disqualifying features of hagiography in modern eyes: the repetitive cataloging of miracles and the seemingly rampant plagiarism from one saint’s life to another. One reading multiple saints’ vitae cannot escape a sense of déjà vu. Certain tropes recur regularly—a portentous birth dream, a somber and seriously spiritual childhood, and a crisis point turning the would-be saint to his or her calling—as well as a serial array of miracles of the same kind. There seems to be, in Fletcher’s phrasing, “a bank of stock tales, themes, phrases on which the hagiographer could draw without restraint or acknowledgement.”97 The modern reader almost unconsciously translates this déjà vu into dismissal. Some have even accused hagiographers of padding their saint’s vita with borrowed miracles because they were “writing of one about whom information was deficient.”98 These negative reactions surface quite apart from the issue of the existence of miracles, breaking through because of the seeming plagiarism in these sources. Yet the medieval view that Spiegel summarizes so well provides a rationale for this practice. If the actual particulars of events are subordinate to the larger, cosmic, interplay of human and divine affairs, then there is an almost irresistible drift toward the trans-temporal. Gregory explained it in his On the Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian: “it is proper that a common miracle link the writings about each saint.”99 It is this communis virtus, “common holy power,” the power of God that unites saints of widely disparate chronological station. Therefore, Gregory could title his miracula on early Christian fathers Liber vitae patrum, book of the “life” of the fathers rather than “lives” of the fathers. James has pointed out that this choice was predicated on Gregory’s view that “those who were deemed holy by God all lived the same kind of life … all saints have the one   Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Historical Thought in Medieval Europe,” in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. Lloyd Kramer and Sara Maza (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 78–98, at 81–82. 96  Ibid. 97  Fletcher, Barbarian Conversion, 11. These “stock tales” often mimic the miracles of Christ from the New Testament, such as restoring sight to the blind, healing paralytics as well as a variety of maladies, commanding nature, and even raising the dead. 98   Attwater and John, Dictionary, 226. 99   PI, chap. 50, p. 134: “dignum est, ut communis virtus utriusque sancti scripta connectat”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 194. 95

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life in Christ.”100 In Gregory’s view there may be a “diversity of merits and virtues among [the saints] but one life of the body sustains them all in this world.”101 Even, or perhaps especially, an apostle such as Andrew can be portrayed in a similar way and with telling effect as the saints nearer to Gregory’s own day. This is particularly necessary in Gregory’s sixth-century world as the explosion of near-contemporary saints threatened to submerge the earlier saints who “were still venerated, but … were figures of a distant age.”102 Although many of his chosen subjects were contemporary or near-contemporary holy ones, Gregory gladly took up the task of linking ancient saints with his day. It almost seems as if he could barely contain his enthusiasm for this connection with the past, as he exclaimed in On the Holy Deeds of St. Martin: “Oh, how often do I marvel at the renewal of those miracles of the prophets and other distinguished men that I have read happened long ago! But what am I saying? What those many men did while alive in this world, this man [Martin] single-handedly renews every day even after his burial.”103 If Gregory and his audience truly believed that all authentic Christians partake of one life, then all past saints are worthy of study and emulation. Repetition is useful truth, not filler, in that it describes the same life replicating endlessly, a type of “chain of being” for holiness. This is a major presupposition for Gregory’s works about the nature of miracles and the quality of this universally shared holy life. In the words of a modern commentator, “Déjà vu was a merit rather than a sin … it was the repetition of the indisputable”104 and, one might add, a pathway to continuity. But what was the use of this indisputable repetition? Are hagiographical writings such as Gregory’s MA simply literary artifacts that happened to survive the ravages of time, therefore looming more significant today than in their own era? The evidence from his era is sometimes described as “a ragbag of odds and ends,” and that calls into question general application. Fletcher has wondered, for example, “how representative” Gregory’s area of operations might be and thus “to what degree, if any at all, may we generalize from its circumstances?”105 But it may be otherwise, as J. M. Wallace-Hadrill’s appraisal suggests: “This scarcity of early manuscripts tells us nothing of the popularity of saints’ Lives for a period from which so few   James, introduction to Life of the Fathers, xiv: “all saints have the one life in Christ.”  James, Life of the Fathers, 2; VP, preface, p. 212: “quia, cum sit diversitas meritorum virtutumque, una tamen omnes vita corporis alit in mundo.” 102   Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 187. 103   VM, Book 2, chap. 43, p. 174: “Quod hi multi fecerunt viventes in saeculo, hic solus cotidie renovat etiam post sepulchrum”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 250. 104   Eugene Vodolazkin, “The New Middle Ages,” First Things 265 (2016): 31–36, at 34. 105  Fletcher, Barbarian Conversion, 48–49. 100 101

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­ anuscripts of any kind survive.”106 The significance the modern reader invests in m Gregory’s works, including the MA, is, at bottom, based on a type of historiographical faith. Apart from these nagging and ultimately insoluble issues, the question of the utility of such texts has often focused on how they can inform our understanding of the time of their composition. This is a worthy pursuit and a fruitful one. Julia M. H. Smith has noted that since the 1970s in particular, “evidence drawn from hagiographical texts … has permeated just about every nook and cranny of medieval studies.”107 But the issue of how these works affected their contemporaries is of at least as much significance. While much of the recent analysis of early medieval hagiography has centered on discerning the motives and meaning of the authors, the significance the miracula held for its audience needs evaluation.108 One must first understand the reason for works such as the MA to exist. A written source could be essential to the preservation of these “holy deeds,” or virtutes, in an age of spreading illiteracy and a prevalent fondness for oral tradition. According to Gregory, the need to transcribe these events is critical. On more than one occasion he warned that saints and their miracles would be forgotten, citing “men of distinguished merits whose names are unknown to the inhabitants.”109 His fear was that miracle recipients would simply keep the experience to themselves, causing Gregory to lament: “Oh, if only everything were displayed in public that individuals received in private when they made requests in faith! If only many retained in their knowledge the secret that the health that is sought in private is acquired by making a request in faith!”110 Gregory “strongly burned with the intention of not allowing what the Lord deigned

  J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 78.   Julia M. H. Smith, “Review Article: Early Medieval Hagiography in the Late Twentieth Century,” Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992): 69–76, at 69. 108   Ibid., 70; Marc Van Uytfanghe, “L’hagiographie et son public à l’époque mérovingienne,” Studia Patristica 16 (1985): 54–62, at 62, believes the lives of saints served to edify ordinary people via oral instruction from the texts. It was for a diverse public, the entire Christian community: “pour un public diversifié, à toute la plebs Christiana”; Katrien Heene, “Merovingian and Carolingian Hagiography: Continuity or Change in Public and Aims?,” Analecta Bollandiana 107 (1989): 415–28, at 416, has observed that Latin was only introduced among the Germanic peoples of Gaul during the “evangelization period” and thus remained a special language, “the language of the Church,” thereby privileging these tales rather than making them inaccessible to their hearers. 109   GC, chap. 35, p. 320: “Sunt enim ibi, ut diximus, inlustrium meritorum viri, quorum nomina ignota”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 49. 110   VM, Book 1, chap. 39, p. 156: “O si totum proderetur in publico, quod singuli quique, dum fideliter poscunt, latenter accipiunt, et retenit occultum multorum conscientia, quod fideliter poscendo clam quaesita sanitas est adepta!”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 227. 106 107

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to perform … to be forgotten,” believing “the miracles that are revealed ought rather to be publicized, not concealed.”111 Gregory was right to worry. Modern scholarship has identified a strong connection between the existence of a hagiographical record and the growth of saints’ cults. Ward has noted that the wider the circulation of accounts of a saint’s miracles, the more extensive was the cult’s impact.112 Hagiographical records that remained at the saints’ shrines were condemned to nearby fame only, an explanation for the myriad of little-known local saints who still today defy enumeration in any standard dictionary of the saints.113 With properly produced and publicized hagiography, a saint could go regional or, in the case of Gregory’s “special patron,” Martin, become a foundational saint for Christendom as a whole. Yet how can we know how Gregory’s hagiography was received by his public when we have so few sources upon which to draw? In fact, many of the sources available are those of Gregory himself. But does the survival of these sources attest to their popularity? A viewpoint contrary to this tidy explanation has been expressed by Wallace-Hadrill, who wondered if the need to publicize miracles and saints was the effect rather than the cause: “Could it have been that relics worked cures because they were popular, and were not popular in the first place because they worked cures?”114 Did Gregory’s hagiography create the popularity of saints, or did the saints’ popularity create the need for hagiography? It is a conundrum without an exit and, of course, leaves the origins of that popularity in obscurity. Whatever its popular genesis, Gregory’s work informs on many levels. The listing of miracles with an equal listing of maladies provides an access to the medical needs of the sixth century, and Gregory’s works are sprinkled with offhanded information on such widely divergent topics as trout fishing and viticulture.115 Apart from social vignettes concerning food, agricultural processes and the like, there are occasional ­nuggets of theological significance, such as Gregory’s statement about the bodily 111   VM, Book 2, preface, p. 158: “ardentes valde in hac siti, ut non traderetur oblivioni quod Dominus exercere dignatus est in laudem antestitis sui”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 228; VM, Book 3, chap. 60, p. 197: “ut ea quae ostenduntur non oculi, sed magis debeant populari”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 284. 112  Ward, Miracles, 128: those cults that succeeded “had a biographer devoted to (their) cause” while those that failed did so because “there was no such ‘middleman’ to link the miracles with the populace.” Despite this, Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism,” 97, has noted that there “are many writings about saints which seem never to have served for any functioning cult and many in which the dominant motives for composition are unrelated to any kind of liturgical veneration.” 113  Ward, Miracles, 166. 114  Wallace-Hadrill, Frankish Church, 11. 115   Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 82–115 (on ailments), 148 (on fishing and viticulture).

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­ ssumption of the Virgin in his Glory of the Martyrs.116 But the primary task of works A such as the MA is to provide publicity for sainthood and the miracles that attend and validate it, both in service of spreading the faith, an evangelical objective, and amending the behavior of those already Christian. This publicity is necessary to link contemporary behavior back to the original saintly paradigm of “an ancient pattern fixed once and for all in the Bible.”117 As hagiography such as the MA is about saints, the next task must be to discern who qualify as such as well as what their function might be for the early Middle Ages generally and Gregory of Tours particularly. IV.  Gregory’s World of Saintcraft Gregory’s reputation as a trustworthy voice from the post-Roman West rests firmly on his ten books of history. But the focus on his Histories has its complications. The issue is encapsulated in his preface to Book 2 of the Histories, as he put saints and their activities on an equal level with normally accepted historical events: As I continue to follow the march of history, I recount for you at one and the same time, and in the muddled and confused order in which these events occurred, the holy deeds of the Saints and the way in which whole races of people were butchered. It will not, I am sure, be held unreasonable of me if I describe the blessed lives of the Saints together with the disasters of the unfortunate: for it is the course of events which demand this and not my own fantasy as a writer.118

The blend of the historical and the hagiographical is most evident in Gregory’s treatment of saints. The juxtaposition of wars and political matters with things overtly hagiographical can mislead us into a false dichotomy, so that we treat his Histories as separate from his miracula writings. 119 All of Gregory’s works are   GM, chap. 4, p. 39: “Et ecce iterum adstetit eis Dominus, susceptumque corpus sanctum in nube deferri iussit in paradiso, ubi nunc resumpta anima cum electis eius exultans, aeternitatis bona nullo occasura fine perfruetur.” Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, chap. 4, p. 22 n. 4, calls this “the first formulation of the doctrine of the bodily Assumption of the Virgin in western orthodox theology.” It is probable, however, that Gregory adopted this from an existing text. 117  Wallace-Hadrill, Frankish Church, 79. 118   LH, Book 2, preface, p. 36: “Prosequentes ordinem temporum, mixte confusequae tam virtutes sanctorum quam strages gentium memoramus. Non enim inrationabiliter accipi puto, se filicem beatorum vitam inter miserorum memoremus excidia, cum idem non facilitas scripturis sed temporum series praestitit”; Thorpe, History, 103. 119   For example, Murray, Gregory of Tours, offers a translation of only the passages of the Histories that relate to political matters “to present in a readable and ready form the political narrative of the Histories” (xi). 116

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s­ uffused with the immanent presence of saints. They may be said to comprise the bulk of his mental and spiritual landscape. This raises essential questions: What did it mean to be a “saint” for Gregory? What were the qualifications and functions of this status? Gregory lived and worked in the sixth century, a period in which saints’ cults burgeoned throughout the Christian world. As Brown has observed, these cults began to dominate the religious and even physical territory of Gaul “like pools on a drying surface.”120 It became increasingly difficult to move about without encountering an oratory, church, or even a field not dedicated to the service of a particular saint. This type of territorialism explains the progress of the Frankish king Clovis south to engage the Visigoths in the spring of 507, as he felt the need to placate successive saints as he crossed their boundaries.121 It is not surprising that Gregory, a highly placed ecclesiastic, would see the world through a forest of saintly foundations. Those who did not share this viewpoint Gregory criticized as having either rusticitas, “rusticity,” or temeritas, “rashness.” Saints were so essential to Gregory’s worldview that all other perspectives were invalid.122 As Gregory was a native of the Auvergne, his family had a long tradition of reverencing St. Julian of Brioude, a small town some forty miles south of Clermont. Julian was martyred in the early fourth century and Gregory devoted one of his more personal writings to that saint’s life and miracles.123 Had Julian remained Gregory’s family saint, his cult would have had little impact on Gaul, but two events opened this rural, somewhat obscure saint to a wider public: Gregory’s uncle Gallus became bishop at Clermont in the early sixth century and transplanted devotion for Julian there, and when Gregory became bishop of Tours he took his affection for Julian, whom he called “my

 Brown, Cult of the Saints, 124, sees these foundations as nodal points of Christian presence and power: “it lay around the shrines of the saints like pools of water on a drying surface. For only in certain places, and in certain precisely delimited social milieux, could the language of the praesentia and the potentia of the saints echo with satisfying congruence the deepest wishes of the Christian communities.” 121   LH, Book 2, chap. 37, pp. 85–86; Thorpe, History, 151–54. 122   Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, chap. 73, p. 341 and chaps. 84–88, pp. 352–55; Brown, Cult of the Saints, 119, sees rusticitas as Gregory’s favorite pejorative for disbelief in the power of the saints, which he translated as “boorishness.” Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 124 n. 42, notes that rusticitas was used in a wide range of settings apart from belief in saints. He prefers the term temeritas, also used frequently by Gregory, as the more precise descriptor of those doubting saintly power: “A more precise antithesis is temeritas, ‘rashness,’ which Gregory in fact used to explain deviant behavior.” 123   Gregory went so far as to include the story of a woman named Feodamia, healed of paralysis by St. Julian, who met the dead saint in a dream and described him as tall, with gray-flecked blond hair and a ready smile, in PI, chap. 9, p. 118; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 170. 120

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own special patron,” there as well.124 As Van Dam has concluded, it was Gregory’s family that propelled Julian from “backwater” status to a position of prominence in Gaul.125 This prominence was not enduring, and today Julian is remembered only by a church in Brioude, proving Ward’s point that continued publicity for saints was essential in their cult’s survival.126 The rural flavor of Julian’s cult, one that featured the saint protecting his flock from lightning that burned haystacks and killed sheep and the power of his relics to make ploughboys urge one another to “leave the oxen, abandon the plows and let us all go to meet him,”127 would be implanted in Gregory’s view of sainthood from his boyhood on and is an important access point for understanding his hagiographical works, including the MA. But the saint that occupied Gregory professionally and in the largest single portion of his writings was St. Martin of Tours (ca. 330–397). Gregory may have brought his family reverence for St. Julian with him when he became bishop of Tours in the summer of 573, but his new post demanded that he cultivate assiduously the memory of Martin. In this assignment, Gregory caught a bit of luck. There was no need to boost Martin from the ranks of lightly known local saints, as he was already emerging to preeminence in Gaul largely due to the popularity of his Life. Sulpicius Severus, who knew Martin personally, had written the De vita beati Martini (The Life of St. Martin) in 395 and it became recognized as the prototypical saint’s life.128 The linkage of Martin’s cult and the position of bishop of Tours had reached critical mass under Bishop Perpetuus in the 470s.129 This ecclesiastic built a proper basilica over Martin’s shrine and set the pattern of episcopal advocacy for the saint. This was to be the calling Gregory took up along with his bishop’s insignia. Grego124  See Passio sancti Iuliani martyris, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1969), chap. 6, p. 431: “peculiaris patroni nostri”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 198. This brief text, a separate one from the Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris and apparently written before Gregory’s day, employs this common description of the saint, suggesting its widespread popularity. The unknown author uses this phrase twice within only four lines of chapter 6 (lines 5–8). 125   Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 45–46. 126  Ward, Miracles, 166–67. 127   PI, chap. 32, p. 127: “Currite viri, relinquite boves, dimittite aratra, caterva omnis eat in obviam”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 185. See also PI, chap. 27, p. 125; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 181–82. 128   Sulpicius Severus, De vita beati Martini. An accessible translation is found in Carolinne White, trans., Early Christian Lives (London: Penguin, 1998), 129–59. Also, Philip Burton, ed., Sulpicius Severus’ “Vita Martini” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), offers an updated translation and edition with the Latin text and English translation on facing pages as well as an excellent commentary on the work and its milieu, incorporating the prolific research in the field from the past fifty years. 129   Perpetuus, the sixth bishop of Tours, ruled from 460–490. Martin was the third bishop of Tours.

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ry’s task at Tours was to superintend this powerful cult and elaborate it whenever possible. To that end, he wrote his Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi (On the Holy Deeds of St. Martin) not to rehash Martin’s life but to illustrate Martin’s continuing, postmortem miraculous powers. This was designed to feed the growing reverence of the public on what Gregory came to call a “special patron for the entire world.”130 Consequently, his work on Martin, consisting of four books totaling over two hundred chapters, dwells on events either close to Gregory’s era or contemporaneous with it. This comprises the best window on sixth-century Gaul apart from Gregory’s Histories. It is therefore for his writing about Martin, not Julian or even the Apostle Andrew, that Gregory’s hagiography is best remembered. The “special patron for the whole world” superseded the ancestral one. What did it mean to be a special patron? What could a saint do to support those in his or her patronage? First, it must be noted that sainthood in Gregory’s day was an equal opportunity status, with men and women represented. In Gaul, St. Genovefa (St. Genevieve) was a significant saint, as were a host of lesser women saints such as SS. Maura and Britta, venerated at Tours. Gregory spoke to this issue of women saints in, oddly, the Life of the Fathers by including the story of St. Monegundis. Of her, he said: “[God] gives us as models not only men, but also the lesser sex, who fight not feebly, but with a virile strength; He brings into his celestial kingdom not only men, who fight as they should, but also women, who exert themselves in the struggle with success.”131 A saint was more than an exemplar, an example of a Christian life well lived. While that was a bare minimum, the saint had an active role in the lives of believers, both in heaven and on earth. This concept of saintly patronage was so ubiquitous that the foundation letter from St. Radegund (d. 587), creator of the celebrated convent of the Holy Cross at Poitiers, included an appeal to her patrons, the Virgin Mary, St. Hilary of Poitiers, and St. Martin of   VM, Book 4, preface, p. 199: “ac toto orbi peculiare patrono Martino”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 285. 131   VP, chap. 19, preface, p. 286: “Qui nos exemplis sanctorum vivere incessabili praeceptionis suae munire cohortatur, nobisque non modo viros, sed etiam ipsum inferiorum sexum, non segniter, sed viriliter agonizantem, praebet exemplum. Qui non solum viris legitime decertantibus, verum etiam feminis in his proeliis faborabiliter desudantibus siderea regna participat”; James, Life of the Fathers, 118. Also, Kitchen, Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender, 101 and 103, has examined the problematical issue of fitting a female into male models of sanctity by using the case of St. Monegundis. He observes that “we should address the question of whether the hagiographers we have been studying change their approach to portraying sanctity when their subjects are holy women.” Kitchen sees Gregory’s treatment of Monegundis as something “we have not yet encountered.” Wood, “Topographies,” 141, has a map of Tours locating a shrine in the city to Monegundis, who was a devotee of St. Martin. 130

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Tours, to give protection for her establishment against future ravages by local political powers.132 The foundation for this patronage was based on propinquity. When alive, the saint could be expected to pray for others and, if possible, to work miracles via God’s agency for the faithful. But death did not cancel this mandate. The same intercessions expected of a live saint applied even after death. There was, it appears, a dual locality for saints, as the inscription over the tomb of St. Martin indicates: Hic conditus est sanctae memoriae Martinus episcopus. Cuius anima in manu Dei est, sed hic totus est, Praesens manifestus omni gratia virtutum. Here lies Martin the bishop, of holy memory, whose soul is in the hand of God; but he is fully here, present and made plain in miracles of every kind.133

The translation is Brown’s, but it should be noted that conditus, here rendered “lies,” is the same word used for the foundation of Rome. The saint was not simply buried, but his tomb was a foundation point connecting heaven and earth. This perspective explains why a Merovingian king could place a written question on the sarcophagus of St. Martin and come back three days later expecting a reply.134 The saint was “fully here” and “in the hand of God” simultaneously. Having God’s ear while connected to the travails of earthly adherents meant that the saint acted as a type of advocate for his or her followers. The word used repeatedly to describe saints, advocatus, was the same as the Latin word for lawyer. The saint represented as well as served as a patron for followers. Therefore, having reverence for a particular saint, or saints, was essential to well-being in this life and the next. Gregory made this point clearly in his paean to Julian: Therefore, let the reader who is interested in these miracles understand that he can be saved in no other way than by the assistance of the martyrs and the other friends of God. I, however, pray for the goodwill of the Lord through the patronage of the blessed martyr Julian. May he stand before the Lord and be successful as an advocate on behalf of [me]   LH, Book 9, chap. 42, p. 472; Thorpe, History, 537.  Brown, Cult of the Saints, 4. The tomb also contained an inscription on its top: “Confessor by his merits, martyr by his suffering, apostle by his actions, Martin presides from heaven here at this tomb. May he be mindful [of us], and by cleansing the sins of our wretched life may he conceal our crimes with his merits.” Quoted in Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 315. 134   LH, Book 5, chap. 14, pp. 211–12; Thorpe, History, 271. The king was Chilperic I, who reigned from 561 until his assassination in 584 and was somewhat of a nemesis for Gregory. Along these lines, Geary, Living with the Dead, 2, notes that “the dead did not cease to be members of the human community,” and 77–92, that death “marked a transition, a change in status, but not an end,” especially for the saints. He devotes an entire chapter on the exchange and interaction between the living and the dead. 132 133

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his own foster son, so that I might complete the course of this life without the handicap of any blemish, and so that until the end of this life I might blamelessly retain, faithfully exercise, and manfully protect what I confessed at my baptism.135

Having a special patron did not, however, exclude reverence for other saints, as Gregory’s own life illustrates. Possessing multiple saintly advocates did require a compartmentalization of functions and a type of ranking system for allegiance. Thus, Gregory could claim special connection to Julian, Martin, and, of course, Andrew while still acknowledging the territory and powers of others. How might one reach such an advocate? Pilgrimage to the appropriate saintly tomb was common, especially in times of desperate need, but not always possible. The location of these holy relics, in either the church constructed over the burial place or in the city cathedral, was accessible to all. But for obvious reasons, pieces of the saints or even of their sarcophagi were not available. Therefore, contact relics, which had touched the tomb or been placed near it, were the means of keeping the saint close for those unable to frequent the holy burial site. Threads from the tomb coverings, dust from the area immediately around the tomb, often used as a drink infusion to cure disease, and even oil from the hanging lamps illuminating the dark crypt served just this purpose of connectivity. The popularity of these relics and their obvious value required some regulation. Even in the sixth century it was becoming necessary to restrict access to churches and the relics within, as the creation of a lower clerical grade of ostiarius, or “doorkeeper,” suggests. But in Gregory’s day, the lines of communication to the saint and therefore to heaven were open for those with reverentia.136 While this may explain what the reverent could expect from the saint and what the saint might expect from his or her followers, the question remains as to who exactly was a saint? In Gregory’s world, there was an additional complicating factor to sainthood. In this era before the institution of a canonization process, attaining sainthood   PI, chap. 50, p. 134: “Ergo his miraculis lector intendens intellegat, non aliter nisi martyrum reliquorumque amicorum Dei adiutoriis se posse salvari. Ego autem Domini misericordiam per beati martyris Iuliani patrocinia deprecor, ut advocatus in causis alumni proprii coram Domino adsistens obteneat, ut absque inpedimento maculae ullius huius vitae cursum peragam atque illa quae confessus sum in baptismum inreprehensibiliter teneam, fideliter exerceam, viriliter usque ad consummationem huius vitae custodiam”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 194–95; also see MA, chap. 38, p. 109. 136   Julia M. H. Smith, “Women at the Tomb,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 163–80, at 164–72 points out that this inclusion did not last. In Gregory’s day “the great relic shrines were accessible to all,” but as the shrines fell increasingly under monastic control, women were excluded: “By the second half of the seventh century, the late antique distinction between monastic community and saintly shrine had collapsed … Saints’ shrines were located in monasteries.” On the ostiarius, see Henry G. J. Beck, The Pastoral Care of Souls in South-East France During the Sixth Century (Rome: Gregorian University, 1950), 49. 135

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was based on popular opinion. If the individual appeared holy enough and was validated by miracles, saintly status followed. Additionally, one need not be deceased to qualify. As previously mentioned, Sulpicius Severus wrote the De vita beati Martini in 395, while his subject was very much alive. Most saints were recognized as such after their death, but there was always the possibility of mistaken public opinion “canonizing” a pseudo-prophet. Gregory described two such cases in his Histories. Both these episodes occurred when the plague was ravaging Gaul in the 580s, but Gregory makes it clear that these were not isolated cases by noting that “There are quite a number of these people who … keep on leading the common people astray” and gather a following to “put it about that they were saints (sanctos).”137 This posed a real problem to the whole structure of sainthood and the cults that surrounded it. The answer to this problem was divine intervention. Once again St. Martin is instructive. A “saint” venerated by the people was shown via a vision to be nothing more than a robber and Martin ordered the altar set up at this shrine to be dismantled.138 Since sainthood depended on popular opinion, serious mistakes could be made. Waiting for a dream or vision to determine true sainthood might allow a false cult to implant and flourish. In fact, the dreams used this way were often ex post facto ones designed to invalidate a “cult” that had already taken root. A more certain solution, and perhaps a better use of divine intervention, was the certification of miracles and relics. This was the approach Gregory took when confronted with false saints. Not opposed to true sainthood coming from the common folk, Gregory simply wanted the claims of would-be saints tested and proved. When an anti-saint of this type barged into Gregory’s cell at Tours in 587 and demanded deference, Gregory responded simply with a request that the man put his relics on the altar for analysis. Likewise, when confronted similarly, Bishop Ragnemod of Paris demanded that the relics be deposited in the church for examination. When the suspects refused, they were soon revealed as false saints.139 What did Bishops Gregory and Ragnemod expect to happen when questionable relics were placed on the altar for validation? Here, as with the status and practice of sainthood, miracles were the key to authenticity. It is to Gregory’s understanding of the miraculous that we must now turn, particularly since the MA is not a biography of Andrew but an account of the miracles associated with him.   LH, Book 9, chap. 6, pp. 417–20, esp. 420 and Book 10, chap. 25, pp. 517–19; Thorpe, History, 483–87 and 584–86. 138   De vita beati Martini, Book 11, chaps. 1–5 (White, Early Christian Lives, 144–45). This was a common occurrence in the early Middle Ages. Sometimes the dreams and visions left physical marks, such as happened to Adomnán at the Synod of Birr in Ireland in 697. For a good discussion of this see Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000). 139   LH, Book 9, chap. 6, pp. 417–20; Thorpe, History, 484–85. 137

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V.  The Matter of Miracles A saint is a saint because they have lived a holy, exemplary life, and one sure way to validate that holy life is through participation in miracles. The issue of the miraculous is fraught with nuance and ramifications, never more fully on display than in the writings of Gregory of Tours. It is no accident that our subject text is called The Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle. Andrew’s status as an apostle and saint must by definition include miracles, and numerous ones at that. The MA is not just about Andrew; it is, rather, about the miracles that are his. As Gregory’s writings, including the MA, are suffused with stories of the saints, they are heavily laden with tales of the miraculous, even to the level of redundancy. Recurring maladies, such as hands drawn up so severely as to force fingernails into the palm, are met with correspondingly recurring miraculous cures. It seems a world ruled by credulity to modern readers accustomed to scientifically rational explanations of phenomena. The sheer volume, and quotidian nature, of the accounts encourages skepticism—perhaps even a type of dismissive pity.140 However, the question of whether the modern reader believes these miracle stories is somewhat beside the point. Gregory and his audience believed them and, therefore, any attempt to understand the Bishop of Tours’s writings must proceed from that reality.141 This still leaves open the issue of the logicality and rationality of the miraculous. Our knowledge of the natural mechanisms underlying miracles does not always explain their timing. We know, for example, that the great wind that blew up suddenly into the face of the pagan usurper Eugenius’s forces in September 394, giving victory to Theodosius’s Christian side at the Battle of Frigidus, was in all likelihood simply a manifestation of the Adriatic Bora, which howls through that region every autumn.142 But this knowledge does not answer the question as to why the wind decided to blow at just the right moment to sway the battlefield outcome. If one were to estimate the logical or rational qualities of miracles, more than sheer   Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2011), 1:67: “That … accounts strike many modern Western readers as so similar may stem partly from our cultural assumptions in view of which all miracle reports diverge starkly from our construction of reality.” 141   Ibid., 1:97, charges moderns with anachronism: “We must beware of simply assuming modern antisupernaturalism’s unsympathetic reading of ancient texts, which diverges starkly from how the first audiences would have heard them.” 142  Theodoret, Historia Ecclesiastica, Book 5, chap. 24, ed. J. L. Schulze, Patrologia Graeca 82:1250– 54; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, trans. Blomfield Jackson, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892; reprinted, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 149–51. 140

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­ echanics would be necessary. Were miracles “illogical” or “irrational”? What is m logic but the predictive sequence arising from a premise? Wallace-Hadrill’s criticism of the early Middle Ages for their disdain of classical knowledge, that “the age may have known what it wanted but it plainly wanted the wrong thing,” is often applied by moderns to the miracles of Gregory’s day.143 Christopher Tyerman has pointed out that ignorance is not irrationality, and a lack of knowledge does not automatically produce irrationality.144 Further, D. L. d’Avray has defined rationality as “thinking, which involves some general principles and strives for internal consistency.”145 Despite our contemporary distaste, miraculous events, such as those recorded by Gregory, were consistent with the previously accepted principles of that age, even though the populace may have been unaware of the science behind them. Perhaps a miracle is not illogical or irrational if predicated on a worldview that requires it. But what was that worldview? It seems it was based on two assumptions: that the supernatural is nature unfolded, and that there exists a highly permeable membrane between this world and the next. If there were miracles, what was the miracle theory behind them? It is a necessary starting point in examining Gregory’s writings to determine what exactly constituted a miracle for the Bishop of Tours. For those still willing to allow the existence of the miraculous, the acceptable view that developed in the later Middle Ages was that God had created the natural order, or potentia ordinata, to allow things to run predictably. Only occasionally would God intervene in the ordained order with the miraculous through his potentia absoluta, or “absolute power.” This meant that miracles were a breakage of the norm and therefore somewhat rare. This created a distinction between nature and the supernatural. It also put the issue at odds with Gregory’s seemingly never-ending miraculous accounts, as frequency undermines the very definition of “miracle” for the modern world. The later medieval view, that miracles were the suspension of nature’s normal processes,146 was not what Gregory and his era believed. An earlier Christian position, that miracles seemed “a literary competition … with pagan wonders,”147 had been eroded in the progressive decline of Rome, coupled with a concomitant  Wallace-Hadrill, Frankish Church, 75.   Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (Oxford: Allen Lane, 2015), 11. 145   D. L. d’Avray, Medieval Religious Rationalities: A Weberian Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2. 146   Michael E. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle, 1150–1350 (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 2007), 21. 147   Giselle de Nie, Poetics of Wonder: Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 487. 143 144

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e­ mphasis on Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Augustine had reversed his original position and become a proponent of the miraculous,148 as had his illustrious mentor, Ambrose of Milan. But this volte-face required a rationalization, especially as the sheer volume of the miraculous grew. Augustine himself included an extensive roster of miracles that he had observed in his opus major, The City of God, to justify his conversion to the advocacy of the miraculous.149 As Ward observes, Augustine believed that God had “planted all the possibilities for the future” in his initial creation; therefore, what appeared miraculous was merely the drawing out of an unseen aspect of the natural. Ward concludes that the “usual channel for these ‘hidden causes’ to be made manifest were the prayers of the saints.”150 Modern critics, such as Bartlett, have complained that this view simply blends everything into a meaningless muddle: “For if nature is not to be regarded, somewhat vacuously, as a synonym for ‘everything’ it obviously has things it is defined against.”151 But this presumes a dichotomy, whereas the early medieval view was based on a monism. One should not confuse unity with simplicity or compartmentalization with complexity. The miracle theory of Gregory’s day was not “vacuous,” merely different. This conclusion brings forward the question of terminology. Some have attempted to differentiate between the two words most commonly used by Gregory to describe the miraculous: miracula and virtutes. Goffart believes miracula was used to describe “wonders,” as distinct from the more individualized virtutes, “worked by God through saints.”152 It seems a distinction without a difference, as Gregory used the terms interchangeably. McDermott’s view that Gregory emphasized his most  Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), Book 21, chap. 8, p. 771: “Omnia quippe portenta contra naturam dicimus esse; sed non sunt. Quo modo est enim contra naturam, quod Dei fit uoluntate, cum uoluntas tanti utique conditoris conditae rei cuiusque natura sit? Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura”; Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871; reprinted, New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 776: “For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature”; also see de Nie, Poetics, 49–50, where she quotes Augustine’s earlier statement of opposition to miracles in De vera religione, chap. 25, sec. 47, lines 27–31: “miracles are not permitted to continue into our times.” 149  Augustine, De civitate Dei, Book 22, chap. 8, pp. 815–27; Augustine, City of God, 819–931, where the great Church Father offers a rationale for the continuation of miracles into his day. 150  Ward, Miracles, 3. 151   Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 17. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, seems to have undergone a type of “Augustinian” softening of his views on miracles in this more recent work, published in 2013. 152  Goffart, Narrators, 132. 148

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i­mportant points in his prefaces to his various works, if true, gives a clue here.153 In his preface to the Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, Gregory used both miracula and virtutes to describe miracles,154 and in his description of Martin’s protection of his own estate, Gregory admitted: “It is tedious to describe how many miracles (multae virtutes) were performed … but let me narrate one of these many miracles (multis miraculum).”155 A miracle as an outworking of God’s revelation through nature appears the same under differing nomenclature. This point of view, that all nature is in a sense “miraculous” and all miracles are somehow “natural,” was not peculiar to Gregory.156 It was commonly understood in the Late Antique church and appears in the work of Isidore of Seville and in an Irish treatise titled De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae, apparently written ca. 655 under the pen name “Augustine.”157 To this Irish “Augustine,” a miracle was just the calling forth of hidden natural elements, as his namesake had argued. Miracles were simply “God’s ‘governing’ (gubernatio) of what already exists.” By these means the early medieval era sought to “rationalize the seemingly inexplicable … by reference to practical observation and a genuinely scientific application of reason.” 158 This approach opened the door to a profusion of miracles to equal the seemingly endless variety in nature. As Goffart summarizes it, “miracles had assumed the role formerly assigned to ordered works.”159 If miracles are the drawing out of hidden aspects of nature and therefore not properly “supernatural,” the question remains: Why were some graced with them and others not? Brown poses it well: “For sixth-century men the question is not ours—did they really? But given that some could, who precisely had?”160 One might add the further question of “why?” The issue seems to be one of worthiness. Those who are properly worthy, due to their holiness, will receive the miracle. Those who are not, such as King Chilperic,161 will not. As Gregory stated in his four books on   McDermott, “World of Gregory of Tours,” 141–47.   VM, Book 1, preface, pp. 135–36; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 200–201. 155   VM, Book 1, chap. 34, p. 154; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 225. 156  Goffart, Narrators, 132. 157  Ward, Miracles, 23; Dáibhí Ó Cróinin, Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (London: Longman, 1995), 188. 158   Ó Cróinin, Early Medieval Ireland, 188. 159  Goffart, Narrators, 150. 160   Peter Brown, “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours,” in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 222–50, at 224. 161   Examples of Chilperic’s disqualifying behavior may be found in LH, including his polygamy and subsequent murder of his new bride, Book 4, chap. 28, pp. 160–61 (Thorpe, History, 222–23), and his denial of the three persons of the Trinity, Book 5, chap. 44, pp. 252–54 (Thorpe, History, 310–11), among many. 153 154

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the miracles of St. Martin, the saints give “a similar blessing to all people, if they are pious in their requests.”162 He offered numerous illustrations of this evaluative scheme across the breadth of his writings. A priest named Johannis was the recipient of many miracles “since he lived a life of the highest piety”;163 a woman of “senatorial rank” was given a miraculous sign because of “the merit of a good deed”;164 while St. Venantius was privileged to see a ladder descend from heaven with St. Martin on it and hear a voice from the tomb because “nobody merited the sight of them except him.”165 Gregory concluded “one must believe that he who deserved to hear was a man of special merit.”166 Gregory himself modestly proclaimed that he only received miracles “if it happened that I was worthy to observe some manifestations of the power (virtutibus) of the saints,”167 and allowed that he would only write another book on the miracles of St. Martin “if nevertheless I am still worthy to witness [more] miracles.”168 This particular early medieval view on miracles allows for the “how”—it is the revelation of the previously hidden—as well as the timing—it is when the subject is holy and thus “worthy.” If one’s holy worthiness determines the receipt of miracles, then saints, the most holy among the faithful, should be encompassed in a cloud of the miraculous wherever they went. And it appears they were. A good example of the enumeration of these saintly miracles occurs in the offhanded statement in Gregory’s Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi, where he notes the festival of July 4, 589, celebrating the anniversary of Martin’s consecration as bishop of Tours. To mark the occasion appropriately, he cataloged “twelve paralytics, three blind men, and five possessed men” as healed at one fell stroke.169 It seems a numbers game, with a requisite qualifying threshold that must be met rather than an accounting of wondrous events. Scholars have examined the quantity of miracles surrounding the saintly spiritual elite and wondered whether the miraculous, and holy power generally, were available to the common believer. Isabel Moreira as well as Bernhard Jussen include this issue   VM, Book 4, chap. 10, p. 202: “similem infirmis beneficium praebens, si fideliter expetatur”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 289. 163   GC, chap. 23, p. 312: “in summa religione degens, per cuius manus Dominus multa signa sanitatum dignatus est operare”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 38–39. 164   GC, chap. 64, pp. 335–36; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 71. 165   VP, chap. 16, sec. 2, p. 275: “quod nullus videre meruit nisi ipse tantum”; James, Life of the Fathers, 101. 166   VP, chap. 16, sec. 2, p. 276: “Quod non sine perfectionis merito censetur, ut haec meruisset audire”; James, Life of the Fathers, 102. 167   GM, chap. 83, p. 95: “Nam, si evenit, ut mererer deinceps aliqua de sanctorum virtutibus contemplare, Dei illa munere per sanctorum fidem praestita praeconavi”; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 109. 168   VM, Book 2, chap. 60, p. 180; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 259. 169   VM, Book 4, chap. 6, p. 200; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 286. 162

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in their analyses of prophetic dreams and sainthood, respectively.170 Gregory highly valued his status as bishop, yet is not averse to others, whatever their socioeconomic ranking, participating in miracle access. His inclusiveness has led some to accuse him of stoking “the delicate flames of belief by increasing the objects of reverence.”171 However, the key is not social station, but holiness. Common folk appear routinely in Gregory’s miracle catalog, including one who sought and received relief from a toothache and even a thief who was rescued from execution.172 The saints are the elite dispensers of the miraculous, but their largesse encompasses any with proper reverentia, regardless of social status.173 Yet even these saints, who live in heaven simultaneously with their active presence in the tomb, were not all elites at the outset. Martin, the preeminent saint in Gregory’s world, was the disinherited son of a Roman soldier who appeared so disheveled as to endanger his election as bishop, while Julian was manifestly a part of the world of the rural population.174 These once-common folk became saintly elites via the same qualification of holiness that miracle recipients exhibited. If what we think of as the supernatural was merely an unfolding or outworking of the natural, the difference between this world and the otherworld becomes much harder to discern. In fact, there seems to be a melding of nature and the supernatural in Gregory’s day. The main result of this shift that must occupy us here is the conviction that dead saints were fully in heaven, yet still fully present on earth—a type of bi-locality. As described in the inscription over Martin’s tomb at Tours, the saint was “fully here” (hic totus est) and yet “in the hand of God” (Cuius anima in manu Dei est). The saint had, to use Brown’s term, praesentia, in a “joining of Heaven and Earth.”175 He, or she, was as complete in presence in the tomb as in  Moreira, Dreams; Bernhard Jussen, ed., Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), esp. chap. 4: “Liturgy and Legitimation, or How the Gallo-Romans Ended the Roman Empire,” 147–99. Both Moreira and Jussen were concerned with the power of popular belief and its possible threat to theology and ecclesiastical structure. 171  Goffart, Narrators, 135. 172   GC, chap. 99, p. 362: “nunc non diffidimus de tua oratione, ut quod vivens fecisti in saeculo possis renovare sublimatus in caelo”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 101–2. See also GC, chap. 103, p. 364; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 104–5. 173   McDermott, “World of Gregory of Tours,” 141, credits this inclusiveness to Gregory himself, not to the structure of saintly miracles: “Gregory’s compassion led him to take great interest in the stories of the humble as well as stories of the great.” 174   Sulpicius Severus, De vita beati Martini, Book 2 and Book 9 (White, Early Christian Lives, 136 and 142–43); PI, 112–34; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 163–95. 175  Brown, Cult of the Saints, 86–105, and his opening statement: “This book is about the joining of Heaven and Earth, and the role, in this joining, of dead human beings” (1). 170

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Heaven. But this saintly bi-locality was not exclusively a spiritual state, as the believer counted on them to have the ear of God in heaven and be quite capable of physical assistance on earth. It was not only King Chilperic who could place a letter on the sarcophagus of Martin and come back three days later fully expecting a written reply. Proof that this was not merely a personal quirk of this most quirky king is a similar scenario involving a rebellious prince who placed scripture on Martin’s tomb, asking the saint to point out appropriately advisory passages for him. According to Gregory, the saint did reply, only in a very negative manner.176 The enduring nature of this belief is seen in the Liber historiae Francorum, a history written two generations after Gregory in the 660s, featuring Clovis (d. 511) negotiating with St. Martin (d. 397) over the sale of a horse. When Clovis upped his offer, Martin agreed to the sale. Apparently, all accepted this otherworldly transaction as unremarkable and Clovis merely exclaimed, “Indeed the blessed Martin is good in his help and careful in business.”177 Gregory sprinkled such scenes liberally throughout his writings. While there are, in Gregory’s own words, “too many to list,”178 a sampling would include Martin talking with a dead woman in his Glory of the Confessors and, after death, instructing a poor man named Sisulf on his mission.179 Martin even freed prisoners in person some two hundred years after his death in Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi. Gregory repeatedly made it plain that such interactions of the living with the dead prove that the saints live in Paradise.180 This interplay between the living and the dead also appears in the MA. There are visions of the Apostles Peter and John in chapter 20 and of the Lord in chapter 22, and an angel sent from heaven strengthens Andrew in chapter 18. The “joining of Heaven and Earth” permeates the society in which Gregory lived. And the ready access to the holiness of the saint’s tomb was a   LH, Book 5, chap. 14, pp. 211–12; Thorpe, History, 271–72.  Bachrach, Liber historiae Francorum, chap. 17, pp. 51–52. 178   VM, Book 2, chap. 60, p. 180: “Multa quidem sunt et alia, quae vir beatus cotidie operatur, quae insequi longum est”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 259. 179   GC, chap. 3, pp. 300–301; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 20; VM, Book 2, chap. 40, pp. 173– 74; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 249. 180   VM, Book 4, chap. 2, pp. 205–6; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 295; GC, chap. 52, p. 329: “Cuius quae sit mercis in caelo, ad eius ostenditur tumulum; eumque inhabitare paradiso, prodit virtus egrediens de sepulchro” and chap. 58, p. 332: “Qui sepultus in terris, caelis se vivere multis virtutibus manifestat”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 60 and 64; GM, chap. 48, p. 72 and chap. 53, p. 75: “Ecce quid praestat dominus Iesus Christus in terris martyribus sanctis, quos glorificatos adscivit in caelestibus regnis!”; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 72–73 and 78. On the trope of the postmortem miraculous freeing of captives and its relationship to views on power in Gregory’s works, see Graus, “Die Gewalt,” 61–156. 176 177

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deciding feature in the status of a town, with pilgrims, even the elite, flocking to these nodes of holy power.181 How did this easy interface between nature and the supernatural emerge as a key element in Gregory’s writing and the matter of the miraculous and sainthood in general? Part of the answer may lie with Euhemerism, a philosophical concept named after the late fourth-century BC Greek Euhemerus of Messene. This position is normally described as the belief that myths were traditional accounts of historical persons and events. Richard Miles has noted the “permeability between the temporal and celestial worlds” that derives from Euhemerism in his explanation of early Mediterranean populations’ common culture.182 The ancient world had used Euhemerism to justify later events, such as the deification of Alexander the Great by the Corinthian League in 324 BC to validate his stunning conquests and the adoption of the Herakles myth by Hannibal to justify his invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War.183 Christian writers uniformly condemned this point of view, as did Gregory himself in his preface to Glory of the Martyrs.184 Obviously, Christian hagiographers such as Gregory felt the need neither to deify their saintly subjects—they were not gods, but simply access points and advocates to the One God—nor to deny their all too apparent, and essential, humanity. But the lingering use of Euhemeristic principles for sainthood and the miraculous lay in the establishment of a traditional pattern of thought: the almost reflexive belief in a highly permeable membrane between the earthly and the heavenly.185 This membrane was permeable in very specific ways for Gregory: to allow the holy to interact with daily life.  Brown, Cult of the Saints, 93–96; Theuws, “Maastricht,” 155–64, at 164: “It is inconceivable that an episcopal town that lacked a saint would not make the most of an episcopal grave.” 182   Richard Miles, Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 248. Gregory would likely have encountered these traditions via his use of various earlier sources for his writings, apart from his access to standard Christian histories such as those of Eusebius, Jerome, and Paulus Orosius—even announcing his dependence on them in LH, Book 1, chap. 41, p. 28; Thorpe, History, 92: “So far Jerome, from this point onwards the priest Orosius took on the task of writing.” He also used now lost histories by Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus and Sulpicius Alexander. But he appears to be conversant with classical pre-Christian sources such as Vergil’s Aeneid, cited in LH five times (Book 2, chap. 29, pp. 74–75; Book 4, chap. 30, pp. 162–63 and chap. 46, p. 180–83; Book 8, chap. 22, pp. 388–89; Book 9, chap. 6, pp. 417–20) as well as Sallust’s Catilina (Book 4, chap. 13, p. 145; Book 7, chap. 1, pp. 323–27) and Martianus Capella’s Satiricon (Book 10, chap. 31, p. 536). 183  Miles, Carthage, 246–55. 184   GM, preface, pp. 37–38; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 19. Here Gregory goes through a roster of pagan gods and myths, from Jupiter to Odysseus, in an act of extended apophasis, all the while claiming, “I will not recount” and “I will not describe” these tales, as he does just that! 185   Nickolas P. Roubekas, An Ancient Theory of Religion: Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017). 181

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Gregory’s other libri miraculorum often describe rather mundane miracles, dealing with ailments such as gout, headache, and diarrhea, but as the MA concerned an actual apostle, the miracles tended to be of a more impressive category. Restoring sight to one whose eyes had been gouged out (chap. 1); raising the dead (chaps. 3, 7, 14, 18, 19, and 23); and making the lame to walk (chap. 5) constitute a list of the truly miraculous. There are also synchronisms with scriptural miracles, as befits an apostolic subject: an earthquake to free prisoners in chapter 1 (as in Acts 16:23– 40); calming the sea in chapter 8 (see Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:35–41; and Luke 8:22–25); and Andrew’s reception in chapter 6 echoing the events of Palm Sunday. Even Andrew’s prayer in chapter 20 is reminiscent of Jesus’s prayer for his disciples in John 17. Additionally, the same chapter includes an eerie resonance with the Last Supper as the Apostle breaks bread with his companions. There are also miracles that Gregory used in both the MA and his other writings. Men with drawn swords are stopped in their tracks by the power of prayer (chap. 9), as in Gregory’s Glory of the Confessors and his Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi.186 In the Glory of the Martyrs, officials cannot find St. Felix in order to arrest him because “at the command of the Divinity” spiderwebs appeared over the door to Felix’s hiding place, much like in chapter 18 of the MA.187 As numerous as Gregory’s miracle stories are, one might wonder what purpose they served. Their purpose appears to be variegated rather than singular. In most of his miracula books, Gregory’s miracle selection seems to draw a bright line between those who believe, possessors of reverentia, and those who do not, in the grip of rusticitas or temeritas. But in the MA, there is strong emphasis on miracles as an instrument of conversion. First in the mysterious “Mermidona” (chap. 1) and then at Nicea (chap. 6), Nicomedia (chap. 7), Philippi (chaps. 12 and 15), Thessalonica (chaps. 13 and 14), Patras (chap. 22), and Corinth (chap. 27), people drop their paganism to accept Christianity because of miracles performed by Andrew. Even incorrigible bandits turn their lives around (chap. 9) after experiencing these wondrous events. This significance of miracles as conversion tools is acknowledged by Gregory in his quotation from chapter 7 of the MA: in order that, when he is resuscitated, all may leave their idols and turn toward you, and let his return to life be as a salvation of all those perishing, in order that they, no longer subject to death, but having been made yours, may gain eternal life.188   GC, chap. 12, p. 305: “Extractoque unus gladio, quasi amputaturus cervicem eius, resupinus ruit ac spiritum exalavit”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 28; VM, Book 1, chap. 2, p. 137 and chap. 36, p. 155; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 203 and 226. 187   GM, chap. 103, p. 108: “Nam iussu Divinitatis araneae per aditum, quo martyr ingressus fuerat, telarum praetendunt stamina”; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 127–28. 188   MA, chap. 7, p. 73. 186

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Yet another prominent use of the miraculous in Gregory’s work is as a confirmation of holiness. The term “signa,” or “signs,” is often used in tandem with miracula or virtutes to describe miracles that confirm the worthiness of the participants. St. Martin was said to have “illuminated Gaul with his miracles and signs” (quas virtutibus et signis inlustrans) as a way to show the reciprocal nature of the act of miracle and its confirmation.189 There was a long tradition of the miraculous authenticating people and beliefs stretching back through antiquity. Signa established “that the person indeed possessed numinous authority to justify his claims.”190 This would be equally as important to demonstrate for the Apostle Andrew as for Gregory’s contemporary saints. Therefore, in chapter 16 at Philippi, Andrew’s “fame of his holy deeds” spread throughout Macedonia; in chapter 18, again at Philippi, the Apostle’s face shone miraculously, confounding those sent to arrest him; the proconsul was unable to see Andrew, although he was in plain sight; and wild beasts employed to kill him acknowledged his holiness and refused to do the deed. In chapter 23, an “angel of the Lord” intervened to save a woman from her fate, and in chapter 28, Andrew received word from heaven that his intercession for another had been granted. Gregory was careful to differentiate these signa from the wonders produced by sorcerers. When Andrew raised a soldier from the dead in chapter 18, the people shouted down the proconsul’s accusation of sorcery, proclaiming “this is not magic, but sound and true teaching!” This sentiment corresponds well to Gregory’s condemnation of soothsayers in his other writings.191 Signa were legitimate miracles designed to validate the One True God and His servants, the saints. As Gregory said in the Glory of the Confessors concerning a miracle in the church of St. Martin, “in this one there was reinforcement of grace.”192 Confirmatory signa were not only used to validate the status of the participant but also to affirm the rightness of the cause. On several occasions, Gregory framed his confrontations with Arians as miracle contests. In his Histories, as well as in his Glory of the Confessors, he demonstrated that Arianism was wrong because it was not favored with a signum. In Spain, a false Arian restoration of sight caused the actual blindness of the subject, and a Trinitarian deacon retrieved a ring from a boiling pot   VM, Book 1, chap. 3, p. 139; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 205.  Keener, Miracles, 1:61–62. 191  E.g., VM, Book 4, chap. 36, p. 209: “amotis ligaminibus quae stulti indiderant, oleum beati sepulchri ori eius infudit ceraque sofivit. Mox sermone reddito, nequitiae dolo dirempto, aegra convaluit”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 299–300. 192   GC, chap. 20, p. 310: “In illud fuit virtutis indicium, in istum gratiae supplementum”; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 35. 189 190

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unharmed while an Arian lost his limb in the endeavor.193 An Arian bishop was made to exclaim in exasperation, “I cannot bear … that these [Catholic] Bishops should perform so many miracles among the people and that everyone should follow them but neglect me.”194 Gregory stands as a singular author from his age, one who wrote for a very specific purpose using the understood voice of his society. He sought to lead those in his care, whether his flock or his readers, to a deeper understanding of the faith. While most of his miracle stories were contemporaneous, the recension of the story of St. Andrew’s ministry and miracles served as a connective, a type of spiritual chain of being, directly back to Christ and his apostles.195 In this way, the life of the saints can live on as a teaching example for the generations of readers who turn to Gregory for knowledge of the sixth century. We hope our readers will profit similarly from the text he has left us. VI.  Glossary – apocrifus, “apocryphal.” Used in Gregory’s sense to indicate something of doubtful or unsubstantiated authenticity, as a legend. See Gregory’s preface to the MA, where he explained that the account he was about to relate was not legendary. – baptizati sunt, “they were baptized.” Baptism was the signal rite of admission into the Christian faith, quite important in Gregory’s day. It consisted of the application of water, signifying a new birth. Often portrayed as the end result of a profession of faith in God, e.g., in chapters 1, 3, and 4 of the MA, where those present received the rite after making a commitment to believe in God. – beatus, “blessed.” This is now a declaration by the Pope that an individual has taken the first step to sainthood. In the sixth century, no such formalized ranking process existed, so there was no real distinction between the terms beatus, or “blessed,” and sanctus, or “saint.” Gregory used the words interchangeably, as in the titles of his works on Andrew and Martin. For a fuller treatment of saints, see above, pp. 31­–37.   LH, Book 2, chap. 3, pp. 42–43; Thorpe, History, 110–11; GC, chap. 13, pp. 305–6; Van Dam, Glory of the Confessors, 29–30. 194   LH, Book 2, chap. 3, p. 42: “Non patior, quod hi episcopi multa in populos signa depromunt illosque cuncti, me neglecto, secuntur”; Thorpe, History, 110. 195   Mitchell, “Marking the Bounds,” 295–306, sees the linkage between the past and Gregory’s day as a self-serving one, believing he “considered the history of the Touraine and its environs to be not only linked to but equal in importance with all that had gone before” (295). This not only created a bridge over the millennia but elevated “himself to a highly conspicuous position, that of spokesman and moral critic of his age” (306). While Gregory did seem to embrace the role of contemporary moral arbiter, his motives may have been subservient to his own angle of vision. 193

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– crimen, “crime.” A Latin term signifying misdeeds of a most serious nature; e.g., treason was called crimen laesae maiestatis, “the crime of injuring majesty.” Christian writers, such as Gregory, generally did not use this term for sin, preferring St. Jerome’s less legal, and more relational, word peccatum, “mistake or error.” The use of crimen indicated a very serious violation, as in chapter 4 of the MA. – crucis signum, “sign of the cross.” An early Christian practice first reported in 316 by Lactantius in Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died, trans. William Fletcher, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886; reprinted, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 304–5. Often used as an apotropaic gesture to ward off evil, as in chapter 9 and chapter 35 of the MA. Lactantius featured it as an ignition point in the great persecution of 303. Relating how Emperor Diocletian’s visit to a liver-reading oracle failed to reveal the future of Rome due to the Christians present making the sign of the cross: “The soothsayers trembled, unable to investigate the wonted marks on the entrails of the victims … at length … the chief of the soothsayers, either from guess or from his own observations, said ‘There are profane persons here who obstruct the rites.’” According to Lactantius, the persecution followed. Here in the MA, Gregory may also be inserting an anti-Arian detail, as there was a discrepancy between the two sides as to the proper sign of the cross. – daemones, “demons.” Evil spirits in the employ of Satan, they could be in human or animal form. In chapter 106 of the Glory of the Martyrs, Gregory recounted the story of a fly serving as a demon. In the MA, chapters 6, 17, and 27, demons play a prominent role as foils to the holiness of St. Andrew. – diabolus, “devil.” Three times in the MA (chaps. 2, 25, and 32), Andrew uses this word to identify a lesser devil subordinate to the Devil himself. These appear to be counterparts to angels, but who serve Satan rather than God. – exsecrantes, “cursing.” Not used to describe simple profanity, this term, often labeled a defixio, signified the calling down of a malediction on a target enemy, as Exuos’s parents did to him in chapter 12 of the MA. These exclamations were often used as an appeal for legal justice rather than serving a solely magical function. See Caroline Humfress, “Law in Practice,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau (Chichester, Eng.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 377–91. As the issue at hand for both Exuos and his parents was an inheritance matter, a “legal” type of curse would seem to be in order. – magus, “sorcerer.” A term used to differentiate between magical feats and religious miracles, as in chapter 12 of the MA, where Exuos’s parents accused him of becoming a sorcerer after seeing fire supernaturally extinguished by him. The issue also appears in chapter 18 of the MA, where Andrew protests that he is not a

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sorcerer and is validated by the crowd shouting that the Apostle is not practicing magic, but “sound and true teaching.” While the difference between the magical and the miraculous is complex, generally it turns on the power of the practitioner versus the power of God. This distinction was complicated in Gregory’s time by the occasional use of magic by certain Christian clergy. See Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 2003), esp. 273–321. To the pagan world, Christianity seemed like yet another form of sorcery, thus the miracles of Andrew would seem to be merely tricks designed to destroy the polytheistic worldview. – miracula, “miracles.” Currently considered to be something that happens outside the normal understanding of the natural, in Gregory’s day it was believed to be something unusual, yet still a further unfolding of natural mechanisms. Correlating with this was the belief that those who were the most holy were the ones who would experience frequent manifestations of these events. Consequently, the MA was produced by Gregory to highlight Andrew’s miracles and, thus, his sanctity. For a fuller treatment of this issue, see above, pp. 38–48. – paenitentia, “penance.” The act of atoning for past sins by the action of denying oneself comforts. When in MA, chapter 28, the elder Nicolaus completed a strenuous regimen of giving his wealth away and confining his diet to bread and water, it was considered a digna paenitentia, or “worthy penance,” for all his sins. Also, in MA, chapter 11, the offending parents in the incestuous marriage arrangement are instructed by Andrew to discipline their lives in penance. – peccatorum remissio, “the remission of sins.” The Vulgate’s use of the word peccatum for “sin” led to the common theological expression that one could seek remission of sins, as mentioned in chapters 3 and 4 of the MA. – praetorium. Originally the commander’s tent during a military campaign, by the period of the Roman Empire it was the building that served as the residence of the provincial governor and was used for the transacting of official business in the Roman provinces. – proconsul. Originally a high-ranking military commander’s position, by the advent of the Roman Empire it referred to the civil governor of a province, who still retained military authority. – puer, “boy.” This word can indicate a youth or an operative of a powerful person. Companions of the Merovingian kings were often styled pueri. More generally, it refers to servants or slaves. – rusticitas, “rusticity or the state of being rural.” Gregory often used this pejorative to denote those who did not believe in the cult of the saints. Other times he used it to describe uncultured behavior, and sometimes in a deprecatory way to describe his own unsophisticated abilities, as in MA, chapter 38.

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– servus, “servant or slave.” As servitude can have a spectrum of meanings, the servus could vary in status from a servant to a chattel slave, depending on the circumstances involved. It could be used in a spiritual sense, as in MA, chapter 3, where Andrew is called a “servant of God.” In the 590s, Pope Gregory the Great regularly identified himself as a “servant of God” (servus Dei). – signa, “signs.” These were miraculous acts that confirmed the holiness or rightness of an issue or person. For a fuller treatment of this term, see above, pp. 47–48. – trophea, “triumphs.” Originally a war trophy, often consisting of the armor of a defeated enemy, the word came to mean a spiritual triumph in Christian terms. Gregory used it in this fashion in the preface to the MA, where he cites the “triumphs of the holy apostles” (sanctorum apostolorum trophea). – virtutes, “holy deeds” or “holy power.” These terms described the accomplishments of a saint, as in the preface to the MA, concerning St. Andrew. Unlike the Classical Roman meaning of virtus, which emphasized the individual’s prowess, virtutes described God’s power working through a saint. For a fuller discussion of this term, see above, pp. 24–25, 40–42, 47. VII. Annotated Bibliography Primary Sources for Gregory’s Writings The edition used for this translation is Max Bonnet, ed., Gregorii episcopi Turonensis liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli, in Gregorii episcopi Turonensis miracula et opera minora, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 2 (Hanover: Hahn, 1951), 371–96. This volume also includes Gregory’s books of miracles (libri miraculorum). His most renowned work, the Histories, is found in Bruno Krusch and Wilhelm Levison, eds., Gregorii episcopi Turonensis libri historiarum X, MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, pt. 1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1888; reprinted, 1951). Translations of the MA This is the first full translation of the Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli into English. A synoptic version, leaving out many critical junctures in the story, was done by Montague Rhodes James, trans., “The Miracles by Gregory of Tours,” in his The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 337–49. A more recent attempt has been made by Dennis R. MacDonald, trans., in The Acts of Andrew, vol. 1, Early Christian Apocrypha (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press,

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2005), 43–76. Since MacDonald was concerned with reconstructing the lost Acts of Andrew, his translation did not include the dedication and the later chapters that mark the work as Gregory’s. A full French translation of the MA has been done by Jean-Marc Prieur, in his Acta Andreae (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 564–651, even though one of his main objectives was to recover the lost Acts of Andrew. Translations of Gregory’s Other Writings Gregory’s most famous work, the Histories, has been translated many times, but the most accessible English translation is that of Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gregory of Tours: History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1974). Rudolf Buchner, ed., Zehn Bücher Geschichten (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1956), offers Latin and German on facing pages. An informative abridgement of the Histories is that of Alexander Callander Murray, ed. and trans., Gregory of Tours: The Merovingians (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006). Of Gregory’s other works mentioned in the Histories, the University of Liverpool’s Translated Texts for Historians series has produced many of the most famous hagiographical works: Edward James, trans., Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991); Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Confessors (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988); and Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988). In his Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), Professor Van Dam has also translated The Miracles of the Bishop St. Martin, 199–303, as well as The Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian, 162–95. Giselle de Nie, ed. and trans., Lives and Miracles: Gregory of Tours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), includes the Life of the Fathers, Miracles of the Martyr Julian, and the Miracles of Bishop Martin, but not the MA. Of Gregory’s lesser works, only recently accepted as his, William C. McDermott has translated The Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus in Monks, Bishops, and Pagans: Christian Culture in Gaul and Italy, 500–700, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 197–206. Analyses of Gregory’s Writing Gregory’s stylistic and compositional choices are examined in Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988) and Martin Heinzelmann, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trans.

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­ hristopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). These analyze C the structure and effectiveness of Gregory’s works, both historical and hagiographical. Martin Heinzelmann, “Gregory of Tours: The Elements of a Biography,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 5–34, contains useful information on elements of Gregory’s biographical style. Of use in positioning Gregory’s writings in his world is Ian Wood, “The Individuality of Gregory of Tours,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 29–46. Critical Analyses of the MA An excellent survey of the history and availability of manuscripts of the MA is found in John J. Contreni, “Gregorius Turonensis,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentarium. Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides, vol. 9, ed. Virginia Brown, James Hankins, and Robert A. Kaster (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 55–71. Contreni has also followed the reception of Gregory’s works in subsequent eras with his “Reading Gregory of Tours in the Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 419–34 and “Gregory’s Works in the High Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 566–81, speaking to the fate of Gregory’s opus during the centuries after his death. Pascal Bourgain, “The Works of Gregory of Tours: Manuscripts, Language, and Style,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 141–88, provides salient insights on the surviving manuscripts of the Miracula, including the MA. The critical question of authorial attribution of the MA to Gregory was addressed first by Max Bonnet in his Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie,1890; reprinted, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968), and more recently in Klaus Zelzer, “Zur Frage des Autors der Miracula B. Andreae apostoli und zur Sprache des Gregor von Tours,” Grazer Beiträge 6 (1977): 217–41, as well as in Jean-Marc Prieur, “La figure de l’apôtre dans les Actes apocryphes d’André,” in François Bovon, et al., Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres: Christianisme et monde païen (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 121–39. Current scholarly consensus is that Gregory did indeed author the MA. A fascinating take on the various, and sometimes puzzling, sexual stories in the MA is that of Tamás Adamik, “Eroticism in the Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli of Gregory of Tours,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, 5th ed. (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 35–46. Still useful as an examination of St. Andrew’s role in the MA is Francis Dvornik, The Idea of Apostolicity in Byzantium and the Legend of the Apostle Andrew (­Cambridge,

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Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), 181–222. Dvornik firmly ascribes the MA to Gregory and does his best to untangle the interlacing web surrounding the existence of Mermidona. Setting the Work in the History of the Period Translated primary texts from the era include those by Gregory’s contemporary and friend, Venantius Fortunatus, in Judith George, trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), as well as Michael Roberts, ed. and trans., Venantius Fortunatus: Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017). Roberts also treats the relationship between Gregory and Fortunatus in “Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours: Poetry and Patronage,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 35–59. Histories that utilized and continued Gregory’s work are represented by J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, trans., The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar with Its Continuations (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1960) and Bernard S. Bachrach, trans., Liber historiae Francorum (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1973). Both these works cover Gregory’s day and bring the narrative forward well into the seventh century. For the legal background to Gregory’s world, see Katherine Fischer Drew’s translation of the Lex Salica in The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) and her translation of the Lex Gundobada in The Burgundian Code (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972). The Burgundians were incorporated via conquest into the Frankish kingdom in the decade of Gregory’s birth. As a background on early medieval miracle theory, see Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1871; reprinted, New York: The Modern Library, 2000), as well as Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, trans. Blomfield Jackson, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892; reprinted, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), for the emerging tradition of miraculous battlefield victories. Another window on Gregory’s day is the vita of the Irish monastic founder Columbanus, who arrived in Gaul approximately three years before Gregory’s death. An older translation of his story is that of Dana Carleton Munro, The Life of St. Columban by the Monk Jonas (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1895). A more recent version is by Alexander O’Hara and Ian Wood, trans., Jonas of Bobbio: Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017). For the vita of Gregory’s main patron saint, St. Martin of Tours, see Carolinne White, trans., Early Christian Lives (London: Penguin, 1998), 129–60. For a more modern edition, with the Latin text and an updated English translation on facing pages, as well as an

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examination of the Vita’s place in history, see Philip Burton, ed., Sulpicius Severus’ “Vita Martini” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Excerpts from many of these sources are found in Alexander Callander Murray, ed. and trans., From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Secondary Sources Illuminating the Period For a general overview of the era and its religious contours, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000, Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013); Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). Useful in analyzing the development of a singular Merovingian Church is Yitzhak Hen, “The Church in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 232–55. The issue of an incipient notion of Christendom is treated in Thomas F. X. Noble, “Gregory of Tours and the Roman Church,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 145–61 and Janet L. Nelson, “The Merovingian Church in Carolingian Retrospective,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 241–59. For the emerging nature of Frankish identity and the use of Gregory’s works in that, see Helmut Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), as well as Magali Coumert, “Transformations of Identities: Barbarians and Romans in the Merovingian Realm,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 99–116. As background for early medieval society as a whole, see Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West: The Early Middle Ages, A.D. 400–1000 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962). Hagiography and Its Uses As background for hagiography, see Donald Attwater and Catherine Rachel John, A Dictionary of Saints, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1996) and Thomas Head, ed., Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology (London: Routledge, 2001). An excellent review of hagiographical studies up to the early 1990s is Julia M. H. Smith, “Review Article: Early Medieval Hagiography in the Late Twentieth Century,” Early Medieval Europe 1 (1992): 69–76. For prevalent views of the ­interaction of history and hagiography, see Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Historical Thought in Medieval Europe,”

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in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 78–98 and Felice Lifshitz, “Apostolicity Theses in Gaul: The Histories of Gregory and the ‘Hagiography’ of Bayeux,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 211– 28. Guy Philippart, “Hagiographes et hagiographie, hagiologes et hagiologie: Des mots et des concepts,” Hagiographica: Rivista di agiografica e biografia della Società internazionale per lo studio del Medioevo Latino 1 (1994): 1–16, provides an historical overview of the origins of the word “hagiography” and its developing uses during the Middle Ages. Ian Wood examines the multiple ways hagiography morphed to meet the needs of its various audiences in his “The Use and Abuse of Latin Hagiography in the Early Medieval West,” in East and West: Modes of Communication. Proceedings of the First Plenary Conference at Merida, ed. Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 93–109. Felice Lifshitz has done perceptive work in evaluating the historical utility of hagiography in her “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113. Studies concerning the presumed Merovingian audience for hagiography include Marc Van Uytfanghe, “L’hagiographie et son public à l’époque mérovingienne,” Studia Patristica 16 (1985): 54–62, Katrien Heene, “Merovingian and Carolingian Hagiography: Continuity or Change in Public and Aims?,” Analecta Bollandiana 107 (1989): 415–28, and the useful survey by Jamie Kreiner, “Merovingian Hagiography,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 508–30, all exploring the reach and effectiveness for the public at large. For the issue of rewriting earlier hagiography, such as Gregory did with the Acts of Andrew, see Martin Heinzelmann, “La réécriture hagiographique dans l’œuvre de Grégoire de Tours,” in La réécriture hagiographique dans l’Occident médiéval: Transformations formelles et idéologiques, ed. Monique Goullet and Martin Heinzelmann (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003), 15–70. An interesting take on the seemingly repetitive nature of medieval hagiography is Eugene Vodolazkin, “The New Middle Ages,” First Things 265 (2016): 31–36. John Kitchen, Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 101–5, deeply analyzes Gregory’s Life of St. Monegundis as a vehicle to understand female holiness in a male-dominated genre and finds it novel in Merovingian hagiography. Jamie Kreiner, The Social Life of Hagiography in the Merovingian Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), although focusing mostly on the period after Gregory, examines the legal contributions that hagiography provides to a society transforming its view of law and governance. František Graus’s “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefangenenbefreiungen’ der Merowingischen Hagiographie,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1961): 61–156, and his Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der

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­ erowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague: Nakladatelství M Československé akademie věd, 1965), offer insightful analysis on the classification of Gregory’s hagiography and its relationship to the surrounding culture. On the cult of the saints specifically, Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013), offers, in the author’s own words, “a brisk overview” of the cult of the saints, looking at the practices of veneration, the emergence of hagiography, and the sub-set of miracle books. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), is essential, as is his “Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours” in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Raymond Van Dam’s perceptive Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993) explains Gregory’s world of saints in lucid terms. An excellent starting point for examining the interrelationship between the living and the dead in Late Antiquity is Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994). An intriguing use of ancient theories of the permeability between the living and the dead is found in Nickolas P. Roubekas, An Ancient Theory of Religion: Euhemerism from Antiquity to the Present (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017). Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), and Bernhard Jussen, ed., Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), especially chapter four, “Liturgy and Legitimation, or How the Gallo-Romans Ended the Roman Empire,” 147–99, both examine the access to holiness and the miraculous among the various social classes in Gregory’s day. Further aspects of the interplay between worldview and the shape of religion are investigated by Charles M. Radding, A World Made by Men: Cognition and Society, 400–1200 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), featuring an intriguing connection between concepts of developmental psychology and the worldview of the early medieval era, and Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953). The role of the saint in boosting a city to a higher profile of power is dealt with by Ian Wood, “Topographies of Holy Power in Sixth-Century Gaul,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 137–54, for the case of Martin and Tours. See Frans Theuws, “Maastricht as a Center of Power in the Early Middle Ages,” in Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 155–216, on how the burial

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of an esteemed saint could take a settlement from obscurity to prominence. For a pertinent examination of the complex role of cities in the sixth-century world of Gregory, see Nancy Gauthier, “From the Ancient City to the Medieval Town: Continuity and Change in the Early Middle Ages,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 47–66. Katherine Fischer Drew explains the “personality of the law” in “The Barbarian Kings as Lawgivers and Judges,” in Life and Thought in the Middle Ages, ed. Robert S. Hoyt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967), 7–29. For the issue of the miraculous, see Michael E. Goodich, Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Concept of Miracle, 1150–1350 (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 2007), which describes the late medieval view of miracles and thus backlights the earlier medieval belief. Craig S. Keener mounts a vigorous, and provocative, defense of the miraculous in Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2011). Dáibhí Ò Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (London: Longman, 1995), contains a succinct account of the “Irish Augustine’s” view of the miraculous. Relative to the question of the rationality of miracles, see Benedicta Ward’s classic Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event, 1000–1215 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); D. L. d’Avray, Medieval Religious Rationalities: A Weberian Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Christopher Tyerman’s cogent remarks in How to Plan a Crusade: Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages (London: Allen Lane, 2015). Concerning the status of miracles in Gregory’s day, see Peter Brown’s “Society and the Supernatural: A Medieval Change,” in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 302–32; Giselle de Nie, Word, Image, and Experience: Dynamics of Miracle and Self-Perception in Sixth-Century Gaul (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2003); and Giselle de Nie, Poetics of Wonder: Testimonies of the New Christian Miracles in the Late Antique Latin World (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), which contains a fine analysis of the reception of the miraculous by a skeptical Augustine of Hippo, thereby setting up the early medieval view on miracles. Studies on Gregory and his world include Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, eds., The World of Gregory of Tours (Leiden: Brill, 2002) and A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), as well as The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Wood, Gregory of Tours (Bangor, Eng.: Headstart History, 1994), focuses on Gregory himself, while his The Transformation of the Roman West (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018), places Gregory in his era, especially concerning his anti-Arian bias, as well as his preeminence as a sixth-century

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source. Additionally, Kathleen Mitchell, “Saints and Public Christianity in the Historiae of Gregory of Tours,” in Religion, Culture, and Society in the Early Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Richard E. Sullivan, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and John J. Contreni (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1987), 77–94 and Ralph W. Mathisen, “The Family of Georgius Florentius Gregorius and the Bishops of Tours,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n. s., 12 (1984): 83–95, offer insightful comments on Gregory’s reading public and his family ties, respectively. Background studies for some of the peculiar vignettes appearing in the MA include Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999) and Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the GrecoRoman World (London: Routledge, 2003), especially chapter 10, “Sorcerers and Sorceresses from Constantine to the End of the Seventh Century AD,” 273–321. Dickie’s comments shed light on the differences between magic and miracles, as featured in chapter 18 of the MA. William E. Klingshirn, “Magic and Divination in the Merovingian World,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 968–97, contextualizes magic within the normal practices of Merovingian religion. On the use of curses, defixiones, as in chapter 12 of the MA, see Caroline Humfress, “Law in Practice,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau (Chichester, Eng.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 377–91. For insight on the various sexual issues that surface in the MA, see Kyle Harper’s views on prostitution in From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013) and Ian Wood, “Incest, Law and the Bible in Sixth-Century Gaul,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 291–304, relative to the incest question in chapter 11 of the MA. Also see Zubin Mistry’s interesting exposition on punishment for sins extending generationally in his Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c. 500–900 (York: York Medieval Press, 2015), esp. 85–92. The issue of penance in the MA is illuminated in Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), and the status of slavery in Gregory’s world is addressed by Alice Rio in Slavery After Rome, 500–1100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). A fascinating take on attitudes in the Merovingian world is that of Barbara H. Rosenwein’s Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), especially her view on Gregory’s relationship to Venantius Fortunatus and the tendency to ascribe emotions to demons.

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INCIPIUNT CAPITULA LIBRI DE MIRACULIS BEATI ANDREAE APOSTOLI. 1. De 2. De 3. De 4. De 5. De 6. De 7. De 8. De 9. De 10. De 11. De 12. De 13. De 14. De 15. De 16. De 17. De 18. De 19. De 20. De 21. De 22. De 23. De 24. De 25. De 26. De 27. De 28. De 29. De 30. De

Mattheo apostolo et quae in Myrmidona acta sunt. caeco inluminato. puero suscitato. Sustrato puero, cui mater crimen inpigerat. Gratino ac filio et uxore eius. septem daemonibus a Nicea expulsis. mortuo suscitato. commotione maris sedata. latronibus obstupefactis. his qui in navi crediderunt. nuptiis puerorum. Exoo et parentibus eius. filio Carpiani debile. mortuo suscitato. filio Mediae et pueris eius aliisque infirmis sanatis. debile filia cuiusdam sanata. daemone expulso. Virino proconsule et filio eius ac milite suscitato. serpente interfecto et mortuo suscitato. revelatione passionis beati apostoli. eo qui in mari cecidit. Lisbio proconsule et fide eius. Trofimae et uxore proconsulis. quadraginta mortuos suscitatos. difficultate partus cuiusdam mulieris. Sustrato et servo eius. daemoniacis sanatis ad balneum. Nicolau sene. Anthiphanem et uxore ac servis eius. Maximilla, uxore proconsulis Egeae.

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HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK OF THE MIRACLES OF THE BLESSED ANDREW THE APOSTLE. 1. Matthew the Apostle and What Occurred in Mermidona. 2. A Blind Man Receives His Sight. 3. A Boy Is Raised from the Dead. 4. Sostratus’s Mother Lays an Accusation on Him. 5. Gratinus and His Wife and Son. 6. Seven Demons Are Driven Out from Nicea. 7. A Man Is Raised from the Dead. 8. A Storm at Sea Calms. 9. Bandits Are Stunned. 10. Those Aboard a Ship Who Believed. 11. The Marriage of Children. 12. Exuos and His Parents. 13. The Crippled Son of Carpianus. 14. A Boy Is Raised from the Dead. 15. The Son of Medias and a Man’s Boys and Others Are Healed. 16. A Crippled Daughter Is Healed. 17. A Demon Is Driven Out. 18. The Proconsul Virinus, His Son, and a Soldier Are Raised from the Dead. 19. A Serpent Is Killed and a Boy Is Raised from the Dead. 20. The Revelation of the Passion of the Blessed Apostle. 21. The Man Who Fell into the Sea. 22. The Proconsul Lisbius and His Faith. 23. Trofima and the Proconsul’s Wife. 24. Forty Are Raised from the Dead. 25. A Woman’s Difficulty in Giving Birth. 26. Sostratus and His Slave. 27. Demoniacs Are Healed at the Bath. 28. The Old Man Nicolaus. 29. Antiphanes, His Wife, and Slaves. 30. Maximilla, the Wife of the Proconsul Egeas. 31. A Crippled Man Is Healed.

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31. De 32. De 33. De 34. De 35. De 36. De 37. De 38. De 39. De 40. De

Latin Text

debile sanato. tribus caecis inluminatis. arido sanitati restaurato. puero Stratoclei, fratris proconsulis. proconsule ab itinere regresso. passione sancti apostoli. virtute sepulchri eius. auctore libelli huius. reliquiis eius. calcolo sanato.

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63

32. Three Receive Their Sight. 33. A Shrivelled Man Is Restored to Health. 34. The Boy of Statocleus, the Brother of the Proconsul. 35. The Proconsul Returns from His Journey. 36. The Passion of the Holy Apostle. 37. The Power of His Tomb. 38. The Author of This Little Book. 39. His [The Holy Apostle’s] Relics. 40. A Man Suffering from a Kidney Stone Is Healed.

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Inclita sanctorum apostolorum trophea nulli credo latere fidelium, quia quaedam exinde euangelica dogmata docent, quaedam apostolici actus narrant, de quibusdam vero extant libri, in quibus propriae actiones eorum denotantur. De plerisque enim nihil aliud nisi passionum scripta suscipimus. Nam repperi librum de virtutibus sancti Andreae apostoli, qui propter nimiam verbositatem a nonnullis apocrifus dicebatur; de quo placuit, ut, retractis enucleatisque tantum virtutibus, praetermissis his quae fastidium generabant, uno tantum parvo volumine admiranda miracula clauderentur, quod et legentibus praestaret gratiam et detrahentium auferret invidiam, quia inviolatam fidem non exegit multitudo verbositatis, sed integritas rationis et puritas mentis. 1.  Igitur post illum dominicae ascensionis nobile gloriosumque triumphum cum beati apostoli praedicare verbum Dei per diversas regiones dispersi fuissent, Andreas apostolus apud Achaiam provinciam adnuntiare dominum Iesum Christum exorsus est, Matheus autem apostolus, qui et euangelista, Mermidonae urbi verbum salutis adnuntiavit. Sed incolae civitatis dure, indignae ferentes quae de Redemptoris nostri virtutibus audiebant ac sua nolentes destruere templa, adpraehensum beatum apostolum, erutis oculis, circumdatum catenis, in carcere detruserunt, ut, interpositis paucis diebus, interficerent. Venit autem angelus Domini ad Andream apostolum dicens: “Surge et vade ad Mermidonam civitatem et erue fratrem tuum Matheum de squalore carceris quo tenetur.” Cui ille ait: “Domine, ecce, viam nescio, et quo ibo?” Et ille: “Vade,” inquit, “ad litus maris, et invenies ibi navem, in qua statim ascende. Ego enim ero dux itineris tui.” Fecit Andreas iuxta verbum Domini et invenit in litore navem, ascendensque in eam, flantibus ventis congruis, prospere navigavit ad urbem, ingressusque portam civitatis, venit ad carcerem. Videns autem Matheum apostolum in squalore carceris cum vinctis aliis resedentem, amarissime flevit, et facta oratione simul, ait Andreas: “Domine Iesu Christe, quem fideliter praedicamus et ob cuius nomine tanta perferimus, qui caecis visum, surdis auditum, paraliticis gressum, laeprosis munditiam, mortuis vitam inmensa clementia largire dignatus es, aperi, quaeso, oculos servi tui, ut eat ad adnuntiandum verbum tuum.” Et statim locus ille contremuit, et lux magna refulsit in carcere, et oculi beati apostoli restaurati sunt, et cunctorum catenae confractae sunt, et travis, in qua pedes eorum coartati erant, scissa est, et omnes magnificabant Deum, dicentes, quia: “Magnus est Deus, quem praedicant servi eius.” Tunc educti per beatum Andream de carcere, abiit unusquisque ad propria sua, Mattheus autem

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The famous triumphs of the holy apostles lie hidden from none of the faithful. I believe this to be so because the gospel writings teach some of those triumphs, the Acts of the Apostles tell of others, and in some cases books exist that outline the deeds of each of the apostles. For the most part, however, we have nothing other than the writings of their sufferings. Now as regards the holy deeds of Saint1 Andrew the Apostle, I have come across a book, which some say is apocryphal because of its wordiness.2 For this reason, I have decided to limit to one small volume the astonishing miracles, reviewing and explaining in detail only the holy deeds while passing over those things that arouse contempt. This approach serves two purposes: it offers something agreeable to the reader, and it takes away the ill will of the detractor. For it is not a great many words but sound thought and a pure mind that produce an untarnished faith.3 1.  After the famous and glorious triumph of our Lord’s Ascension, when the blessed apostles had scattered to proclaim the word of God throughout various regions, the Apostle Andrew began proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ in the province of Achaea. Now the Apostle Matthew, who wrote the Gospel, made known the word of salvation to the city of Mermidona. But the cruel inhabitants of the city were indignant at what they were hearing about the holy deeds of our Redeemer. Not wanting to tear down their temples, they seized the blessed Apostle, dug out his eyes, bound him in chains, and threw him into prison, with the intent of killing him in a few days’ time. Now an angel of the Lord came to the Apostle Andrew, saying: “Get up and go to the city of Mermidona, and deliver Matthew, your brother [in the faith], from the filthy prison cell in which he is being held.” He said to the angel: “Lord, I do not know the way. Where shall I go?”4 The angel said to him: “Go to the seashore, and there you will find a ship. Board that ship at once, for I will guide your journey.” Andrew did according to the word of the Lord, and on the shore he found the ship and boarded it. The winds were favorable, and he sailed to the city without incident. After entering the city gate, he went to the prison. When Andrew saw the Apostle Matthew sitting with the other prisoners in the filthy prison, he wept very bitterly and at the same time prayed: “Lord Jesus Christ, whom we faithfully proclaim and for whose name we suffer such things, who from your boundless mercy deigned to grant sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, movement to the paralytic, cleansing to the leper, and life to the dead,5 I ask you to restore the sight of your servant, so that he may go and proclaim your word.” At once the place shook,6 and a great light filled the prison.7 The sight of the blessed apostle was restored, and the chains of all the prisoners were broken and the beam, by which their feet had been confined, was split.8 All began praising God, saying: “Great is the God, whom his servants proclaim.” Then, after being led out of the prison by blessed Andrew, each one went away to his own place, but Matthew withdrew from there. Then the Apostle Andrew began proclaiming the word of the Lord to the inhabitants [of Mermi-

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recessit a loco illo. Denique Andreas apostolus praedicabat incolis verbum domini Iesu. Cognoscentes autem homines illi de carceris vinctis quae acta fuerant, adpraehensum Andream, ligatis pedibus, trahebant per plateas civitatis. Iam enim capilli capitis eius evellebantur, et sanguis defluebat a capite, et oravit ad Dominum, dicens: “Aperi, quaeso, Domine, oculos cordis eorum, ut cognoscant te Deum verum et desistant ab hac iniquitate; et ne statuas illis hoc in peccatum, quia nesciunt quid faciunt.” Et statim timor magnus factus est super habitatores civitatis illius, et dimissum apostolum, dicebant: “Peccavimus in te, nescientes quid faceremus. Rogamus ergo, domine, ut remittas nobis delictum et demonstres nobis viam salutis, ne descendat ira Dei super civitatem hanc.” Haec enim dicentes, prostrati erant solo ante pedes Andreae. Quibus ille erectis praedicabat dominum Iesum Christum et miracula quae fecit in hoc mundo, et qualiter ipsum mundum iam pereuntem proprio cruore redemit. At ille credentes baptizati sunt in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, accepta peccatorum remissione. 2.  Andreas autem recedens ab eo loco, venit in regionem suam. Cumque deambularet cum discipulis suis, accessit ad eum caecus quidam et ait: “Andreas apostole Christi, scio, quia potes mihi reddere visum, sed nolo eum recipere, nisi depraecor, ut iubeas his qui tecum sunt conferre mihi pecuniam, de qua vestitum habeam sufficientem et victum.” Cui beatus Andreas: “Vere,” inquid, “cognosco, quia non est haec vox hominis, sed diaboli, qui non sinit homini isti recipere visum.” Et conversus tetigit oculos eius, et confestim recepit lumen et glorificabat Deum. Cumque indumentum haberet vile et hispidum, ait apostolus: “Auferte ab eo vestimenta sordida et date ei indumentum novum.” Expoliantibus se paene omnibus, ait apostolus: “Quod sufficit, haec accipiat.” Et sic, accepto vestimento, gratias agens, rediit ad domum suam. 3.  Demetrii autem primi civitatis Amaseorum erat puer Aegyptius, quem amore unico diligebat. Orta autem in eum febre, spiritum exalavit. Denique, audita Demetrius signa quae faciebat beatus apostolus, venit ad eum, et procidens cum lacrimis ante pedes eius, ait: “Nihil tibi difficile confido, minister Dei. Ecce enim puer meus, quem unice diligebam, mortuus est, et rogo, ut adeas domum meam et reddas eum mihi.” Haec audiens beatus apostolus, condolens lacrimis eius, venit ad domum in qua puer iacebat, et praedicans diutissime ea quae ad salutem populi pertinebant, conversus ad feretrum, ait: “Tibi dico, puer, in nomine Iesu Christi, fili Dei, surge et sta sanus.” Et confestim surrexit puer Aegyptius, et reddidit illum domino suo.

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dona]. But when the people learned what had happened to the prisoners’ restraints, they seized Andrew, bound his feet, and dragged him through the streets of the city. For now the hairs of his head were beginning to be torn away, and blood was beginning to flow from his head, and he prayed to the Lord, saying: “I ask you, Lord, to open the eyes of their hearts, so that they may come to know that you are the true God and may cease from this iniquity. And do not charge this sin to them [Acts 7:59], for they know not what they do [Luke 23:34].” All at once, a great fear came over the inhabitants of that city, and they released the apostle, saying: “We have sinned against you, although we did not know what we were doing. Therefore, we ask you, sir, to pardon our crime and show us the way of salvation, lest the wrath of God descend upon this city.” Saying this, they threw themselves on the ground at the feet of Andrew. He got them up and proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ and the miracles that he did in this world, and how he redeemed the world already perishing by means of his blood. They, for their part, believed and were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,9 and they received forgiveness for their sins. 2.  Now Andrew withdrew from that place and came into his own territory. When he was walking with his disciples, a blind man approached him and said: “Andrew, apostle of Christ, I know that you are able to restore my sight, but I do not want to receive it, save only, I beg, that you command those with you to contribute money to me, from which I may have adequate clothing and food.” Blessed Andrew said to him: “In truth, I recognize that this is not the voice of a man but of a devil, who does not permit this man to receive his sight.” Turning [to the blind man], he touched his eyes, and right away he received his sight and began glorifying God. Since the man was wearing cheap and dirty clothes, the apostle said: “Remove his filthy clothes from him and give him a new garment.” While nearly everyone was stripping himself of his own clothing, the apostle said: “Let him take only what he needs.” And so, the man took the clothes, gave thanks, and returned home. 3.  One of Amasea’s leading citizens was named Demetrius, who had a boy from Egypt, whom he especially loved. [The boy] fell sick with a fever and died. Finally, having heard of the miracles that the blessed apostle was performing, Demetrius came to him, and falling prostrate with tears before his feet, he said: “I am confident that nothing is too difficult for you, servant of God. You see, my boy, who was very dear to me, has died. I beg you to come to my home and restore him to me.” Hearing this, and being moved by Demetrius’s tears, the blessed apostle came to the house where the boy was lying. After proclaiming for a very long time those things that pertained to the salvation of the people, he turned to the funeral bier and said: “Boy, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God, I say to you, ‘Arise and stand healed.’” Immediately, the Egyptian boy got up and Andrew restored him to his

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Tunc omnes qui erant increduli crediderunt Deo et baptizati sunt ab apostolo sancto. 4.  Puer quidam Sostratus nomine christianus venit secretius ad beatum Andream, dicens: “Mater mea concupivit formam speciei meae et iugiter me insectatur, ut commisceam ei. Quod ego infandum execrans refugi. At illa, felle commota, adiit proconsulem, ut crimen suum proiciat in me. Et scio, cum accusatus fuero, quia nihil ad haec respondebo; satius enim duco vitam amittere quam matris detegere crimen. Nunc autem tibi haec confiteor, ut digneris pro me Dominum exorare, ne innocens caream praesenti vita.” Haec eo dicente, venerunt ministri proconsulis arcersientes eum. Beatus vero apostolus, facta oratione, surrexit et abiit cum puero. Mater autem instanter accusabat eum, dicens: “Hic, domine proconsul, oblitus maternae pietatis affectum, stuprose in me conversus, vix potui eripi, ne ab eo violarer.” Cui ait proconsul: “Dic, puer, si vera sunt ista quae mater tua prosequitur.” At ille tacebat. Iterum atque iterum proconsul interrogabat, et nihil respondit. Durante autem eo in silentio, proconsul habebat cum suis consilium, quid ageret; mater autem pueri coepit flere. Ad quam beatus Andreas apostolus ait: “O infelix, quae fletus emittis amaritudinis ob stuprum, quod in filium agere voluisti, quam in tantum concupiscentia praecipitavit, ut unicum amittere filium, libidine inflammante, non metuas.” Haec eo dicente, ait mulier: “Audi, proconsul; postquam filius meus haec agere voluit, homini huic adhaesit et non discessit ab eo.” Proconsul autem de his ira commotus, iussit puerum in culeum parricidae recludi et in flumine proici, Andream autem in carcere retrudi, donec, excogitata supplicia, et ipsum perderet. Orante autem beato apostolo, terrae motus magnus cum tonitruo gravi factus est, et proconsul de sede cecidit, et omnes terrae decubuerunt; mater vero pueri percussa aruit et mortua est. Tunc proconsul prostratus pedibus sancti apostoli, ait: “Miserere pereuntibus, famule Dei, ne nos terra deglutiat.” Orante autem beato apostolo, cessavit terrae motus, fulgora quoque ac tonitrua quieverunt. Ipse autem circumiens eos qui turbati iacebant, cunctos reddidit sanos. Proconsul vero suscipiens verbum Dei, credidit in Domino cum omni domo sua, et baptizati sunt ab apostolo Dei. 5.  Gratini quoque Senopinsis filius, dum in balneum mulierum lavaretur, a daemone, perdito sensu, graviter cruciabatur. Gratinus autem misit epistolam ad proconsulem, in qua rogabat, ut Andream exoraret ad se venire. Sed et ipse adpraehensus febre, graviter aegrotabat, uxor vero eius ab etrope intu-

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master. Then all who were incredulous believed in God and were baptized by the holy apostle. 4.  A young Christian named Sostratus came privately to blessed Andrew, saying: “My mother lusts for my body and is continually after me to sleep with her. Abhorring this unspeakable thing, I have avoided her. But in her bitterness, she has gone to the proconsul to hurl her accusation at me. I know that when I am accused, I will not respond to the charge, for I consider it preferable to lose my life than to expose my mother’s crime. I am confessing this to you, so that you may deign to prevail upon the Lord on my behalf, lest although innocent I lose my life.” As he was saying these things, the officials of the proconsul came to bring him to court. The blessed apostle, after saying a prayer, got up and left with the young man. But Sostratus’s mother vehemently began accusing him, saying: “Lord Proconsul, disregarding any feeling of dutiful devotion towards his mother, my son turned against me in a lascivious way. I could scarcely tear myself away, lest I be violated by him.” The proconsul said to Sostratus: “Tell [me], young man, if what your mother is describing is true.” But Sostratus kept silent. The proconsul asked again and again, and each time he said nothing. Since Sostratus persisted in his silence, the proconsul took counsel as to what he should do. The mother, however, began to weep. The blessed Apostle Andrew said to her: “O misguided woman! You weep bitterly because you wanted to engage in sexual relations with your son! Your desire has cast you down so low that you do not fear losing your only son while you burn with lust!” As he was saying these things, the woman said: “Proconsul, listen to me. Ever since my son wanted to do this, he has clung to this man and has not left his side.” Now provoked with anger about this, the proconsul ordered the young man to be closed up in a leather bag as if he were a parricide and thrown into the river,10 and Andrew to be thrust out of his sight into prison, until he could devise his execution and kill him. Now while the blessed apostle was praying, there was a great earthquake accompanied by violent thunder. The proconsul fell off his seat and everyone lay on the ground; in fact, the young man’s mother, after being struck, withered up and died.11 Then the proconsul, prostrate at the feet of the holy apostle, said: “Have mercy on us who are perishing, servant of God, lest the earth swallow us.” The blessed apostle prayed, the earth stopped shaking, and the lightning and thunder died down. Then, going around to those who were lying on the ground in their agitated state, he restored all to their senses. The proconsul received the word of God and he and all his household believed in the Lord and were baptized by the apostle of God. 5.  While the son of Gratinus of Sinope was bathing in the women’s bathhouse, he lost consciousness and was violently tortured by a demon.12 Gratinus sent a letter to the proconsul, asking him to persuade Andrew to come to him. But he too was seized by a fever and was severely ill, and his wife experienced swelling caused by

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muerat. Deprecante igitur proconsule, Andreas, ascenso vehiculo, venit ad civitatem. Cumque introisset in domum Gratini, conturbavit spiritus malus puerum, et venit et procidit ante pedes apostoli. Quem ille increpans: “Discede,” inquit, “humanae generis inimice, a famulo Dei”; et statim multo clamitans discessit ab eo. Et veniens ad stratum viri, ait: “Recte aegrotas incommode, qui, relicto proprio toro, misceris scorto. Surge in nomine domini Iesu Christi et sta sanus et noli ultra peccare, ne maiorem aegrotationem incurras”; et sanatus est. Mulieri quoque dixit: “Decepit te, o mulier, concupiscentia oculorum, ut, relicto coniuge, aliis miscearis.” Et ait: “Domine Iesu Christe, deprecor piam misericordiam tuam, ut exaudias servum tuum et praestes, ut, si haec mulier ad caenum libidinis quod prius gessit fuerit revoluta, non sanetur omnino. Certe, si scis, Domine, cuius potentia etiam futura praenoscuntur, quod se abstinere possit ab hoc flagitio, te iubente sanetur.” Haec eo dicente, disrupto per inferiorem partem humorem, sanata est cum viro suo. Beatus autem apostolus fregit panem et dedit ei. Quae gratias agens, accepit et credidit in Domino cum omni domo sua; nec deinceps illa aut vir eius scelus quod prius admiserant perpetrarunt. Misit quoque postea Gratinus magna munera sancto apostolo per famulos suos. Ipse postmodum secutus est cum uxore, prostratique coram eo, rogabant, ut acciperet munera eorum. Quibus ille ait: “Non est meum haec accipere, dilectissimi, sed potius vestrum est ea indigentibus erogare.” Et nihil accipit ex his quae offerebantur. 6. Post haec ad Niceam proficiscitur, ubi erant septem daemones inter monumenta commorantes, sita secus viam. Homines quoque praetereuntes meridie lapidabant et multos iam neci mortis adfecerant. Veniente autem beato apostolo, exiit ei obviam tota civitas cum ramis olivarum, proclamantes laudes atque dicentes: “Salus nostra in manu tua, homo Dei.” Et exponentes omnem rei ordinem, ait beatus apostolus: “Si creditis in dominum Iesum Christum, filium omnipotentis Dei, cum Spiritu sancto unum Deum, liberabimini eius auxilio ab hac infestatione daemoniorum.” At illi clamabant, dicentes: “Quaecumque praedicaveris credimus et obaudemus iussioni tuae, tantum ut liberemur ab ista temptatione.” At ille gratias agens Deo pro eorum fide, iussit ipsos daemonas in conspectu omnis populi eius adsistere; qui venerunt in similitudinem canum. Conversus autem beatus apostolus ad populum, ait: “Ecce daemonas, qui adversati sunt vobis; si autem creditis, quod in nomine Iesu Christi possim eis imperare, ut desistant a vobis, confitemini coram me.” At illi clama-

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dropsy.13 So then, at the proconsul’s appeal, Andrew climbed into a carriage and came to the city. When he entered Gratinus’s home, the evil spirit disquieted the boy, who came and fell at the feet of the apostle. Rebuking [the evil spirit], Andrew said: “Enemy of the Human Race, depart from this servant of God.”14 And at once the spirit departed from [the boy] with much shouting. Coming to the couch of the man, Andrew said: “You are rightly troubled by this fever, you who left your marriage bed and consorted with a prostitute.15 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, arise and stand healthy, and sin no more, lest you meet with a greater disease.”16 And he was restored to health. To the woman, also, Andrew said: “Woman, the carnal desire of your eyes [1 John 2:16] deceived you, so that you left your husband to sleep with others.” And he said: “Lord Jesus Christ, I pray by your holy mercy that you listen to your servant and bring to bear that, if this woman returns to the loathsome filth of her sexual desire that she earlier performed, she not be healed at all. Of course, Lord, if you know—you who can know even the future before it happens— that she is able to abstain from her shameful act, let her be healed at your command.” As he was saying this, the fluid burst forth from her body, and she was healed along with her husband. Then the blessed apostle broke bread and gave it to her. Giving thanks, she received it and believed in the Lord, along with all the household. From then on, neither she nor her husband allowed the wickedness of which they were earlier guilty. Afterwards, Gratinus also sent great gifts to the holy apostle through his servants. A little later, he followed with his wife, and prostrate before Andrew, they begged him to accept their gifts. He said to them: “Dear ones, it is not my place to accept these; rather, it is your place to give them to the needy.” And he accepted none of these [gifts] that were offered to him. 6.  After this, he set out for Nicea, where seven demons were lingering among the tombs located beside the road.17 They would also throw stones at the people passing by at midday and had already killed many. As the blessed apostle was coming, the entire city went out to meet him with olive branches, shouting praises and saying:18 “Our salvation is in your hand, man of God.” And as they were relating the whole of the matter in detail, the blessed apostle said: “If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God Almighty, One God with the Holy Spirit,19 you will be set free with his help from this harassment of the demons.” And they shouted, saying: “Whatsoever you proclaim we believe, and we will obey what you command, only let us be freed from this trial!” Giving thanks to God for their faith, he ordered the demons to present themselves in the sight of all the people. The demons came in the likeness of dogs. Turning to the people, the blessed apostle said: “Look! These are the demons who have opposed you. If you believe that in the name of Jesus Christ I am able to command them to cease from harassing you, confess this in my presence.” They shouted, saying: “We believe that Jesus

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verunt dicentes: “Credimus, Iesum Christum filium Dei esse, quem praedicas.” Tunc beatus Andreas imperavit daemonibus, dicens: “Ite in loca arida et infructuosa, nullum paenitus hominum nocentes neque accessum habentes, ubicumque nomen Domini fuerit invocatum, donec accipiatis debitum vobis supplicium ignis aeterni.” Haec eo dicente, daemonas, dato rugitu, evanuerunt ex oculis adstantium, et sic civitas liberata est. Baptizavit autem illos beatus apostolus et instituit eis episcopum Calestum, virum sapientem et inrepraehensibiliter custodientem quae a doctore susceperat. 7.  Denique adpropinquans portam Nicomediae, ecce efferebatur mortuus in grabatto, cuius pater senex servorum sustentatus manibus vix obsequium funeris valebat inpendere. Mater quoque hac aetate gravata, sparsis crinibus, sequebatur heiulando cadaver, dicens: “Vae mihi, cuius usque ad hoc tempus aetas producta est, ut funeris mei apparatum in filii funus expendam.” Cumque haec et his similia deplorantes cadaver vociferando prosequerentur, affuit apostolus Dei, condolensque lacrimis eorum, ait: “Dicite mihi, quaeso, quid huic puero contigit, ut ab hac luce migravit?” At illi prae timore nihil respondentes, a famulis apostolus haec audivit: “Dum esset,” inquiunt, “iuvenis iste in cubiculo solus, advenerunt subito septem canes et inruerunt in eum. Ab his igitur miserrime discerptus, caecidit et mortuus est.” Tunc beatus Andreas suspirans et in caelum oculos erigens, cum lacrimis ait: “Scio, Domine, quia daemonum eorum fuit insidia, quos expuli a Nicea urbe. Et nunc rogo, Iesu benigne, ut resuscites eum, ne congaudeat adversarius humani generis de eius interitu.” Et haec dicens, ait ad patrem: “Quid dabis mihi, si restituero tibi filium tuum salvum?” Et ille: “Nihil eo habeo praetiosius, ipsum enim dabo, si ad vitam surrexerit te iubente.” Beatus vero apostolus iterum, expansis ad caelum manibus, oravit, dicens: “Redeat, quaeso, Domine, anima pueri, ut, isto resuscitato, relictis cuncti idolis ad te convertantur, fiatque eius vivificatio salus omnium pereuntium, ut iam non subdantur morti, sed tui effecti, vitam mereantur aeternam.” Respondentibus fidelibus: “Amen,” conversus ad feretrum ait: “In nomine Iesu Christi, surge et sta super pedes tuos.” Et statim, ammirante populo, surrexit, ita ut omnes qui aderant voce magna clamarent: “Magnus est Deus Christus, quem praedicat servus eius Andreas.” Parentes enim pueri multa munera dederunt filio suo, quae beato apostolo obtulit; sed ille nihil ex his accepit. Puerum tantum secum usque ad Macedoniam abire praecipiens, salutaribus verbis instruxit. 8.  Egressus inde apostolus Domini navem conscendit, ingressusque Helispontum fretum, navigabat, ut veniret Bizantium. Et ecce commotum est

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Christ, whom you proclaim, is the Son of God!” Then the blessed Andrew ordered the demons, saying: “Go into the dry and barren places [Matt. 12:43], utterly harming no one and not carrying out an attack, wherever the name of the Lord is invoked, until you receive the punishment of everlasting fire owed to you.” At these words, the demons roared and vanished from the sight of those standing nearby, and thus the city was set free. The blessed apostle baptized the people and appointed as bishop over them Calestus, a man wise and blamelessly guarding those things he had received from his teacher.20 7.  At length, as he was approaching the gate of Nicomedia, he saw a dead man was being carried out on a cot. The aged father, supported by the hands of servants, was scarcely in any condition to see to his son’s burial. The mother, also burdened with age and with her hair disheveled, followed the corpse with wailing, saying: “Woe is me! My life has been dragged out to this occasion, that I am paying for my son’s funeral out of what was set aside for my funeral.” While they were escorting the body and pouring out these and similar laments, the apostle of God appeared, and pitying their tears, he said: “Tell me, please, what happened to this young man that he has departed from this life?” But although they were afraid to say anything, from the servants the apostle heard this: “While the young man was alone in his bedroom, seven dogs suddenly arrived and attacked him. He fell dead after being wretchedly torn apart by them.” Then, heaving a sigh and lifting his eyes to heaven, blessed Andrew said through his tears: “I know, Lord, that this was an ambush by those demons that I drove out from the city of Nicea. And now I ask, kind Jesus, that you resuscitate him, lest the Adversary of the Human Race rejoice at his death.”21 After saying this, he said to the father: “What will you give me, if I restore your son alive to you?” He replied: “I have nothing more precious than him, and in fact I will give him to you, if he rises to life at your command.” Then the blessed apostle, stretching his hands toward heaven a second time, prayed, saying: “Please, Lord, let the soul of the young man return, in order that, when he is resuscitated, all may leave their idols and turn toward you, and let his return to life be as a salvation of all those perishing, in order that they, no longer subject to death, but having been made yours, may gain eternal life.” The faithful responded: “Amen.” Turning to the funeral bier, he said: “In the name of Jesus Christ, arise and stand on your feet.” And at once, to the astonishment of the people, he got up, so that all present shouted with a loud voice: “Great is the God Christ, whom his servant Andrew proclaims!” The young man’s parents gave many gifts to their son, which he offered to the blessed apostle, but he accepted none of them. Bidding only that the young man go with him all the way to Macedonia, Andrew instructed him in the words of salvation. 8.  Going out from that place, the apostle of the Lord boarded a ship bound for Byzantium through the Hellespont. And, behold, the sea was stirred up, a strong

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mare, et incubuit super eos ventus validus, et mergebatur navis. Denique, praestolantibus cunctis periculum mortis, oravit beatus Andreas ad Dominum, praecipiensque vento, siluit; fluctus autem maris quieverunt, et tranquillitas data est. Ereptique omnes a praesenti discrimine, Bizantium pervenerunt. 9.  Inde progressi, ut venirent Thracias, apparuit eis multitudo hominum a longe cum evaginatis gladiis, lanceas manu gestantes, quasi volentes in illis irruere. Quod cum vidisset Andreas apostolus, faciens crucis signum contra eos, ait: “Oro, Domine, ut decidat pater eorum, qui haec eos agere instigavit. Conturbentur virtute divina, ne noceant sperantes in te.” Haec eo dicente, angelus Domini cum magno splendore praeteriens, tetigit gladios eorum, et corruerunt proni in terra. Transiensque beatus apostolus cum suis, nihil est nocitus; omnes enim, proiectis gladiis, adorabant eum. Angelus quoque Domini discessit ab eis cum magno lumine claritatis. 10.  Sanctus vero apostolus pervenit ad Perintum civitatem Traciae maritimam et invenit ibi navem, quae in Machedoniam properaret. Apparuit enim ei iterum angelus Domini et iussit eum ingredi navem. Tunc praedicans in navi verbum Dei, credidit nauta in dominum Iesum Christum et omnes qui cum eo erant, et glorificabat apostolus sanctus Deum, quod nec in mari defuit qui audiret praedicationem eius aut qui crederet filium Dei omnipotentis. 11.  Fuerunt autem duo viri in Philippis fratres, et uni quidem erant duo filii, alteri filiae duae, quibus erat facultas magna, eo quod essent valde nobiles. Dixitque unus ad alterum: “Ecce sunt nobis opes eximiae, et non est de civibus qui dignae copuletur generationi nostrae; sed veni, et fiat nobis una domus ex omnibus. Filii mei accipiant filias tuas, ut opes nostrae facilius coniungantur.” Placuit hic sermo fratri, et inito foedere, obligaverunt hanc convenentiam per arrabone quod pater puerorum misit. Dato igitur die nuptiarum, factum est verbum Domini ad eos, dicens: “Nolite coniungere filios vestros, donec veniat famulus meus Andreas. Ipse enim vobis quae agere debeatis ostendet.” Iam enim thalamum praeparatum erat et convivae vocati, et omne apparatum nuptiale in promptu tenebatur. Tertia vero die advenit beatus apostolus, et videntes eum, gavisi sunt magno gaudio, et occurrentes ei cum coronis, processerunt ante pedes eius et dixerunt: “Te amoniti praestolamur, famulae Dei, ut venias et adnunties nobis quid faciamus. Accepimus enim verbum operire te, et, ne ante coniungerentur filii nostri, quam tu venires, indicatum est nobis.” Erat tunc vultus beati apostoli tamquam sol

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wind bore down upon them, and the ship began to sink. Then, while everyone was awaiting the peril of death, the blessed Andrew prayed to the Lord. At the apostle’s command, the wind became still, the waves of the sea died down, and calm was bestowed. All aboard the ship were delivered from immediate danger and reached Byzantium. 9.  After setting out from there in order to come to Thrace, visible to them in the distance was a great number of men with swords drawn and carrying spears, as if wanting to charge at them. When the Apostle Andrew saw this, he made the sign of the cross against them and he said: “Lord, I pray that their father, who incited them to do this, falls. Throw them into confusion by your divine power, lest they harm those who place their hope in you.” As he was saying this, an angel of the Lord, who was passing by with great splendor, touched their swords, and the men fell forward onto the ground. The blessed apostle with his [companions] crossed over unharmed. All [the attackers] threw away their swords and revered him. The angel of the Lord also departed from them, accompanied by a light of intense brightness.22 10.  The holy apostle arrived at Perinthus, a maritime city of Thrace, and there found a ship for quick passage to Macedonia. The angel of the Lord appeared to Andrew again and ordered him to board the ship. Then Andrew proclaimed the word of God on the ship, and a sailor and all who were with him believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the holy apostle glorified God, because at sea there were persons present to hear his preaching and believe in the Son of God Almighty. 11.  Now, there were two brothers at Philippi, one who had two sons and the other two daughters. These brothers had considerable resources because they were very noble. The one said to the other: “Look here. Our wealth is exceptional, and there is not one citizen who is worthy to marry our children; but come, let us have one house from two. Let my sons marry your daughters, so that our wealth may be more easily joined together.” This proposition pleased his brother, and entering into a compact, they bound this agreement by a payment sent from the young men’s father. Therefore, on the appointed day of the wedding, there was a word from the Lord for them, saying: “Do not join your children in marriage until my servant Andrew arrives, for he will show you what you must do.” The marriage bed had already been prepared and the guests invited, and everything for the wedding was kept in readiness. On the third day, the blessed apostle arrived, and seeing him, the two brothers rejoiced greatly, and running to meet him with crowns, they fell down before his feet and said: “Servant of God, as commanded we have been waiting for you to come and announce to us what we should do. We received word to meet you, and it was revealed to us that our children should not be joined in marriage before you arrive.” Then the countenance of the apostle was just like that of the shining sun,23 so that all marveled at him and honored

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relucens, ita ut omnes admirarentur, et honorarent Deum. Quibus ait apostolus: “Nolite, filioli, nolite seduci, nolite decipere hos iuvenes, quibus potest fructus apparere iustitiae; sed magis paenitentiam agite, quia deliquistis in Dominum, ut proximos sanguine velletis coniugio copulare. Non nos nuptias aut avertimus aut vitamus, cum ab initio Deus masculum iungi praecipisset et feminam, sed potius incesta damnamus.” Haec eo loquente, commoti parentes eorum, dixerunt: “Oramus, domine, ut depraeceris pro nobis Deum tuum, quia nescientes fecimus hoc delictum.” Adolescentes autem videntes vultum apostoli splendere tamquam vultum angeli Dei, dicebant: “Magna et inmaculata est doctrina tua, vir beatae, et nesciebamus; verum enim cognovimus, quia Deus loquitur in te.” Quibus sanctus apostolus ait: “Custodite sine pollutione quae audistis, ut sit Deus vobiscum, et accipiatis mercedem operis vestri, id est sempiternam vitam, quae nullo clauditur fine.” Haec dicens apostolus et benedicens eos, siluit. 12.  Erat quidam iuvenis in Tesalonica nobilis valde ac dives opibus Exuos nomine. Hic venit ad apostolum, nescientibus parentibus suis, et procidens ad pedes eius, rogabat eum, dicens: “Ostende mihi, quaeso, famule Dei, viam veritatis. Cognovi enim, quod verus minister sis eius qui te misit.” Sanctus vero apostolus praedicavit ei dominum Iesum Christum, et credidit adolescens, adherens sancto apostolo nihilque de parentibus meminens neque de facultatibus aliquam inpendens sollicitudinem. Parentes autem requirentes eum, audierunt, quod in Philippis cum apostolo moraretur, et venientes cum muneribus, rogabant, ut separaretur ab eo; sed nolebat, dicens: “Utinam nec vos has opes haberetis, ut mundi cognoscentes auctorem, qui est verus Deus, erueretis animas vestras ab ira futura.” Sanctus quoque apostolus descendit de tristico et praedicabat eis verbum Dei; sed non audientibus, rediit ad puerum et clausit ostia domus. At illi, convocata cohorte, venerunt, ut incenderent domum illam in qua erat iuvenis, dicentes: “Intereat puer, qui reliquid parentes et patriam.” Et adhibentes fasces caractae scyrpique et facularum, coeperunt succendere domum. Et cum iam flamma fereretur in altum, arreptam adolescens ampullam aquae, ait: “Domine Iesu Christe, in cuius manu omnium elementorum natura consistit, qui arentia inficis et infecta facis arescere, qui ignita refrigeras et extincta succendens, tu extingue hos ignes, ut tui non tepescant, sed magis accendantur ad fidem.” Et haec dicens, exparsit desuper aquam ex ampulla, et statim omne incendium ita supitum est, acsi non fuisset accensum. Quod videntes parentes pueri, dicebant: “Ecce iam filius noster magus effectus est.” Et adhibentes scalas,

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God. The apostle said to them: “Do not, dear children, do not be deceived. Do not mislead these young persons, for whom the fruit of justice can occur; but instead repent, because you have committed an offense against the Lord, in that you wanted to join blood relatives in marriage. We neither have an aversion to nor avoid weddings, since from the beginning God has commanded male and female to be joined together;24 rather, we condemn incest.”25 As he was saying these things, the parents of the children were shaken and said: “We pray, sir, that you intercede on our behalf to your God, because we unknowingly committed this offense.” Now when the young men and women saw the countenance of the apostle shining just like the face of an angel [Acts 6:15] of God, they said: “Great and pure is your teaching, blessed man, and we were ignorant. But to be sure, we recognize that God speaks through you.” The holy apostle said to them: “Guard without defilement what you have heard, so that God may be with you and you may receive the reward of your work, namely, eternal life, which has no end.” After saying these things and blessing them, the apostle fell silent. 12.  There was a young man in Thessalonica, who was very noble and rich, named Exuos. This [young man] came to the apostle without his parents’ knowledge, and falling at his feet, he begged him, saying: “Servant of God, please show me the way of truth. For I know that you are a true servant of the one who has sent you.” The holy apostle proclaimed to him the Lord Jesus Christ, and the young man believed. He clung to the holy apostle, neither mindful of his parents nor anxious about his resources. Now the young man’s parents were searching for him and heard that he was lingering in Philippi with the apostle. Coming with gifts, they begged their son to separate himself from Andrew; but he was unwilling to, saying: “I wish you did not have your wealth, so that by knowing the Creator of the world, who is the True God, you might rescue your souls from the wrath to come.”26 The holy apostle also descended from the third story and proclaimed the word of God to them. But since they did not listen, he returned to the young man and locked the doors of the house. Calling their attendants together, [his parents] came to burn the house in which the young man was, saying: “Let this young man, who has left behind his parents and country, perish.” And applying bundles consisting of reed, bulrush,27 and small torches, they began to set fire to the house. When the flames were being borne aloft, the young man quickly seized a bottle of water and said: “Lord Jesus Christ, in whose hand is the nature of all the elements, who makes dry things wet and wet things dry, who cools off inflamed things and ignites extinguished things, put out these fires, in order that your own may not grow lukewarm but rather awakened to faith.” And as he was saying this, from above he sprinkled water out of the bottle, and at once every fire was thus quenched, as if it had not been lit. Seeing this, the parents of the young man said: “Look, now our son has proven himself to be a

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volebant ascendere in tristico, ut eos interficerent gladio. Dominus autem excaecavit eos, ne viderent ascensum scalarum. Cumque in hac perversitate durarent, quidam Lesemachus e civibus ait: “Ut quid, o viri, casso vos labore consumitis? Deus enim pugnat pro viris istis, et vos non cognoscitis? Sinite ab hac stultitia, ne vos caelestis ira consumat.” Haec eo dicente, conpuncti omnes corde, dicebant: “Verus est Deus, quem isti colunt, quem et nos persequi temptavimus.” Haec eis dicentibus, cum iam tenebrae noctis advenissent, subito lumen effulsit, et omnium oculi inluminati sunt. Ascendentesque ubi erat apostolus Christi, invenerunt eum orantem; prostrati quoque in pavimento, clamabant dicentes: “Quaesumus, domine, ut ores pro servis tuis, qui errore seducti sunt.” Tanta enim omnes conpunctio cordis attigerat, ut diceret Lysemachus: “Vere Christus est filius Dei, quem praedicat servus eius Andreas.” Tunc erecti ab apostolo, conroborati sunt in fide, tantum parentes pueri non crediderunt. Qui exsecrantes adolescentem, regressi sunt in patriam, subdentes omnia quae habebant publicis ditionibus. Post dies autem 50 unius horae momento expiraverunt; et post haec, pro eo quod diligerent omnes viri civitatis adolescentem propter bonitatem et mansuetudinem eius, omne patrimonium ei concessum est a publico, et erat possidens cuncta quae habuerant parentes eius. Non tamen ab apostolo discedebat, sed fructus praediorum in pauperum necessitatibus et curis indigentium expendebat. 13.  Rogavit autem adolescens beatum apostolum, ut proficiscerentur simul in Thesalonica, et cum venissent ibi, congregati sunt omnes ad eum; gaudebant enim videntes puerum. Tunc, congregatis omnibus in theatrum, praedicabat eis puer verbum Dei, ita ut sileret apostolus, et admirarentur prudentiam eius. At illi clamaverunt, dicentes: “Salva filium Carpiani civis nostri, quia valde aegrotat, et credimus in Iesum quem praedicas.” Quibus ait beatus apostolus: “Nihil est inpossibile apud Deum; sed tamen, ut credatis, adducite eum in conspectu nostro, et sanabit illum dominus Iesus Christus.” Tunc pater eius abiit ad domum suam et dixit ad puerum: “Hodie sanus eris, fili dilectissime Adimathe”; hoc enim erat nomen pueri. Qui ait ad patrem: “Vere enim effectum est somnium meum; nam ego vidi per visum virum hunc, qui me sanum redderet.” Et haec dicens, induit vestimenta sua, surrexitque a grabatto et pergebat ad theatrum cursu veloci, ita ut non possit a parentibus adsequi. Et procidens ad pedes beati apostoli, gratias agebat pro sanitate recepta. Populi autem stupebant, videntes eum post viginti tres annos ambulantem, et glorificabant Deum, dicentes, quia: “Non est similis deo Andreae.”

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sorcerer.”28 Reaching for a ladder, they wanted to climb into the third story to kill them with a sword. The Lord, however, struck them blind, in order that they might not see to climb the ladder. While they were continuing in this perversity, a citizen named Lysimachus said: “Why, O men, do you consume yourselves with empty toil? Do you not recognize that God is fighting on behalf of those men?29 Cease from this foolishness, lest heavenly wrath consume you.” As he was saying this, all were pierced in their hearts and said: “True is the God, whom they worship, whom we also have tried to persecute.” As they were saying this, although the dark of night had already arrived, a light suddenly shone forth and their sight was restored. Climbing up to where the apostle of Christ was, they found him praying. They too fell prostrate on the floor and shouted, saying: “Sir, we ask that you pray for your servants, who were seduced by error.” So great was the remorse that touched the hearts of all that Lysimachus said: “Truly, Christ is the Son of God, whom his servant Andrew proclaims.” Then the apostle raised them up off the floor and encouraged them in the faith. Only the boy’s parents did not believe. Cursing the young man, they returned to their country, placing their entire estate in the hands of the public authorities.30 Fifty days later, however, [his parents] died within one hour of each other. After this, because all the men of the city esteemed the young man on account of his goodness and gentleness, the entire inheritance was granted to him from the treasury,31 and he possessed everything his parents had owned. However, the young man did not depart from the apostle, but he spent the income from the estates on the needs of the poor32 and the care of the needy. 13.  Now the young man asked the blessed apostle to set out with him for Thessalonica, and when they arrived there, all flocked to him, for they rejoiced at seeing the young man. Then, when everyone had assembled in the theater, the young man preached the word of God to them in such a way that the apostle remained silent and the people marveled at his prudence.33 But they shouted, saying: “Heal the son of our citizen Carpianus, because he is very sick, and we will believe in Jesus whom you proclaim!” The blessed apostle said to them: “Nothing is impossible with God [Luke 1:37]. However, so that you may believe, bring him to us, and the Lord Jesus Christ will heal him.” Then his father went forth to his home and said to his boy: “Today you will be healthy, my very dear son, Adimathus,” for this was his boy’s name. He said to his father: “Truly my dream is fulfilled, for I saw in a vision this man who restores me to health.” Saying this, he put on his clothes, got up from his sickbed, and made his way to the theater so rapidly that his parents were unable to keep up. And falling prostrate at the feet of the blessed apostle, he gave thanks for receiving his health. The people were stunned at seeing him walking after twentythree years, and they glorified God, saying: “There is no god like the God of Andrew.”34

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14.  Unus autem e civibus, cuius filius habebat spiritum inmundum, rogabat beatum apostolum, dicens: “Sana, quaeso, vir Dei, filium meum, quia male a daemonio vexatur.” Daemon vero, sciens futurum se eici, seduxit puerum in secretum cubiculum et suffocavit eum, laqueo extorquens animam eius. Denique pater pueri, cum invenisset illum mortuum, flevit multum et ait amicis suis: “Ferte cadaver ad theatrum; confido enim, quod poterit resuscitare ab hospite qui praedicat Deum verum.” Quo delato et posito coram apostolo, narravit ei, qualiter interfectus esset a daemone, dicens: “Credo, homo Dei, quod etiam a morte per te possit resurgere.” Conversus autem apostolus ad populum, ait: “Quid vobis proderit, viri Thesalonicenses, cum haec fieri videtis, si non creditis?” At illi dixerunt: “Ne dubites, vir Dei, quia, isto resuscitato, omnes credimus.” Haec illis dicentibus, ait apostolus: “In nomine Iesu Christi, surge, puer”; et statim surrexit. Et stupefactus omnis populus, clamabat dicens: “Sufficit; nunc credimus cuncti Deo illi quem praedicas, famule Dei.” Et deducentes eum ad domum cum facibus et lucernis, eo quod iam nox advenisset, introduxerunt eum in domum suam, ubi per triduum instruxit illos de his quae Dei erant. 15.  Venit ad eum quidam vir de Philippis Medias nomine, cuius filius in debilitate nimia aegrotabat, et ait ad apostolum: “Depraecor, o homo Dei, ut restituas mihi filium meum, quia debilitatus est corpore.” Et haec dicens, flebat valde. Beatus vero apostolus abstergens genas eius et caput manu dimulcens, dicebat: “Confortare, fili; tantum crede, et inplentur voluntates tuae.” Tunc adpraehendens manum eius, ibat in Philippis. Cumque ingrederetur portam civitatis, occurrit ei senex, rogans pro filiis, quos pro culpa ineffabili Medias carcerali supplicio detruserat, et erant ulceribus putrefacti. Conversus autem sanctus apostolus ad Median, dixit: “Audi, homo; tu deprecaris, ut sanetur filius tuus, cum apud te vincti retineantur, quorum iam sunt carnes exaese. Et ideo, si praeces tuas ad Deum vis proficisci, absolve prius miserorum catenam, ut et filius tuus a debilitate laxetur; nam video inpedimentum ferre precibus meis malitiam quam exerces.” Tunc Medias procidit ad pedes eius, et deosculans, ait: “Absolvantur hii duo et alii septem, de quibus nihil audisti, tantum ut sanetur filius meus.” Et iussit eos in conspectu beati apostoli exhiberi. At illi, inpositis eis manus, et per triduum abluens vulnera eorum, sanitati restituit libertatique donavit. Postera vero die ait ad puerum: “Surge in nomine domini Iesu Christi, qui me misit, ut medear infirmitati tuae.” Et adpraehensa manu eius, levavit eum; qui statim surrexit et a­ mbulabat,

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14.  One of the citizens, whose son had an unclean spirit, begged the blessed apostle, saying: “Please, man of God, heal my son, because he is being vexed by an evil demon.” But the demon, knowing that he was about to be cast out, led the boy away into a secluded bedroom and choked him, wresting the life from him with a noose. Upon finding the boy dead, his father wept much and said to his friends: “Carry my son’s body to the theater, for I am confident the stranger who proclaims the True God will be able to resuscitate him.” When [the corpse] had been removed and placed before the apostle, [the father] told him how he was murdered by a demon, saying: “I believe, man of God, that even from the dead he is able to rise again through you.” Now the apostle turned to the people and said: “Men of Thessalonica, what will it benefit you, if you do not believe, when you see this happen?” But they said to him: “Have no doubt, man of God, that all of us will believe when the boy is brought back to life.” As they were saying this, the apostle said: “Boy, in the name of Jesus Christ, arise.” And at once he got up. All the people were astonished and shouted, saying: “It is enough! Now we all believe in the God whom you proclaim, servant of God.” And accompanying Andrew home with torches and lamps, since night had already set in, they brought him to his house, where for three days he taught them about the things of God. 15.  There came to him a man from Philippi named Medias, whose son suffered from a very great weakness, and he said to the apostle: “I beseech you, man of God, that you restore my son to me, because his body is weak.” As he was saying this, he began weeping greatly. But the blessed apostle, drying his cheeks and stroking his head, said: “Take comfort, my son; only believe, and your desires will be fulfilled.”35 Then, taking hold of his hand, he went to Philippi. When Andrew was entering the city gate, an old man met him, imploring on behalf of his sons, whom Medias had punished with imprisonment for an unspeakable crime, and who were rotting with sores. Turning to Medias, the holy apostle said: “Listen, man; you beseech me to heal your son, when those whose flesh is now being consumed are kept bound by you. Therefore, if you want your prayers to proceed to God, first free those wretched ones from their chains, so that your son may also be set free from his weakness. For I see that the malice you are indulging in is a hindrance to my prayers.” Then Medias fell at Andrew’s feet, and showering [them] with kisses, he said: “Let those two be released, and the seven others about whom you have heard nothing, so that my son may be healed.” And he ordered them to be produced in the sight of the blessed apostle. But Andrew, after laying his hands upon them and cleansing their wounds for three days, restored [them] to health and delivered [them] to freedom. Now the next day, he said to Medias’s son: “Get up in the name of Jesus Christ, who sent me to heal your infirmity.” And taking his hand, Andrew raised him up; at once, he stood up and began walking, glorifying God. The young man was called Philionedis,

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magnificans Deum. Vocabatur enim puer Philionedis, qui viginti duobus annis fuerat debilis. Clamantibus autem populis et dicentibus: “Et nostris medere infirmis, famule Dei Andreas,” ait vero apostolus ad puerum: “Vade per domos aegrotantium et in nomine Iesu Christi, in quo sanatus es, tu iube eos exurgere.” At ille, admirantibus populis, abiit per domos infirmorum, invocatoque Christi nomine, restituebat eos sanitati. Credidit autem omnis populus, offerensque ei munera, rogabant, ut audirent verbum Dei. Beatus vero apostolus praedicans Deum verum, nihil de muneribus accipiebat. 16.  Denique Nicolaus quidam e civibus exhibens carrucam deauratam cum quattuor mulis candidis equisque eiusdem numeri et coloris, obtulit beato apostolo, dicens: “Haec accipe, famulae Dei, quia nihil repperi inter res meas his amabilius, tantum ut sanetur filia mea, quae nimio cruciatu vexatur.” Cui subridens beatus apostolus ait: “Accipio quidem munera tua, Nicolae, sed non haec visibilia. Nam, si pro filia quae praetiosum in domo tua habebas offeres, quanto magis pro anima debes? Ego enim hoc a te accipere cupio, ut homo ille interior agnoscat verum Deum factorem suum creatoremque omnium, qui terrena respuat et aeterna desideret, qui caduca neglegat, diligat sempiterna, qui illa quae videntur abnuat et ea quae non videntur contemplatione spiritalis intentiones advertat, ut, cum his exercitatu sensu vigueris, vitam aeternam consequi merearis, filiamque hic sanitati redditam, etiam in illa aeternitatis gaudia perfruaris.” Haec eo dicente, persuasit omnibus, ut, relictis idolis, Deum verum crederent. Filiam quoque ipsius Nicolai sanavit ab infirmitate qua tenebatur, et omnes magnificabant eum, percurrente per totam Machedoniam fama de virtutibus quae faciebat super infirmos. 17.  Sequenti vero die docente eo, ecce quidam adolescens exclamavit voce magna, dicens: “Quid tibi et nobis, Andreas famule Dei? Venisti, ut nos a propriis sedibus exturbaris?” Tunc beatus apostolus, vocatum ad se iuvenem, ait: “Enarra, auctor criminis, quod sit opus tuum.” Et ille: “Ego,” inquid, “in hoc puero ab adolescentia eius inhabitavi, suspicans, quod numquam ab eo recederem. Die autem tertio audivi patrem illius dicentem amico suo: ‘Vadam ad hominem famulum Dei Andream, et sanabit filium meum.’ Nunc autem timens cruciatos quos nobis inferis, veni, ut egrediar ab eo coram te.” Et haec dicens, prostratus solo ante pedes apostoli, exiit a puero, et sanatus est et surgens glorificabat Deum. Tantam enim gratiam Deus praestitit sancto apostolo, ut sponte omnes venirent ad audiendum verbum salutis et dicerent:

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who had been weak for twenty-two years. The people shouted, saying: “Heal our infirmities also, Andrew, servant of God!” But the apostle said to the young man: “Go throughout the homes of the sick, and in the name of Jesus Christ, by whom you were healed, command them to get up.” As the people were marveling, Philionedis went away through the homes of the sick, invoking the name of Christ and restoring them to health. Now all the people believed, and offering him gifts, begged to hear the word of God. The blessed apostle proclaimed the True God but accepted none of their gifts. 16.  At length, a citizen named Nicolaus brought out a gold-covered carriage along with four white mules and four white horses and offered them to the blessed apostle, saying: “Accept these, servant of God, since I have found nothing among my possessions more precious than these, only let my daughter be healed, who is being excessively tormented.” Smiling at him, the blessed apostle said: “I will accept your gifts, Nicolaus, but not these that can be seen. For if, on behalf of your daughter, you offer what is of great value in your home, how much more ought you offer on behalf of your soul? This is what I desire to receive from you: that your inner man36 recognize the True God as his Maker and the Creator of all; that he reject earthly things and desire eternal ones; that he disregard the perishable and cherish the everlasting; that he say no to those things that are seen and give heed by spiritual contemplation to those things that are not seen, so that when trained in these things you thrive in your understanding, you may deserve to attain eternal life and may enjoy fully your daughter restored to health here in this life and also in the everlasting blessedness of eternity.” As he was saying these things, he persuaded all to leave their idols behind and believe in the True God. He also healed the daughter of Nicolaus from the infirmity that held her, and all extolled him, as the fame of his holy deeds, which he did on behalf of the sick, was spreading throughout the whole of Macedonia. 17.  Now the next day as he was teaching, behold, a young man cried out in a loud voice, saying: “What do we have to do with each other, Andrew, servant of God? Have you come to drive me away from my own place?”37 Then the blessed apostle called the young man to himself and said: “Author of Crime, give a full account of what your business is.” And he replied: “I have made my home in this boy since his youth, supposing that I may never depart from him. However, three days ago, I heard his father saying to his friend: ‘I will go to the servant of God, Andrew, and he will heal my son.’ Now, fearing the torments that you will inflict on me, I have come so that I may go out from him in your presence.” And saying this, he prostrated himself on the ground before the feet of the apostle and went out of the boy. The boy was healed, got up, and began glorifying God. So great was the favor that God showed to the holy apostle that all willingly came to hear the word

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“Enarra nobis, homo Dei, quis est verus Deus, in cuius nomine nostros curas infirmos.” Sed et philosophi veniebant et conquirebant cum eo, et nemo poterat resistere doctrinae eius. 18.  Dum autem haec agerentur, surrexit quidam inimicus praedicationis apostolicae et venit ad proconsulem Virinum, dicens: “Surrexit homo iniquus in Thesalonica, qui templa deorum praedicat destrui, caerimonias respui et omnia priscae legis decreta convelli. Unum deum tantum praedicat coli, cuius se etiam famulum protestatur.” Haec audiens proconsul, misit milites cum equitibus, qui eum exhiberent in conspectu eius. Qui venientes ad portam, didicerunt, in quam domum commoraretur apostolus. Ingredientes autem, cum vidissent vultum eius fulgore nimio resplendere, timore perterriti, ceciderunt ante pedes eius. Beatus vero apostolus narrabat audientibus, quae de eo proconsuli nuntiata fuissent. Et venientes populi cum gladiis et fustibus, volebant milites interficere; sed prohibuit eos sanctus apostolus. Proconsul enim veniens, cum non invenisset apostolum in civitate qua praeceperat, fremuit ut leo et misit alios viginti. Et ipsi ascendentes in domum, cum vidissent beatum apostolum, turbati, nihil dixerunt. Tunc proconsul haec audiens, iratus valde, misit multitudinem militum, qui eum cum vi adducerent. Quibus visis, apostolus dixit: “Numquid propter me venistis?” Et illi: “Propter te,” inquiunt, “si tamen tu es magus, qui praedicas deos non coli.” Quibus ille ait: “Ego magus non sum, sed sum apostolus Dei mei Iesu Christi, quem praedico.” Dum haec agerentur, unus militum arreptus a daemone, evaginato gladio, exclamans dixit: “Quid mihi et tibi, Virine proconsul, ut mitteres me ad hominem, qui non solummodo extrudere ab hoc vase, verum etiam suis me virtutibus incendere potest? Utinam venires ad occursum eius et nihil mali ageres contra illum.” Cum autem haec dixisset, daemonium egressum est a milite. Miles igitur cecidit et mortuus est. Interea venit proconsul cum magno furore, et stans secus sanctum apostolum, eum videre non poterat. Cui ille dixit: “Ego sum quem quaeris, proconsul.” Et statim aperti sunt oculi eius, et vidit illum et indignans ait: “Quae est haec insania, ut contemnas iussionem nostram et ministros nostros subicias dicioni tuae? Vere enim te magum atque maleficum esse manifestum est. Nunc autem feris te subiciam pro contemptu deorum et nostro, et tunc videbis, si te possit eripere crucifixus, quem praedicas.” Cui beatus apostolus ait: “Oportet te credere, proconsul, Deum verum et quem misit filium eius Iesum Christum, praesertim cum videas unum de tuis militibus interisse.” Et prostratus ad orationem sanctus apostolus, cum

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of salvation and said: “Explain to us thoroughly, man of God, who the True God is, in whose name you cure our sick.” Even philosophers would come and search out ideas with him, and no one could oppose his teaching.38 18.  While these things were taking place, there rose up a man who was hostile to the preaching of the apostle, and he came to the proconsul Virinus, saying: “There has risen up an unjust man in Thessalonica, who preaches that the temples of the gods should be destroyed, the ceremonies rejected, and all decrees of the ancient law overturned. He preaches the worship of one god only and even testifies publicly that he is his god’s servant.” Hearing these things, the proconsul sent soldiers with cavalry to bring the apostle to him. Coming to the city gate, they learned in which house the apostle was staying. Now when they entered and saw the apostle’s face shining exceedingly brightly,39 they were greatly terrified and fell down before his feet. The blessed apostle told his hearers what the proconsul had announced concerning him. And coming with swords and clubs, the people wanted to kill the soldiers; but the holy apostle did not allow them to do so. When the proconsul came and did not find the apostle where he had expected to find him in the city, he roared like a lion and sent twenty others. They also entered the house, and when they saw the blessed apostle, they were confused and said nothing. Upon hearing this, the proconsul was greatly angered and sent a large number of soldiers to bring him by force. When the apostle saw them, he said: “Did you come on account of me?” They said: “Yes, if you are the sorcerer who preaches that the gods should not be worshipped.” He answered them: “I am no sorcerer, but I am an apostle of my God, Jesus Christ, whom I proclaim.” While this exchange was taking place, one soldier, seized by a demon and with sword drawn, said as he cried out: “What do we have to do with each other, Proconsul Virinus, that you would send me to a man, who is able not only to drive me out of this vessel, but also to burn me with his powers? I wish that you would come to meet him and do nothing evil against him.” Now when the demon had said this, he came out of the soldier, who then fell down and died. In the meantime, the proconsul came with great rage, and although he was standing near the holy apostle, he could not see him.40 Andrew said to him: “Proconsul, I am the one you are looking for.” And at once the proconsul’s eyes were opened, and he saw him and said with indignation: “What madness is this, that you show contempt for my orders and subject my officials to your authority? For truly, that you are a sorcerer and an evildoer is clear. Now, however, I will subject you to the wild beasts for your contempt of the gods and of me, and then you will see if the Crucified One, whom you proclaim, is able to rescue you.” The blessed apostle said to him: “You should believe, Proconsul, in the True God and his son Jesus Christ, whom he sent [John 17:3], especially since you see that one of your soldiers has perished.” And falling down in prayer, the holy apostle, when he had poured out his entreaties to

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­ iutissime preces fundisset ad Dominum, tetigit militem, dicens: “Surge, susd citat te Deus meus Iesus Christus, quem praedico.” Et statim surrexit miles et stetit sanus. Cumque populus adclamaret: “Gloria Deo nostro!” proconsul ait: “Nolite credere, o populi, nolite credere magum.” At illi clamabant dicentes: “Non est haec magica, sed est doctrina sana et vera.” Proconsul dixit: “Hominem istum ad bestias tradam et de vobis scribam caesari, ut velociter pereatis, quia contemnitis leges eius.” Illi autem volentes eum lapidibus obruere, dicebant: “Scribe caesari, quia Machedonas receperunt verbum Dei et, contemptis idolis, Deum verum adorant.” Tunc iratus proconsul, recessit ad praetorium, et facto mane intromisit feras in stadium et iussit trahi et proici beatum apostolum in stadio. Quo adpraehenso, trahebant per capillos, inpellentes fustibus, proiectumque in harena dimiserunt aprum ferocem et orribilem; qui ter circuivit sanctum Dei et nihil nocuit. Videntes autem haec populi, dederunt gloriam Deo. Proconsul vero iussit iterum dimitti taurum; qui a triginta militibus adductus et a duobus venatoribus inpulsus, Andream non attigit, sed venatores discerpsit in frustra, et dans mugitum, cecidit et mortuus est. Et statim adclamavit populus dicens: “Verus Deus Christus.” Dum haec agerentur, angelus Domini visus est descendisse de caelo et confortabat sanctum apostolum in stadio. Denique proconsul fervens ira iussit leopardum ferocissimum dimitti; qui dimissus reliquid populum, et ascendens ad sedem proconsulis, arripuit filium eius et suffocavit eum. Tantaque insania consulem obtinuerat, ut nihil de his aliquid aut doleret aut diceret. Tunc beatus apostolus conversus ad populum, dixit: “Cognoscite nunc, quia verum Deum colitis, cuius virtute bestiae superatae sunt, quem nunc Virinus proconsul ignorat. Sed ego, ut facilius credatis, etiam filium illius in nomine Christi, quem praedico, suscitabo, ut confundatur stultissimus pater eius.” Et prostratus terrae, diutissime oravit, adpraehensaque manu suffocati, suscitavit eum. Haec videntes populi, magnificaverunt Deum et voluerunt Virinum interficere, sed permissi non sunt ab apostolo. Virinus autem confusus discessit in praetorium suum. 19.  His ita gestis, adolescens quidam, qui erat iam cum apostolo, indicavit matri suae quae acta erant et arcessivit eam, ut veniret ad occursum sancti. Quae accedens, procidit ad pedes eius et quaerebat, ut audiret verbum Dei. Cui cum satisfactum fuisset depraecatione, rogavit, ut accederet ad agrum eius, in quo serpens mirae magnitudinis erat, qui totam regionem illam devastabat. Adpropinquante autem apostolo, sibila magna emittens, erecto capite,

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the Lord for a very long time, touched the soldier, saying: “Get up. My God Jesus Christ, whom I proclaim, raises you from the dead.” At once the soldier got up and stood healed. When the people shouted in approval: “Glory be to our God,” the proconsul said: “Do not believe, O people, do not believe this sorcerer.” But they shouted, saying: “This is not magic, but sound and true teaching!”41 The proconsul said: “I shall hand over that man to the wild beasts, and I shall write to Caesar42 concerning all of you, in order that you may perish swiftly because you show contempt for his laws.” Now wanting to stone him, they said: “Write to Caesar that Macedonia has received the word of God, and despising her idols, worships the True God.” Then enraged, the proconsul withdrew to the praetorium, and when it was morning, the proconsul sent wild beasts into the stadium and ordered the blessed apostle to be dragged and thrown into the stadium. Seizing him, they dragged him by his hair and struck him with clubs. After he had been thrown into the arena, they let loose a ferocious and horrible wild boar. Three times it circled the holy man of God but did not harm him. Upon seeing this, the people gave God glory. Then the proconsul ordered a bull to be let loose. Led in by thirty soldiers and driven forward by two animal handlers,43 it did not attack Andrew, but in vain mauled the animal handlers, and bellowing, fell down and died. The people immediately shouted their approval, saying: “Christ is the True God!” While this was happening, an angel of the Lord was seen to descend from heaven, and he strengthened the apostle in the stadium. At last, the proconsul, seething with anger, ordered a very ferocious leopard to be let loose. Upon the animal’s release, it left the people, and climbing up to the proconsul’s seat, it seized his son and suffocated him. So great was the madness that possessed the proconsul that he neither grieved nor said anything about these things. Then the blessed apostle turned to the people and said: “Now you recognize that you worship the True God, by whose power the beasts were overcome, and whom now the proconsul Virinus disregards. But so that you may more easily believe, I will also raise his son from the dead in the name of Christ whom I proclaim, to the bewilderment of his most foolish father.” Falling to the ground, he prayed for a very long time, and taking the hand of the one suffocated, he raised him from the dead. Seeing this, the people praised God and wanted to kill Virinus, but the apostle did not permit it. Virinus, however, went away to his praetorium bewildered. 19.  After these things were accomplished in that way, a young man who was now with the apostle made known to his mother what had happened and invited her to come meet the holy man. Approaching Andrew, she fell at his feet and asked to hear the word of God. When he had satisfied her entreaty, she begged him to come to her estate, in which there was a serpent of wondrous size that was devastating that entire region. Now as the apostle was drawing near, it hissed loudly, reared up its head, and came at him. The serpent was fifty cubits44 long, and all

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venit in obviam. Erat enim longitudo eius quinquaginta cubitorum, ut omnes qui aderant metu terrerentur et terrae decubarent. Tunc sanctus Dei ait ad eum: “Abde caput, funeste, quod erexisti in principio ad perniciem generis humani, et subde te famulis Dei ac morire.” Et statim serpens emittens gravem rugitum, circumdedit quercum magnam, quae propinqua erat, et obligans se circa eam, evomens rivum veneni cum sanguine, expiravit. Sanctus vero apostolus pervenit ad praedium mulieris, in quo parvulus, quem serpens perculerat, mortuus decubabat. Et videns flere parentes eius, ait ad eos: “Deus noster, qui vult vos salvos fieri, misit me huc, ut credatis in eum. Nunc autem abeuntes, videte mortuum interfectorem filii vestri.” At illi dixerunt: “Nihil dolemus de morte fili, si ultionem ex inimico videmus.” Illis vero abeuntibus, dixit apostolus ad uxorem proconsulis: “Vade et suscita puerum.” Ad illa nihil dubitans, venit ad corpus et ait: “In nomine Dei mei Iesu Christi, surge, puer, incolomis,” et statim surrexit. Parentes autem eius redeuntes cum gaudio, quod vidissent serpentem mortuum, invenerunt filium viventem, et prostrati coram pedibus apostoli, gratias agebant. 20.  Sequenti vero nocte visum vidit beatus apostolus, quem etiam fratribus enarravit, dicens: “Audite, dilectissimi, somnium meum. Videbam, et ecce mons magnus erat in sublimi elevatus, qui nihil super se de terrenis rebus habebat, nisi tantum luce resplendens, ita ut mundum putaretur inluminare. Et ecce adstiterunt mihi dilectissimi fratres Petrus et Iohannes apostoli; et Iohannes quidem, extensa manu Petro apostolo, levabat eum in vertice montis, et conversus ad me, rogabat ascendere post Petrum, dicens: ‘Andreas, poculum Petri bibiturus es.’ Et extensis manibus, ait: ‘Adpropinqua mihi et extende manus tuas, ut coniungantur manibus meis, et caput tuum capite meo societur.’ Quod cum fecissem, inventus sum brevior esse Iohanni; et post haec ait mihi: ‘Vis cognoscere imaginem huius rei quam cernis, vel quis sit qui tibi loquitur?’ Et ego aio: ‘Desidero ista cognoscere.’ Et ait mihi: ‘Ego sum Verbum crucis, in qua pendebis in proximo propter nomen eius quem praedicas.’ Et multa alia mihi dixit, quae nunc silere oportet; prodebuntur tamen tunc cum ad hanc immolationem accessero. Nunc autem conveniant omnes qui susceperunt verbum Dei, et commendem illos domino Iesu Christo, ut eos in doctrina sua inmaculatos custodire dignetur. Ego vero iam resolvor a corpore et vado ad promissionem illam quam mihi pollicere dignatus est Regnator caelorum et terrae, qui est filius omnipotentis Dei, cum Spiritu sancto verus Deus, permanens in saecula sempiterna.” Haec audientes

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who were present were very frightened and fell down to the ground. Then the holy man of God said to it: “Hide your head, you deadly thing, which you raised up in the beginning for the destruction of the human race,45 and subject yourself to the servants of God and die.” And at once the serpent, letting out a deep roar, encircled a great oak, which was nearby, and binding itself around [the tree], it breathed its last breath as it disgorged a stream of poison and blood. To be sure, the holy apostle reached the farm estate of the woman, on which a little boy, whom the serpent had struck down, lay dead. And seeing his parents weeping, he said to them: “Our God, who wishes you to be saved [1 Tim. 2:3–4], has sent me here, in order that you may believe in him. Now go and see your son’s killer lying dead.” And they replied: “We will not grieve the death of our son if we see revenge on our enemy.” Indeed, as they were going away, the apostle said to the wife of the proconsul: “Go and raise up the boy.” With no hesitation at all, she came to the body and said: “Boy, in the name of my God Jesus Christ, arise unharmed.” And at once, the boy got up. Now his parents, returning with joy, because they had seen the dead serpent, found their son living, and prostrating themselves before the feet of the apostle, they gave thanks. 20.  To be sure, the following night, the blessed apostle saw a vision, which he also related to his brothers [in the faith], saying: “Most beloved, listen to my dream.46 I was looking, and, behold, there was a great mountain lifted up on high, which had no earthly thing on top of it, except only that it was glittering with light in such a way that one would suppose it illuminated the world. And, see, there stood the brothers most dear to me, the Apostles Peter and John; indeed, John extended his hand to the Apostle Peter and lifted him up onto the mountain peak, and turning to me, he asked me to ascend after Peter, saying: ‘Andrew, you are going to drink from the cup of Peter.’47 And stretching out his hands, he said: ‘Approach me and stretch out your hands, so that they may be joined with my hands, and that your head may be united with my head.’ When I had done this, I was found to be shorter than John; and after this he said to me: ‘Do you want to learn the meaning of what you see or the identity of the one speaking to you?’ I said: ‘I desire to learn those things.’ And he said to me: ‘I am the Word of the cross, on which you will hang shortly on account of the name of him whom you proclaim.’ And he told me many other things, which I must leave unmentioned for now; however, they will be disclosed at that time when I approach this sacrifice. But now, let all who have received the word of God come together, and let me commend them to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he may deign to keep them pure in his teaching. Indeed, I am now being released from my body and I go to that promise, which the Ruler of Heaven and Earth has deigned to promise me, he who is the Son of Almighty God, along with the Holy Spirit48 the True God, who remains into the everlasting ages.” Upon

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fratres, flebant valde et cedebant palmis facies suas cum gemitu magno. Denique convenientibus cunctis, ait iterum: “Scitote, dilectissimi, me discessurum a vobis, sed credo in Iesum, cuius verbum praedico, quia custodiet vos a malo, ut non divellatur ab inimico haec messis, quam in vobis serui, id est cognitio et doctrina Iesu Christi domini mei. Vos autem orate iugiter et state fortes in fide, ut, evulsam Dominus omnem zizaniam scandali, tamquam triticum mundum in horreo vos caelesti congregare dignetur.” Et sic per dies quinque docebat eos et confirmabat in praeceptis Dei. Post haec autem expansis manibus oravit ad Dominum, dicens: “Custodi, quaeso, Domine, gregem hunc, qui iam tuam cognovit salutem, ut non praevaleat illi malignus, sed quae, te iubente, me dispensante, suscepit, inviolatum custodire mereatur in saecula saeculorum.” Et haec dicens, omnes qui aderant responderunt: “Amen.” Et accipiens panem, gratias agens fregit et dedit omnibus, dicens: “Accipite gratiam quem vobis tradit per me famulum suum Christus dominus Deus noster.” Et osculans singulos atque commendans Domino, in Thesalonica profectus est, ibique biduo docens, discessit ab eis. 21.  Multi autem ex Machedonia fideles profecti sunt cum eo, quorum fuerunt duae naves. Quaerebant autem omnes, ut illam navem in qua apostolus vehebatur conscenderent, desiderantes eum audire loquentem, scilicet ut nec in mari eis deesset verbum Dei. Quibus ait apostolus: “Novi desiderium vestrum, dilectissimi, sed navis haec parvula est. Ergo pueri cum inpedimentis in maiore conscendant nave, vos vero in ista quae minor est nobiscum properabitis.” Et dato eis Anthimo, qui consolaret eos, iussit aliam conscendere navem, quam prope sibi semper iussit adesse, ut et ipsi viderent eum et audirent verbum Dei. Dormiente autem eo parumper, quidam vento modico inpulsus, cecidit in mari. Anthimus autem excitavit eum, dicens: “Succurre, doctor bonae; periit autem unus de famulis tuis.” Expergefactus autem apostolus, increpavit ventum, et siluit, et mare tranquillum est redditum. Homo vero qui ceciderat, unda famulante, ad navem devectus est. Cuius manum Anthimus adpraehensam, levavit eum in navi, et omnes admirati sunt virtutem apostoli, quod etiam et mare oboediebat ei. Duodecima igitur die Patras Achaiae civitatem adpulsi sunt, egressique navem, in quodam diversorio morabantur. 22.  Denique cum eum multi rogarent, ut in domibus eorum ingrederetur, dixit: “Vivit Dominus, quia non vadam, nisi quo praeceperit Deus meus.” Et nocte dormiens, nihil revelationis accepit. Altera vero nocte, cum esset ex hoc tristis, audivit vocem dicentem sibi: “Andreas, ego semper tecum sum et non

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­ earing this, the brothers wept profusely, struck their faces with the palms of their h hands, and groaned loudly. At last, when all were assembled, he said again: “Know, most beloved, that I am about to depart from you, but I trust in Jesus, whose word I proclaim, that he will guard you from evil, so that this harvest that I have sown among you, namely the knowledge and teaching of Jesus Christ my Lord, may not be wrested away by the enemy. However, pray without ceasing and stand strong in the faith [1 Pet. 5:9], so that when every weed of scandal has been eradicated, the Lord may deign to gather you together as pure wheat in the heavenly granary.”49 And so, for five days he taught and strengthened them in the precepts of God. After this, he stretched out his hands and prayed to the Lord, saying: “Please, Lord, guard this flock, which now knows your salvation, lest the Evil One prevail over it, but at the same time may it be worthy of keeping inviolate forever and ever those things that it has received through my stewardship of your command.” And as he was saying these things, all who were present responded: “Amen.” And taking bread and giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to all, saying: “Receive the grace that the Lord Christ our God gives to you through me, his servant.” Then, kissing and entrusting each one to the Lord, he set out for Thessalonica, and after teaching there for two days, he departed from them. 21.  Now many of the faithful from Macedonia set out with him, and there were two ships for them. However, all were asking to board that ship on which the apostle was sailing, because they desired to hear him talk, evidently so that even at sea they would not lack the word of God. The apostle said to them: “Most beloved, I know your desire, but this ship is quite small. Therefore, let the servants take the baggage and board the larger ship; you, on the other hand, will sail quickly with us on the smaller ship.” And he ordered Anthimus, who had been given to them for encouragement, to board the other ship, which he ordered to stay always near his ship, so that they also might see him and hear the word of God. Now while he was sleeping for a short time, one man was struck by a small blast of wind and fell into the sea. Anthimus awoke him, saying: “Good teacher, help! One of your servants has perished!” Roused from his sleep, the apostle rebuked the wind and it fell silent, and the tranquil sea returned.50 Moreover, the man who had fallen overboard was carried to the ship by a wave. Anthimus grabbed his hand and lifted him up into the ship. And all marveled at the power of the apostle, that even the sea was obedient to him [Luke 8:25]. So then on the twelfth day they put in at Patras, a city of Achaea, where they disembarked the ship and stayed at an inn. 22.  Finally, when many were begging Andrew to enter their homes, he said: “As the Lord lives, I will not go anywhere except where my God commands.” As he slept that night, he received no revelation. But on the second night, when he was sad because of this, he heard a voice saying to him: “Andrew, I am always with you and

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te derelinquo.” Haec autem audiens, glorificabat Deum pro hac visione. Lisbius vero proconsul admonitus est per visum, ut susciperet hominem Dei. At ille misit ad hominem qui eos hospitio reciperat et rogavit, ut adduceret sibi beatum apostolum. Quod cum ille audisset, venit ad proconsulem, et ingressus cubiculum eius, vidit eum iacentem clausis oculis quasi mortuum. Pungensque latus illius, ait: “Surge et enarra nobis quae tibi contigit.” Et ille: “Ego,” inquid, “sum qui execrabam viam quam doces et misi milites cum navibus ad proconsulem Machedoniae, ut vinctum te transmittens mihi, morte damnarem. Sed naufragia perferentes, numquam potuerunt accedere quo iussi sunt. Cumque in hac intentione durarem, ut distruerem viam tuam, apparuerunt mihi duo viri Aethiopes, qui me flagris cedebant, dicentes: ‘Non possumus hic iam ullam potestatem habere, quia venit homo ille quem persequi cogitabas. Et nunc in hac nocte, in qua adhuc potestatem habemus, ulciscimur nos in te.’ Et sic graviter caesum, recesserunt a me. Nunc autem tu, vir Dei, deprecare Dominum, ut dimittens mihi hoc delictum, saner ab infirmitate qua teneor.” Haec eo coram omni populo narrante, beatus apostolus praedicabat assidue verbum Dei, et credebant omnes. Proconsul vero sanatus, credidit et conroboratus est in fide. 23.  Igitur Trofimae, quae quondam concubina proconsulis fuerat et alio iam viro sociata erat, reliquid virum suum et adherebat apostolicae doctrinae et ob hoc plerumque in domo proconsulis veniebat, in quam iugiter docebat apostolus. Iratus autem vir eius venit ad dominam suam, dicens: “Trofima recolens scortum, quod cum domino meo proconsule agere consueverat, ei nunc iterato commiscetur.” At illa succensa felle, ait: “Idcirco ergo me reliquid vir meus et iam sex mensibus non coniungitur mihi, eo quod diligat ancillam suam.” Et vocato procuratore, iussit eam scorto damnari. Nec mora, deducitur ad lupanar ac lenoni donatur. Sed nihil horum Lisbius sciebat, requirens tamen eam, ab uxore deludebatur. At illa ingressa lupanar, orabat assidue, cumque venissent qui eam contingerent, ponebat euangelium quod secum habebat ad pectus suum, et statim omnes vires perdebant accedens ad eam. Quidam vero inpudicissimus veniens, ut inluderet ei, resistente autem ea, disrupit vestimenta eius, et cecidit euangelium ad terra. Trofimae vero lacrimans, extensis ad caelum manibus, dixit: “Ne patiaris me, Domine, pollui, ob cuius nomine diligo castitatem.” Et statim apparuit ei angelus Domini, et iuvenis caecidit ante pedes eius et mortuus est. At illa confortata, benedicebat et glorificabat Dominum, qui non permiserat eam deludi. Sed

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I will not leave you [Josh. 1:5].” Now hearing this, he glorified God for the vision. Now the proconsul Lisbius was urged through a vision to receive the man of God. Thereupon, he sent word to the man who had received [Andrew and his party] at the inn, asking him to bring the blessed apostle to him. When Andrew had heard this, he came to the proconsul, and entering Lisbius’s bedroom, he saw him lying with his eyes shut, as though he were dead. Poking his side, Andrew said: “Get up and tell us what has happened to you.” And Lisbius said: “I am a man who detested The Way,51 which you teach, and I sent soldiers with ships to the proconsul of Macedonia for him to bind you and hand you over to me, in order that I might condemn you to death. But enduring shipwrecks, they were never able to approach where they were ordered. When I persisted in my aim of destroying your Way, two Ethiopians appeared to me, who began striking me with whips, saying: ‘We will no longer have any authority here, because that man you intend to persecute is coming. And yet now on this night, in which we still have authority, we avenge ourselves on you.’52 After violently beating me thus, they withdrew from me. But in view of this, you, man of God, beseech the Lord, that by forgiving me this crime, I may be healed of this weakness that holds me.” Because he was relating these events in the presence of all the people, the blessed apostle tirelessly proclaimed the word of God, and all believed. To be sure, after the proconsul was healed, he believed and was strengthened in the faith. 23.  Consequently, Trofima, who at one time had been the concubine of the proconsul Lisbius and was now with another man, left her man and began clinging to the apostolic teaching. On account of this, she would often come to the house of the proconsul, in which the apostle was continually teaching. Angered at this, her man came to his mistress [the proconsul’s wife] and said: “Trofima has resumed her role as a prostitute again, a role that she had been accustomed to play with my master, the proconsul. Now she is sleeping with him again.”53 Bitter and enraged, [the proconsul’s wife] said: “That is the reason my husband left me, and for six months now has not slept with me, because he loves his maidservant [Trofima].” And summoning her agent, she ordered Trofima to be sentenced to a life of prostitution. Without delay, Trofima was led away to the brothel and presented to the brothel-keeper. But Lisbius knew nothing of these matters, and when inquiring after her, was fooled by his wife. But meanwhile Trofima, after entering the brothel, prayed incessantly, and when men came to take hold of her, she would place the gospel,54 which she had with her, on her chest, and at once they would become impotent as they approached her. However, a man most shameless came to her for sex, but as she resisted, he tore her clothing, and the gospel fell to the ground. Through her tears and with hands stretched toward heaven, Trofima said: “Lord, do not allow me to be violated because I choose chastity in your name.” And at once an angel of the Lord appeared, and the young man fell down before her feet and died. And now comforted, she blessed and glorified the Lord, who had not

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­ ostmodum in nomine Iesu Christi resuscitavit puerum, et omnis civitas p cucurrit ad hoc spectaculum. Uxor vero proconsulis abiit ad balneum cum procuratore suo. Cumque lavarentur simul, apparuit eis daemon teterrimus, a quo percussi ambo ceciderunt et mortui sunt. Et ecce planctus magnus factus est, et nuntiatum est apostolo et proconsuli, quod uxor eius cum lenone mortua erat. Tunc beatus Andreas haec audiens, ait populo: “Videte, dilectissimi, quantum praevalet inimicus, nam Trofime propter pudicitiam damnaverunt scorto. Nunc autem iudicium Dei adfuit, et ecce materfamilias, quae eam in lupanar poni iussit, cum lenone suo percussa in balneum, cecidit et mortua est.” Haec eo dicente, ecce advenit nutrix eius, quae prae senectute manibus deportabatur aliorum, scissis vestibus, cum clamore magno, et deposita coram apostolo, rogare coepit, dicens: “Scimus, quia dilectus Dei es, et quaecumque petieris Deum tuum praestat tibi. Nunc autem miserere mei et resuscita illam.” Condolens beatus apostolus super lacrimas mulieris, conversus ad proconsulem, ait: “Vis, ut resuscitetur?” Cui ille: “Absit,” inquid, “ut vivat, quae tantum flagitii commisit in domo mea.” Et apostolus: “Noli,” ait, “sic agere; miserere enim nos oportet petentibus, ut misericordiam consequamur a Deo.” Haec eo dicente, perrexit proconsul ad praetorium; sanctus vero apostolos iussit corpus exhiberi in medium, et accedens, ait: “Rogo, benigne domine Iesu Christe, ut resuscitetur haec mulier, et cognoscant omnes, quia tu es dominus Deus solus misericors et iustus, qui non pateris innocentes perire.” Et conversus, tetigit caput mulieris, dicens: “Surge in nomine Iesu Christi Dei mei”; et statim surrexit mulier. Quae, dimisso vultu, flens et gemens, respiciebat in terram. Cui apostolus: “Ingredere in cubiculum tuum et esto secretius orans, donec conforteris a Domino.” Cui illa respondit: “Facito me prius cum Trofime pacificam, in qua tantum mali congessi.” Sanctus apostolus dixit: “Noli timere, non enim meminit Trofimae malorum neque ultionem expectat, sed gratias agit Deo in omnibus quae accesserit ei.” Et vocata Trofimae, pacificavit eas cum Calisto, uxore proconsulis, quae resuscitata erat. Lysbius vero in tantum proficit in fide, ut quadam die accedens ad apostolum, omnia ei confiteretur peccata sua. Cui sanctus apostolus dixit: “Gratias ago Deo, fili, quod times futurum iudicium. Sed viriliter age et confortare in Dominum quem credis.” Et tenens manum eius, deambulabat in litore. 24.  Post deambulationem vero cum sedisset, sedebant et singuli qui cum eo erant super arenam, audientes verbum Dei. Et ecce cadaver enectum in mari proiectum est ante pedes apostoli in litore. Tunc sanctus Andreas

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allowed her to be made sport of. And what is more, a little later she resuscitated a boy in the name of Jesus Christ, and the whole city ran to see this sight. Now the proconsul’s wife went to the baths with her agent. When they were bathing together, a demon most hideous appeared and struck them both dead. And lo, there was great lamentation, and it was reported to the apostle and the proconsul that his wife had died along with the brothel-keeper. Hearing this, the blessed Andrew said to the people: “Most beloved, see to what extent the Enemy has the upper hand, for they sentenced Trofima to prostitution on account of chastity. Now, however, the judgment of God has come, and see, the lady of the house, who ordered Trofima to be placed in a brothel, after being forcibly struck along with her brothel-keeper55 in the baths, has fallen and died.” As he was saying this, look, the nursemaid [of the proconsul’s wife], who was being carried by the hands of others on account of her old age, arrived with torn garments and loud shouting. And after being set down in front of the apostle, she began to beg him, saying: “We know that you are God’s chosen, and whatever you seek from your God, he will give you.56 Have mercy on me and resuscitate her.” Pitying the woman’s tears, the blessed apostle turned to the proconsul and said: “Do you wish that she be resuscitated?” He said to him: “God forbid that she live, she who committed so great a disgrace in my house.” And the apostle said: “Do not behave in this way; for it is right for us to have mercy on those who request that we seek compassion from God.” As he was saying this, the proconsul hastened to the praetorium; however, the holy apostle ordered the body to be displayed in their midst, and approaching, he said: “I beg you, kind Lord Jesus Christ, that this woman be restored to life, and that all may come to know that you are the Lord God, who alone being merciful and just will not allow the innocent to perish.” He turned and touched the woman’s head and said: “Arise, in the name of Jesus Christ my God.” And at once the woman got up. With a downcast expression, weeping and groaning, she held her gaze on the ground. The apostle said to her: “Go into your bedroom and pray in secret until you are comforted by the Lord.” She replied to him: “Allow me first to make peace with Trofima, upon whom I have heaped up so great an evil.” The holy apostle said: “Do not fear, for Trofima neither remembers the evils nor looks for vengeance, but she gives thanks to God in everything that has happened to her.” Summoning Trofima, he made peace between her and Calisto, the proconsul’s wife, who had been resuscitated.57 Now Lisbius advanced to such a degree in the faith that one day he approached the apostle and confessed all his sins to him. The holy apostle said to him: “I thank God, my son, that you fear the judgment to come. But live courageously and find strength in the Lord, in whom you believe.” And holding his hand, he took a walk on the shore. 24.  Now, when he had sat down after his walk, each one who was with him also sat down on the sand, listening to the word of God. And look, the corpse of a man killed at sea was cast upon the shore before the feet of the apostle. Then the holy

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a­ postolus exultans in Domino, ait: “Oportet hunc resuscitari, ut cognoscamus, quid in eum adversarius est operatus.” Et fusa oratione, tenens manum mortui, erexit illum, et statim revixit et loquebatur. Cumque nudus esset, dedit ei tunicam, dicens: “Dic nobis ordinem, expone omnia quae contigerunt tibi.” At ille respondit: “Nihil tibi occultabo, quicumque sis homo. Ego sum Sostrati filius civis Machedonis, qui nuper ab Italia adveni. Sed cum redissem ad propria, audivi doctrinam surrexisse novam, quam nullus hominum prius audivit, sed et signa prodigiaque ac medelas magnas fieri a quodam doctore, qui se veri Dei adfirmat esse discipulum. Ego autem, cum haec audissem, properavi, ut eum videre possim; non enim aliud arbitrabam, nisi ipse esset Deus qui talia ageret. Cumque navigarem cum pueris et amicis meis, subito orta tempestas, commoto mari, obpraessi fluctibus sumus. Et utinam simul proiecti fuissemus, ut et illi resuscitati fuissent a te sicut et ego!” Et haec dicens, volvebat multum in corde suo et arbitrabatur, quod ipse esset apostolus quem quaerebat. Et procidens ad pedes eius, ait: “Scio, quia tu es famulus Dei veri. Rogo pro his qui mecum fuerunt, ut et ipsi, te inpertiente, vitam mereantur, ut cognoscant Deum verum, quem praedicas.” Tunc sanctus apostolus repletus Spiritu sancto, praedicabat ei constanter verbum Dei, ita ut miraretur puer super doctrina eius. Et expansis manibus, ait: “Ostende, quaeso, domine, et reliquorum cadavera mortuorum, ut et ipsi cognoscant te Deum verum et solum.” Haec eo dicente, statim apparuerunt 30 et 9 corpora ad litus, unda famulante, devecta. Tunc, flente iuvene, omnes simul flere coeperunt, prostratique ante pedes apostoli, rogabant, ut et isti resuscitarentur. Sed et Philopater—hoc enim erat nomen pueri—dicebat: “Genitor meus per bonam voluntatem, inpositis necessariis, cum magna pecunia misit me huc. Nunc autem, si audierit quae mihi contigerunt, blasphemat Deum tuum et doctrinam eius refutat. Sed absit, ut ita fiat.” Flentibus autem omnibus, rogavit apostolus, ut congregarentur corpora simul; sparsim enim proiecta fuerant. Congregatis igitur omnibus in unum, ait apostolus: “Quem vis prius resuscitari?” At ille dixit: “Warum conlactaneum meum.” Tunc flexis in terram genibus palmisque extensis ad caelum, diutissime oravit, cum lacrimis dicens: “Iesu bone, resuscita hunc mortuum, qui cum Philopatore nutritus est, ut cognoscat gloriam tuam, et magnificetur nomen tuum in populis.” Et statim surrexit puer, et admirabantur omnes qui aderant. Apostolus autem iterum super singulos orationem fundens, ait: “Quaeso, domine Iesu, ut et isti resurgant, qui de profundo aequoris sunt delati.” Tunc iussit fratribus, ut

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Apostle Andrew, rejoicing in the Lord, said: “It is right for this one to be resuscitated, in order that we may know what the Adversary did to him.” And after pouring out a prayer, taking hold of the dead man’s hand, he raised him up, and at once he was restored to life and began to speak. Since he was naked, Andrew gave him a tunic, saying: “Tell us from start to finish everything that happened to you.” The man replied: “I will hide nothing from you, whoever you may be. I am the son of Sostratus, a citizen of Macedonia, recently arrived from Italy. But when I returned home, I heard that a new teaching had arisen, which no one had heard before, and, moreover, that signs and portents and great cures were taking place through a certain teacher, who affirmed that he was a disciple of the True God. Now when I heard these things, I went quickly, in order that I might be able to see him; for I was of the opinion that it was nothing else but God himself who was doing such things. When I was sailing with my servants and my friends, suddenly there arose a tempest that stirred up the sea, and we were overpowered by the waves. If only we had been cast ashore together, so that they too would have been resuscitated by you, just as I have been.” As he was saying these things, he was mulling over many things in his heart and determined that Andrew himself was the apostle he was seeking. And falling down at his feet, he said: “I know that you are the servant of the True God. I beg on behalf of those who were with me that they too may merit life imparted by you, so that they may know the True God whom you proclaim.” Then the holy apostle, filled with the Holy Spirit, began faithfully preaching the word of God to him in such a way that the young man marveled at his teaching. And extending his hands, Andrew said: “Please, Lord, show the rest of the corpses, so that they too may acknowledge you as the true and only God.” As he was saying this, at once there appeared thirty-nine bodies washed ashore by the waves. Then, as the young man was weeping, all likewise began to weep. Falling down prostrate at the feet of the apostle, they asked that these also might be resuscitated. But Philopater (this was the boy’s name) said: “After loading the necessary provisions [onto the ship], my father through his good will sent me here with a large amount of money. Now, however, if he hears what has happened to me, he will blaspheme your God and refute his teaching. But God forbid that it be so.” Now, while all were weeping, the apostle asked that the bodies be gathered together, for they had been cast ashore here and there. And so, after all the bodies had been gathered together in one place, the apostle asked: “Whom do you want resuscitated first?” The young man said: “Warus, my foster brother.”58 Then, kneeling on the ground and stretching his hands toward heaven, Andrew prayed for a very long time, saying with tears: “Good Jesus, resuscitate this dead man, who was reared with Philopater, so that he may know your glory and that your name may be extolled among people.” And at once the young man got up, and all those present were amazed. Now, pouring out a prayer over each and every corpse, the apostle said: “Lord Jesus, I ask that these, who have been carried away from

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unusquisque tenens mortuum diceret: “Resuscitat te Iesus Christus, filius Dei vivi.” Quod cum factum fuisset, suscitati sunt 30 et 8, et glorificaverunt Deum qui aderant, dicentes: “Non est similis tibi, Domine.” Lysbius vero multa munera obtulit Philopatori, dicens: “Non te contristet amissio facultatum, nec recedas a famulo Dei.” Et erat semper cum apostolo, intendens omnibus quae dicebantur ab eo. 25.  Erat enim mulier Caliopa nomine, quae homicidae coniuncta, conceptum suscipit inlicitum. Ubi vero tempus pariendi venit, artabatur doloribus magnis et partum proferre non poterat. Quae ait sorori suae: “Vade, quaeso, et invoca Dianam deam nostram, ut misereatur mei. Ipsa enim habet studium obstetricandi.” Faciente autem sorore quae sibi imperata fuerant, venit ad eam nocte diabolus, dicens: “Quid me casso invocas, cum tibi nihil prodesse possim? Sed magis vade ad apostolum Dei Andream in Achaia, et ipse miserebitur sorori tuae.” Surrexit igitur mulier et venit ad apostolum et narravit ei omnia haec. At ille nihil moratus venit in Chorinthum ad domum mulieris aegrotantis; erat enim Lysbius proconsul cum eo. Videns vero beatus apostolus mulierem gravium dolorum cruciatu torqueri, ait: “Recte haec pateris, quae male nupsisti, quae doloso concipiens, dolores intolerabiles sustines. Insuper consuluisti daemonia, quae neque ulli neque sibi prodesse possunt. Crede nunc Iesum Christum, filium Dei, et proice puerperium. Verumtamen mortuum egredietur quod indigne concepisti.” Credidit mulier, et egredientibus cunctis de cubiculo, proiecit partum mortuum; et sic a doloribus liberata est. 26.  Cum autem multa signa et prodigia faceret beatus apostolus in Chorintho, Sostratus, pater Philopatoris, admonitus per visum, ut apostolum visitaret, venit in Achaia, et cum non invenisset eum, pervenit in Chorintho. Cumque cum Lysbio et aliis deambularet, cognovit eum Sostratus, sicut ei iam per somnium erat ostensus, complexusque pedes eius, ait: “Miserere mei, quaeso, famulae Dei, sicut et filio meo misertus es.” Philopater autem ait apostolo: “Hic est pater meus quem cernis. Nunc autem interrogat, quid eum oporteat agere.” Et beatus apostolus ait: “Scio, quia pro cognoscenda veritate ad nos venerit. Gratias agimus domino nostro Iesu Christo, qui se credentibus revelare dignatur.” Leontius autem, servus Sostrati, ait ad eum: “Vides, domine, qua luce refulgeat vultus hominis huius?” Cui ille: “Video,” inquid, “dilectissime, et ideo non discedamus ab eo, sed simul cum illo vivamus et audiamus verba vitae aeternae.” Et sequenti die obtulit apostolo munera

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the depths of the sea, may also rise.” Then he ordered each of the brothers to hold the hand of a dead person and say: “May Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, resuscitate you.” When they had done this, the thirty-eight were resuscitated, and those present glorified God, saying: “There is none like you, Lord [Ps. 85:8].” Indeed, Lisbius offered many gifts to Philopater, saying: “Do not be saddened by the loss of your resources and do not depart from the servant of God.” And Philopater was always with the apostle, attending to his every word. 25.  There was a woman named Caliopa, who had married a murderer and conceived an illegitimate child. When the time came for her to give birth, she was restricted with great pains and was not able to deliver the child. She said to her sister: “Please, go and call upon our goddess Diana59 to have mercy on me, for she is devoted to assisting in childbirth.” Now, as her sister was doing what she had been commanded to do, a devil came to her at night, saying: “Why do you call upon me in vain, since I am not at all able to benefit you? Rather, go to the apostle of God, Andrew, in Achaea, and he will have mercy on your sister.” Therefore, the woman rose up and came to the apostle and told him all these things. Without delay, he came to Corinth, to the house of the suffering woman; and, in fact, Lisbius the proconsul was with him. Indeed, when the blessed apostle saw the woman wracked with severe labor pains, he said: “Rightly you suffer these things, you who wedded wrongly; and because you conceived a child with a treacherous man, you are bearing intolerable pain. Moreover, you consulted demons, who are able to benefit neither anyone nor themselves. Believe now in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and cast out the newborn. In truth, the child you unworthily conceived will be stillborn.” The woman believed, and after all had left the bedroom, she cast out the dead offspring. Thus, she was freed from her pains.60 26.  Now, when the blessed apostle was doing many signs and portents in Corinth, Sostratus, the father of Philopater, urged through a vision to visit the apostle, came to Achaea, and when he did not find him, he came to Corinth. When Andrew was strolling about with Lisbius and others, Sostratus recognized him, just as he had been shown to him through the dream, and embracing the feet of the apostle, he said: “Please, have mercy on me, servant of God, just as you had mercy on my son.” And now Philopater said to the apostle: “The man you see is my father. But now he asks what he should do.” The blessed apostle said: “I know that he has come to us to learn the truth. We give thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ, who deigns to reveal himself to those who believe.” Now Leontius, the slave61 of Sostratus, said to him: “Master, do you see with what light the countenance of this man brightly shines?”62 He said to him: “I do see, most beloved, and, therefore, let us not depart from him, but together let us live with him and hear the words of eternal life.” And the ­following day, he offered many gifts to the apostle; but the holy man of God said

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multa; sanctus vero Dei dixit ad eum: “Non est meum accipere aliud ex vobis, nisi vos ipsos lucri faciam, cum credideritis in Iesum, qui me misit euangelizare in hunc locum. Si pecuniam desiderassem, Lysbium diciorem repperissem, qui me multo ditare potuerat; nam vos in his conferte mihi, in quibus vobis proficiat ad salutem.” 27.  Post dies autem paucos iussit sibi balneum praeparari, et cum venisset lavandi gratia, vidit senem daemonium habentem et trementem valde. Quem dum admiraretur, alius puer adolescens egressus de piscina, procidit ad pedes apostoli, dicens: “Quid nobis et tibi, Andreas? Venisti huc, ut destruas nos a sedibus nostris?” Erectus autem, adstante populo, dixit apostolus: “Nolite timere, sed credite in Iesum salvatorem nostrum.” Clamantibus autem omnibus: “Credimus quae praedicas,” increpavit utrumque daemonem, et egressi sunt a corporibus obsessis, dimissique vel senex vel adolescens, redierunt ad propria sua. Beatus vero apostolus lavans, disserebat, quia: “Inimicus generis humani ubique insidiatur, sive in lavacris sive in fluminibus. Et idcirco nomen Domini assidue invocandum erit, ut is qui vult insidiari non habeat potestatem.” Quod videntes viri civitatis, veniebant et adferebant aegrotos, ponentes ante eum, et curabantur. Sed et de aliis civitatibus veniebant cum infirmis, et ipsi sanabantur et libenter audiebant verbum Dei. 28.  Dum haec agerentur, ecce quidam senex Nicolaus nomine, scissis vestibus, venit ad apostolum, dicens: “Famule Dei, ecce 74 anni sunt vitae meae, in quibus non discessi ab inmunditiis et scorto ac fornicatione, plerumque praeceps deductus ad lupanar, et exercebam inlicita. Et nunc tertia dies est, in qua audivi miracula quae agis et praedicationes tuas, quae sunt plenae verbis vitalibus. Cogitabam enim mecum, ut, relicto hoc opere, venirem ad te, ut mihi ostenderes meliora. Sed dum haec cogitarem, veniebat mihi alius sensus, ut haec relinquerem et non facerem bonum quod cogitabam. Luctante igitur conscientia mea, accepi euangelium et oravi Dominum, ut haec aliquando me faceret oblivisci. Post dies vero paucos oblitus euangelii, quod super me erat, inflammante cogitatione perversa, abii iterum ad lupanar. Et ecce mulier meretrix videns me, ait: ‘Egredere, senex, egredere; angelus enim Dei es tu. Ne contingas me neque adpropinques in hoc loco; video enim in te misterium magnum.’ Cumque ego obstupefactus cogitarem quid hoc esset, recolui, quod euangelium mecum habebam. Et conversus, veni ad te famulum Dei, ut miserearis erroribus meis; spes enim mihi est maxima, quod non peream, si oraveris pro humilitate mea.” Haec audiens beatus Andreas, cum

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to him: “It is not for me to receive anything from you, except that I reap the benefit of you, when you believe in Jesus, who sent me into this place to preach the gospel. If I had desired money, I would have found Lisbius to be richer, who could have made me much wealthier; moreover, devote yourselves to me in these things, in which it may benefit you for salvation.” 27.  A few days later, he ordered a bath prepared for himself, and when he had come to bathe, he saw an old man, possessed by a demon and trembling greatly. While Andrew was marveling at him, an adolescent boy came out of the pool and fell at the feet of the apostle, saying: “What do we have to do with each other, Andrew? Have you come here to drive us from our home?” Having gotten up, with people standing nearby, the apostle said: “Do not fear, but believe in Jesus our Savior.” As all were shouting, “We believe what you proclaim,” he rebuked each of the two demons, and they came out from the bodies they had occupied. Both the old man and young man were sent away and returned to their homes. While the blessed apostle was bathing, he taught: “The Enemy of the Human Race lies in wait everywhere, whether in bath waters or in rivers.63 Therefore, you must continually invoke the name of the Lord, so that he who wishes to lie in ambush has no dominion.” Upon seeing this, the men of the city came and brought their sick, placing them before the apostle, and they were cured. And what is more, from other cities, too, [people] came with their sick, and they were healed and gladly heard the word of God. 28.  While these things were being done, behold, an old man by the name of Nicolaus64 came with his clothes torn to the apostle, saying: “Servant of God, look, I am seventy-four years old. During this time, I have not departed from lust, prostitution, and fornication. Frequently, I have been impetuously drawn to brothels and practiced unlawful things. And now this is the third day on which I have heard of the miracles you do and your proclamations that are full of life-giving words. In fact, I began thinking to myself that I would leave that business behind me and come to you, in order that you might show me better things. But while I was pondering this, another thought came to me, that I should leave behind these [better] things and not do the good that I was considering. Therefore, as I was wrestling with my conscience, I received the gospel and I asked the Lord to now at last make me forget these things [my way of life]. However, a few days later, forgetful of the gospel that I had with me and inflamed by perverted thoughts, I returned again to the brothel. And behold, a prostitute who saw me said: ‘Go away, old man, go away! For you are a messenger of God. Do not touch me or approach this place, for I see in you a great mystery.’ Dumbstruck and pondering what she meant, I remembered that I had the gospel with me. I turned around and came to you, servant of God, so that you might take pity on the errors of my way; for my greatest hope is that I should not perish if you pray on behalf of my humility.” Hearing this, the blessed Andrew, since Nicolaus had to a great extent ceased from his fornication, fell to his knees,

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multa contra fornicatione deseruisset, prostratus genibus, expansis manibus, tacitus orabat, emittens gemitus cum lacrimis ab ora diei sexta usque in horam nonam. Surgens autem, abluta facie, nihil accipere voluit, dicens: “Non gustabo, donec cognoscam, si miserebitur Deus huic homini, et si sit reputandus inter salvatos.” Et ieiunans altera die, nihil ei revelatum est de homine usque ad quintum diem, in quo flens vehementer, dicebat: “Domine, pro mortuis obtinemus pietatem tuam, et nunc iste, qui tua cognoscere desiderat magnalia, cur non revertatur, ut sanes illum?” Haec eo dicente, vox de caelis delata est, dicens: “Obtines, Andreas, pro sene; sed sicut tu ieiuniis fatigatus es, ita et ipse studeat ieiunium, ut salvetur.” Et vocans eum, praedicavit ei abstinentiam. Die vero sexta vocavit suos et rogavit, ut orarent universi pro eo. Qui prostrati solo, orabant dicentes: “Domine pie, misericors, remitte homini delictum suum.” Quo facto, et ipse gustavit et ceteros manducare permisit. Nicolaus autem rediens ad domum suam, omnia quae habebat distribuit indigentibus; ipse quoque multum se excruciavit, ita ut per sex menses nihil aliud quam aquam acciperet et pane arido vesceretur. Exacta enim digna paenitentia, excessit a saeculo. Beatus autem apostolus non erat praesens, sed in loco quo erat vox ad eum facta est, dicens: “Andreas, meus effectus est Nicolaus, pro quo depraecatus es.” At ille gratias agens, narravit fratribus, Nicolaum excessisse de corpore, orans, ut in pace quiesceret. 29.  In quo loco dum commoraretur, venit ad eum Antiphanis civis Megarinsis et ait ad eum: “Si qua est in te bonitas iuxta praeceptum Salvatoris, quem praedicas, beate Andreas, nunc ostende et libera domum meam de insidia qua temptatur. Ecce enim valde turbata est.” Cui sanctus apostolus: “Enarra,” ait, “nobis, homo, quae contigerit tibi.” Et ille: “Dum de itinere,” inquid, “reversus domui fuissem et ingrederem ianuam atrii mei, ecce audivi vocem ianitoris miserrime declamantem. Cumque interrogassem, quae essent haee voces, narraverunt mihi qui aderant, ipsum cum uxore et filio male a daemonio torqueri. Ascendens vero ad superiora domus, vidi alios pueros stridentes dentibus et in me impetum facientes et adridentes risos insanos. Quos cum praeterirem, ascendi iterum ad alia superiora, in qua coniux iacebat ab his verberata gravissime. Quae ita erat amentiae fatigatione turbata, ut, caesariem super oculos dimissam, neque aspicere neque me cognoscere possit. Hanc ergo, rogo, ut restituas mihi tantum, de ceteris vero curam non habeo.” Tunc sanctus apostolus misericordia motus, ait: “Non est enim acceptio personarum apud Deum, qui propterea venit, ut cunctos salvos faceret pereuntes.” Et ait: “Eamus ad domum

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and with hands stretched forth he began praying silently, sending forth groans mixed with tears from the sixth hour of the day until the ninth.65 And now, rising up, he washed his face and wanted nothing to eat, saying: “I will not eat until I know if the Lord will take pity on this man and if he is to be reckoned among the saved.” Although he fasted the next day, nothing was revealed to him about the man until the fifth day, when weeping passionately he said: “Lord, on behalf of the dead we obtain your compassion. Now why should this man, who desires to know your mighty works, not come back, in order that you may heal him?” As he was saying these things, a voice came down from heaven, saying: “Andrew, you have succeeded on behalf of the old man. But just as you are worn down from fasting, so let him also be zealous for fasting, in order that he may be saved.” And calling him, Andrew preached abstinence to him. On the sixth day, he called his [followers] and asked them all to pray for Nicolaus. Lying prostrate on the ground, they prayed, saying: “Kind Lord, Merciful One, pardon this man his offence.” After this, he took food and allowed the rest to eat. But returning to his home, Nicolaus distributed everything he possessed to the needy. He also tormented himself much, to such a degree that for six months he drank and ate nothing but water and dry bread. To be sure, after completing a worthy penance,66 he departed from this life. Now the blessed apostle was not present [at Nicolaus’s passing], but a voice spoke to the apostle in the place where he was, saying: “Andrew, Nicolaus, on whose behalf you interceded, has become mine.” Giving thanks, he told the brothers that Nicolaus had departed from the body and prayed that he rest in peace. 29.  While Andrew was staying in that place, Antiphanes, a citizen of Megara, came to him and said to him: “Blessed Andrew, if there is any integrity in you according to the instruction of the Savior, whom you proclaim, show it now and free my house from the attack that troubles it, for lo, it has been thrown into great confusion.” The holy apostle said to him: “Tell me, man, what has happened to you.” He said: “At the time that I returned home from a journey and was entering the door of my atrium, behold, I heard the voice of my doorkeeper shouting in a most wretched way. When I asked what these cries were, those who were present told me that he along with his wife and son were being badly tormented by a demon. Now ascending to the upper part of the house, I saw other boys67 gnashing their teeth, both as they were assaulting me and laughing insanely. When I had passed by them, I climbed again to another story, where my wife was lying after being severely beaten by them. She was so disturbed from her struggle with madness that, with her hair down over her eyes, she could neither look at nor recognize me. Therefore, I beg that you restore only her to me; to be sure, I do not care about the others.” Then the holy apostle was moved with compassion and said: “God does not play favorites [Rom. 2:11]. For that reason he came, in order to save the perishing.” And he said: “Let us go to the house.” And when p­ roceeding

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eius.” Cumque procedens a Lachedaemone venisset in Megara, ingressi sunt ianuam domus, et statim omnes daemones unius vocis impetu clamaverunt, dicentes: “Ut quid nos hic, Andreas sanctae, persequeris? Ut quid domum non tibi concessam adis? Quae tua sunt posside, quae nobis concessa sunt ne adicias penetrare.” Sed sanctus apostolus nimis de his admirans, ascendit in cubiculum quo mulier decubabat, et facta oratione, adpraehensam manum eius, ait: “Sanat te dominus Iesus Christus.” Et statim surrexit mulier a lectulo et benedicebat Deum. Similiter et singulis quibusque qui a daemonio vexabantur inponens manum, sanitati restituit habuitque deinceps Anthiphanem et uxorem eius firmissimos adiutores ad praedicandum verbum Dei. 30.  Veniens vero beatus apostolus Patras civitate, in qua proconsul Egeas erat, qui nuper Lysbio successerat, et accessit ad eum quaedam mulier Efidama nomine, quae ex doctrina Sosiae cuiusdam apostolici discipuli iam conversa fuerat, et amplectens pedes beati apostoli, ait: “Andreas sanctae, rogat te domina mea Maximilla, quae magnis febribus retenetur, ut accedas ad eam, libenter enim vult audire doctrinam tuam. Nam et proconsul, coniux eius, stat ante lectulum, flens gladiumque in manu tenens, ut, cum illa spiritum exalaverit, iste se mucrone perfodeat.” At ille, praecedente Effidima, venit ad cubiculum in quo mulier iacebat incommoda, et videns stantem praesidem cum evaginato gladio, ait: “Nihil tibi nunc mali feceris, sed reconde gladium tuum in locum suum. Erit enim tempus, quando ad nos exerendus erit.” Sed nihil intellegens praesis, dedit accedendi locum. Tunc apostolus veniens ante lectum infirmae, facta oratione, adpraehendit manum eius, et statim sudore perfusa est mulier, et discessit ab ea febris, iussitque ei apostolus dare cibum. Proconsul autem centum argenteos obtulit sancto Dei, quos ille nec aspicere voluit. 31.  Inde discedens, vidit hominem iacentem in stercore debilem, cui multi e civibus stipem porrigebant, unde alimentum haberet. Et ait ad eum apostolus: “In nomine Iesu Christi, surge sanus.” Qui protinus surgens, glorificabat Deum. 32.  Degressus vero in alio loco, vidit hominem caecum cum uxore et filio et ait: “Vere diaboli hoc est opus. Ecce enim quos et mente caecavit et corpore.” Et ait: “Ecce ego vobis in nomine Dei mei Iesu Christi corporalium oculorum restituo lumen; ipse quoque mentium vestrarum tenebras reserare dignetur, ut, cognita luce, quae inluminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum, salvi esse possitis.” Et inponens eis manus, aperuit oculos eorum.

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from Lacedaemonia they had come to Megara, they entered the door of the house, and at once all the demons shouted violently with one voice, saying: “Holy Andrew, why do you pursue us here? Why do you come to a home not given to you? Occupy what is yours; do not proceed to enter what has been given to us. But while marveling very much at them, the holy apostle ascended to the bedroom where the woman was lying, and after saying a prayer, he took her hand and said: “The Lord Jesus Christ heals you [Acts 9:34].” And at once the woman got up from her bed and began blessing God. Likewise, by the laying on of his hand, Andrew restored to health each and every one who was being harassed by a demon, and from that time on had Antiphanes and his wife as his very steadfast assistants for proclaiming the word of God. 30.  Now, as the blessed apostle was coming to the city of Patras, where Egeas had recently succeeded Lisbius as proconsul, a woman named Efidama approached him. She had by that time been converted by the teaching of Sosias, a disciple of the apostle, and embracing the feet of the blessed apostle, said: “Holy Andrew, my mistress Maximilla, who is being held back from coming to you herself by a great fever, asks that you come to her, for she gladly wishes to hear your teaching. And in fact, the proconsul, her husband, stands before her bed, weeping and holding a sword in his hand, in order that he may stab himself with its sharp tip when she dies.” With Efidama leading the way, he came to the bedroom in which the ailing woman was lying, and seeing Egeas standing as a guard with sword unsheathed, he said: “Do not harm yourself [Acts 16:28] now, but put away your sword in its place [Matt. 26:52], for there will come a time when you will have to draw it against me.” Although Egeas understood nothing, he stepped aside. Then the apostle came before the bed of the sick woman, and after saying a prayer, he took her hand, and at once the woman was covered with sweat, and her fever broke, and the apostle ordered that she be given food. Now the proconsul offered one hundred silver coins to the holy man of God, which he was not willing to look at. 31.  Departing from there, he saw a crippled man lying in dung, to whom many of the citizens were offering alms from which he might have nourishment. And the apostle said to him: “In the Name of Jesus Christ, rise up healthy.” Immediately rising up, he began glorifying God. 32.  Going down to another place, he saw a blind man with his wife and son. He said: “Truly this is the work of a devil. Look, here are those whom he has blinded in both mind and body!” And he said to them: “See here, in the name of my God Jesus Christ I restore your sight; he also deigns to draw back the darkness of your minds, in order that, when you recognize the light that shines upon every person coming into this world [John 1:9],68 you may be saved.” Laying hands upon them, he opened their eyes. And they fell down, kissed his feet, and

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At illi procidentes, osculabantur pedes eius et dicebant, quia: “Non est alius Deus nisi quem praedicat famulus eius Andreas.” 33.  Videns autem haec signa quidam, ait ad eum: “Rogo te, famule Dei, ut digneris accedere usque portum; est enim ibi homo, nautae cuiusdam filius, qui ab annis quinquaginta in debilitate nimia proiectus a domo, iacet in litore, cui nullius medici potuit cura valere. Ecce enim est ulceribus plenus et scatens vermibus.” Haec eo dicente, prosecutus beatus apostolus, venit ad eum. Quem intuitus infirmus, ait: “Forsitan tu es discipulus Dei illius qui solus salvare potest.” Cui sanctus apostolus ait: “Ego sum qui in nomine Dei mei te sanitati restituo.” Et adiecit: “In nomine Iesu Christi, surge et sequere me.” At ille, relictis pannis purolentis, in quibus tabis defluxerat, sequebatur eum, profluente pure cum vermibus a corpore eius. Cumque venisset ad mare, ingressi sunt utrique in aquam. Tunc sanctus apostolus abluens eum in nomine Trinitatis, ita sanum reddidit, ut nullum paenitus infirmitatis huius corpori resedisset indicium. Tantaque fide post accepta sanitate accensus est, ut nudus per civitatem currerit, adnuntians, quia: “Ille est verus Deus quem Andreas praedicat.” Et mirabantur omnes, congratulantes sospitati eius. 34.  Cumque talia apud Patras per beatum apostolum agerentur, advenit Stratocleus, frater proconsulis, de Italia. Et ecce unus ex pueris eius Algmana nomine, quem praetiosum habebat, ab inpulsu daemonis percussus, iacebat spumans in atrio; et ecce tumultus magnus factus est. Et nuntiata sunt haec Stratocleo, qui nimio animi dolore commotus, ait: “Utinam me prius mare obsorbuisset, quam haec vidissem de puero!” Videntes autem eum dolentem Maximilla et Efidama, dicunt: “Noli contristari, frater; mox enim puer recuperabitur. Est enim hic vir Dei, qui viam salutis ostendens, multos revocat ab infirmitate ad integram sanitatem. Mittamus ad illum, et statim reddit puerum sanum.” Denique, arcessito apostolo, rogaverunt eum pro puero. At ille, adpraehensam manum eius, ait: “Surge, puer, in nomine Iesu Christi Dei mei, quem praedico.” Et statim surrexit incolomis. Stratocleus vero credidit in Domino et confortatus est in fide et non discedebat ab apostolo, sed cotidie adherens ei audiebat verbum salutis. 35.  Omni enim die Maximilla ad praetorium veniens, vocabat apostolum et audiebat ab eo verbum Dei, quia proconsul discesserat a Patras et abierat in Machedonia. Magna enim indignatione succensus erat contra apostolum, eo quod Maximilla, uxor eius, post acceptum salutis verbum non ei coniungebatur. Illo quoque redeunte, cum omnes in praetorio resederent et audirent

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said: “There is no other God except the one whom his servant Andrew proclaims.” 33.  A certain man who saw these signs said to him: “I beg you, servant of God, that you deign to go to the port; for a man is there, the son of a sailor, who has been very sick for fifty years. He lies on the shore, having been thrown out of his house. No physician has been able to cure him, for look, he is full of ulcers and teeming with worms.” When the man said this, the blessed apostle followed him and came to him. When the sick man gazed on him, he said: “Perhaps you are the disciple of that God, who alone is able to heal.” The holy apostle said to him: “I am he. In the name of my God, I restore you to health.”69 And he added: “In the name of Jesus Christ, get up and follow me.” And leaving behind his purulent rags onto which pus had flowed, the man followed him, as pus containing worms was flowing out of his body. When they had come to the sea, each one went into the water. Then, washing the man in the name of the Trinity,70 the holy apostle returned him to such a degree of health that no sign of the infirmity remained within his body. Upon receiving his health, the man was afterward enflamed with so great a faith that he ran naked through the city, announcing: “The god whom Andrew proclaims—he is the True God!” And all were amazed and expressed their joy at the man’s deliverance. 34.  When such things were being done at Patras by the blessed apostle, Stratocleus, the brother of the proconsul Egeas, arrived from Italy. And behold, one of his boys named Algmana, whom Statocleus regarded as valuable, had been attacked by a demon and was lying in the atrium, frothing at the mouth; and look, there was a great uproar. This was reported to Statocleus, who, moved with very great grief in his heart, said: “If only the sea had swallowed me before I had seen my boy this way.” Now Maximilla and Efidama saw him grieving and said: “Do not be saddened, brother; soon your boy will recover. For there is here a man of God, who shows the way of salvation and calls many back from illness to full health. Let us send for him, and he will at once return the boy to health.” At last, they summoned the apostle and begged him on behalf of the boy. He, taking hold of his hand, said: “Arise, boy, in the name of Jesus Christ my God, whom I proclaim.” And at once he got up unharmed. Indeed, Stratocleus believed in the Lord and was strengthened in the faith. He did not depart from the apostle, but clinging daily to him he heard the word of salvation. 35.  Coming, in fact, every day to the praetorium, Maximilla called the apostle and listened to the word of God from him, because the proconsul had departed Patras and gone away to Macedonia. To be sure, he was inflamed with great indignation against the apostle, because Maximilla, his wife, after receiving the word of salvation, was not sleeping with him. When all were seated in the praetorium and listening to the word of God, they were thrown into a state of great commotion,

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verbum Dei, turbati sunt valde, timentes, ne aliquam eis vim inferret. Tunc sanctus apostolus oravit, dicens: “Ne patiaris, quaeso, Domine, ingredere proconsulem in hoc loco, donec omnes egrediantur.” Extemplo proconsuli adfuit voluntas purgandi ventris; cumque secessum petisset et moras innecteret, sanctus apostolus singulis manum inponens et signans eos, abire permisit, novissime autem se signans, et ipse discessit. Sed Maximilla, cum primum invenisset locum, statim veniebat ad sanctum apostolum, et suscipiens verbum Dei, regrediebatur ad domum suam. 36.  Post haec conpraehensus beatus apostolus ab Egea proconsule, positus est in carcere. Ad quem omnes conveniebant, ut audirent verbum salutis. At ille non cessabat praedicare nocte et die verbum Dei. Paucis vero diebus interpositis, eductus de carcere et gravissime caesus, cruci suspensus est. In qua cum per triduum vivens penderet, non cessabat praedicare Dominum salvatorem, donec tertia die, populis flentibus, spiritum exalaret, quod lectio passionis eius plenissime declarat. Cuius beatum corpus Maximilla accipiens, conditum aromatibus recondidit in sepulchro, assidue super illum depraecans Dominum et, ut ei beatus apostolus memor esset, exorans. 37.  De quo sepulchro manna in modum farinae et oleum cum odore suavissimo defluit, a quo, quae sit anni praesentis fertilitas, incolis regionis ostenditur. Si exiguum profluit, exiguum terra exhibet fructum; si vero copiose processerit, magna fructuum opulentia ministratur. Nam ferunt, hoc oleum usque ad medium basilicae sanctae decurrere, sicut in primo Miraculorum scripsimus libro. Passionis quoque eius ita ordinem prosecuti non sumus, quia valde utiliter et eleganter a quodam repperimus fuisse conscriptum. 38.  Haec sunt quae de virtutibus beati Andreae apostoli praesumpsi, indignus ore, sermone rusticus, pravus conscientia, propalare, depraecans eius misericordiam, ut, sicut in illius natale processi ex matris utero, ita ipsius obtentu eruar ab inferno, et, sicut in die passionis eius sumpsi vitae huius exordium, ita me sibi proprium adscire dignetur alumnum. Et quia de maioribus meritis revocat nos pars magna facinoris, hoc tantum temerarius praesumo petere, ut, cum ille post iudicium dominico corpori conformatus refulget in gloria, saltem obtineat pro inmensis criminibus mihi vel veniam non negandam.

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fearing that the proconsul, who was on his way back, would do some violence to them. Then the holy apostle prayed, saying: “Please, Lord, do not allow the proconsul to come into this place until all go out.” Right away, the proconsul had an urgent need to purge his belly;71 and when he was looking for a latrine and trying to devise ways to delay [the departure of the people from the praetorium], the holy apostle, placing his hand on each and every one and blessing them with the sign of the cross, allowed them to leave. Now signing himself last of all, he also left. But as soon as Maximilla found an opportunity, she came at once to the holy apostle, and receiving the word of God, she went back to her home. 36.  After this, the blessed apostle was arrested by Egeas the proconsul and placed in prison. All kept coming to him in order to hear the word of salvation. But he did not cease from preaching night and day the word of God. However, after the space of a few days, he was led out of prison, severely beaten, and crucified. While he hung on the cross alive for three days, he did not cease from preaching the Lord as Savior, until on the third day he breathed his last breath as the people wept (as the account of his passion72 declares in full). Receiving his blessed body, Maximilla embalmed it with spices and buried it in a tomb, pleading to the Lord continually over him and praying that the blessed apostle remember her. 37.  From Andrew’s tomb flowed manna like flour and olive73 oil with a most pleasant odor.74 This flow shows the inhabitants of the region what the fertility of the present year will be. If a meager amount flows forth, the earth produces a meager crop; but if it comes forth abundantly, the supply of produce is great. For they say that this oil runs down to the middle of the holy basilica, just as I have written in the first book of the Miracles.75 Accordingly, I also have not described in detail his passion, because I have found that someone else has written it in a very useful and elegant manner. 38.  I have ventured to publish these accounts of the mighty deeds of Blessed Andrew the Apostle, in spite of the fact that my speech is unworthy, my prose provincial, and my conscience flawed. I do so, pleading for his mercy that just as on the anniversary of his death I came forth from my mother’s womb,76 so may I be rescued from Hell by his covering,77 and just as on the day of his passion I entered upon my life, so may he deign to adopt me as his protégé.78 And because a great portion of guilt checks me from greater rewards, I boldly presume to ask for only this,79 that after the judgment, when he is conformed to the Lord’s body and shines in glory, he may at least gain for me an undeniable pardon for my immeasurable offences.

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Notes   The terms “saint” and “blessed” carry different meanings today. One is “blessed” if on the way to sainthood, while “saint” is reserved for those of full saintly status. In the sixth century, lacking a standardized procedure for sainthood, the terms were interchangeable. Thus Andrew, the first-called apostle of unquestioned sanctity, could be referred to as “blessed” in the title of the MA and “saint” in the prologue. 2   Gregory is alluding to the now lost Acts of Andrew. Since he did not read Greek, he apparently used the later Latin version of the text. 3   This echoes Scripture and the multitude of admonitions to adhere to sound thinking, e.g., Titus 1:9, Acts 15:9, 1 Tim. 1:5, and Ps. 24:4, to name only a few. Given Gregory’s life-long combat with the Arian heresy, this may also seem a veiled criticism of that position. Gregory’s choice of brevity and his use of a colloquial literary style were praised in a dream he had of his late mother, Armentaria, as recounted in VM, Book 1, preface, p. 136; Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 200. 4   Andrew’s use of the word dominus (“lord”) raises a question. The term was often used to signify temporal rule over a region or people and lingered in use as a marker of respect and power well beyond the Middle Ages. Gregory did believe that saints had territorial lordship, with the line between spiritual and temporal power often blurred in practice (cf. Gregory’s account of Clovis’s progress south to engage the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillé in 507 in LH, Book 2, chap. 37, pp. 85–88; Lewis Thorpe, trans., Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks [Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1974], 151–54, where the Frankish king had to acknowledge various saints as he passed through their territories). While today we see the word “lord” as signifying a particular spiritual status, i.e., Jesus, it had a more flexible use in the post-Roman West. In that day, it was more of a term of deference and respect akin to our use of the word “sir” (as in the French monsieur or the Spanish señor). The city of Mermidona eludes location. As Gregory allows Andrew to reply to the angel that “he knows not the way,” he may be speaking for all of us. The legendary inhabitants of Mermidona were said to engage in cannibalism and thus called anthropophagites (“man-eaters”), although Gregory does not mention this aspect in this account of the city. The reference to the land of the cannibals must have appeared in the Acts of Andrew. 5   Cf. Matt. 11:5. 6   Cf. Acts 16:26. 7   Cf. Acts 12:7. 8   Cf. Acts 16:24. Miraculous escapes from confinement are common in hagiography and mirror the wondrous freeing of the apostles in Acts 5:17–24 and Peter’s liberation in Acts 12:1–11. See František Graus, “Die Gewalt bei den Anfängen des Feudalismus und die ‘Gefangenenbefreiungen’ der merowingischen Hagiographie,” Jahrbuch fur Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1961): 61–156, for a good discussion on this trope. 9   The standard baptismal formula, acknowledging the Trinity and, therefore, another reference to the errors of Arianism. 10   A typical Roman punishment for the offense of parricide, the killing of a near relative. The judgment was styled poena cullei, “penalty of the sack.” The sentence provided for the victim to be sewn up alive inside a leather sack, often with live animals such as dogs, snakes, cocks, and even monkeys, depending on availability. Then the victim would be thrown into the river to drown. The proconsul apparently considered Sostratus’s offense against his mother as the equivalent of parricide. 1

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112 Notes   Gregory often employs immediate, and frequently lethal, divine punishment in his writings. Styled velox ultio Dei, “the swift judgment of God,” it can avenge great offenses or even lesser ones, such as combing one’s hair on the Sabbath, or when a citizen of Tours, named Pelagius, “trespassed on a meadow belonging to some nuns … [and] as soon as he began to wield his sickle he was seized by a fever, and on the third day he died” (LH, Book 8, chap. 40, pp. 406–7; Thorpe, History, 472). 12   We might assume either Gratinus’s son was very young and thus permitted into the women’s bathhouse, or, as Tamás Adamik, “Eroticism in the Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli of Gregory of Tours,” in The Apocryphal Acts of Andrew, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, 5th ed. (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 35–46, at 38, believes, the boy’s being in the women’s baths “inflamed his sexual fantasy,” making his presence there a sin. While Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 27, rightly notes that the question of mixed bathing “varied from region to region or even establishment to establishment,” disapproval of this practice was expressed in some Roman sources such as Pliny scorning women “bathing in the company of men” (Pliny, Natural History, vol. 9, Books 33–35, trans. H. Rackham [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952], Book 33, chap. 54, pp. 114–15), and Martial viewing a woman’s refusal to bathe with him as a sexual rejection (Martial, Epigrams, vol. 1, Spectacles, Books 1–5, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993], Book 3, chap. 51, pp. 236–37). It would not be surprising to see disapproval of mixed bathing as Gregory’s sixth-century position. 13  Dropsy, etrops, or, as in Gregory’s other writings, hydrops, is a medical condition in which the victim suffers extreme edema or swelling due to an excessive accumulation of fluid in a body cavity or under the skin. It was mentioned by Gregory in VP, chap. 14, sec. 3, pp. 269–70; Edward James, trans., Gregory of Tours: Life of the Fathers, 2nd ed. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 93, where a man named Nivardus, “his belly and stomach visibly swelling up like a bladder,” was healed by the touch of St. Martin, and also in VM, Book 2, chap. 27, p. 169, as Duke Roccolen, in the process of besieging Tours, came down with dropsy (ab hydrope conflatus) and died; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 243. 14   As saints’ lives often mirror the actions of Christ, such as the casting out of demons from the young man in Matt. 17:14–18, Mark 9:17–26, and Luke 9:37–42, the issue of exorcism does surface. Gregory would have been positively disposed to the position of exorcist, a grade below deacon, because his patron saint, Martin, began his ministry in that office under St. Hilary of Poitiers. In this capacity, Martin would have worked with those not permitted into the mass as a type of social worker meeting the needs of the unbaptized, and his duties would have even included the casting out of demons. Cf. Clare Stancliffe, St. Martin and His Hagiographer: History and Miracle in Sulpicius Severus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 15   Prostitution was an integral part of Roman culture, often seen as an outlet for the male libido in order to protect the marriage union. This rationale did not apply to the wife, however, who would be considered guilty of adultery. The story of Gratinus and his unnamed wife, however, is a Christian one, and stands in stark contrast to the prevailing practice in that Gratinus was considered sinful for his consorting with prostitutes and his wife would have been worthy of death only if she failed to repent. As they both did repent, they were forgiven and restored to health. See Kyle Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), 3: “In the ancient world, the flesh trade was a dominant institution, flourishing in the light of day. The sex industry was integral to the moral economy of the classical world” opposed by “the jarring gospel of Christian sexuality.” Harper also explains that Gregory excised from his text of the Acts of Andrew Maximilla’s hiring of a beautiful slave girl to sleep with her husband Egeas so she would not have to, saying, “Needless to say, this detail did not survive the literary scalpel of Gregory, who makes no mention of the scam” (211–12). 11

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  Cf. John 5:14, where Jesus used similar words to admonish the man healed on the Sabbath.   Cf. Matt. 8:28. The ancient pre-Christian world viewed dead bodies as unclean; consequently, cemeteries, or necropolises, were sited outside the city. Thus the “tombs located beside the road” at Nicea is an expected description. There was also a prevalent belief that the spirits of the dead, or manes, would occasionally appear to the living. Gregory may well have regarded these as “demons.” 18   An echo of Palm Sunday; see above, p. 71. 19   Gregory has Andrew refer, quite plausibly, to the Trinity, but it also may be yet another criticism of Arianism. 20   Calestus is featured here as the first bishop of Nicea. However, the earliest Nicene bishop in the historical record is Theognis, bishop in the early fourth century, who was excommunicated by the Council of Nicea for failing to denounce Arianism. 21   In the Merovingian era, spirits were ascribed emotions. Barbara H. Rosenwein’s Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), 171, discusses the recurring tendency in Merovingian hagiography to ascribe emotions to demons as well as the Devil: “Even the Devil was accorded a complex emotional life in these writings. The emotional community of the elites … saw emotions as animating elements of thought, behavior, and human (and inhuman) interaction.” 22   The use of light to signify a recent encounter with the holy corresponds to Moses’s experience at Mt. Sinai in Exod. 34:29–30, as well as the New Testament account of the Mount of Transfiguration, as described in Matt. 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9. 23   Cf. Matt. 17:2. 24   Cf. Gen. 2:24 and Mark 10:6–9. This statement, ostensibly by Gregory’s hand rather than the anonymous author of the Acts of Andrew, appears to be a well-timed biblical quotation designed to counter the encratic, anti-marriage views appearing in the earlier text. That work had disapproved of marriage as part of its overall Gnostic worldview that saw matters of the flesh as evil. 25   Incest was considered sinful. In Gregory’s day, marriage to one’s stepmother could incur the death penalty, and those who committed other forms of incest were considered to be permanently estranged from God. Ian Wood, “Incest, Law and the Bible in Sixth-Century Gaul,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 291–304, notes that Gregory’s culture “inherited a set of regulations from the Old Testament, and most especially from Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy” (292) and consequently “incest was to become a significant issue for the Frankish church” (301). Curiously, the church councils held incestuous relationships in higher disapproval than bigamy, as the career of several Merovingian kings demonstrated (302). 26   Cf. Matt. 3:7. 27   For information on these wetland plants, the reader may wish to consult Wilhelm Heizmann, Wörterbuch der Pflanzennamen im Alwestnordischen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993). 28  This vignette illustrates a recurring problem in the sixth-century church: how to differentiate between the miraculous and the magical. See the glossary entry magus and note 41 below for more information. 29   Cf. Exod. 14:25. 30   This appears to be more than a simple profane outburst. Rather it was a defixio, or malediction, called down on those opposing a decision. See the glossary entry exsecrantes. 31   As Exuos did not seem to object to his parents disinheriting him, he appears to have chosen the Roman custom of abdicatio, an abdication of property rights. The unusual part of the story is the almost miraculous willingness of the citizens of Thessalonica to give the estate to him upon his parents’ deaths. 32   Although “the poor” or pauperes is commonly used to refer to those who lack financial resources, the concomitant notion of “vulnerability” is also certainly possible. See Karl Bosl, “Potens und Pauper: 16

17

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114 Notes Begriffsgeschichtliche Studien zur gesellschaftlichen Differenzierung im frühen Mittelalter und zum ‘Pauperismus’ des Hochmittelalters,” in Alteuropa und die moderne Gesellschaft, Festschrift für Otto Brunner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 60–87. The word may also have a spiritual meaning, as in “those who are poor in spirit” (cf. Matt. 5:3). This use of pauperum, when describing Exuos’s giving of his inherited wealth to the poor, would seem to signify a material, rather than a spiritual, state. 33   Cf. Luke 2:47. 34   Cf. Isa. 46:9. 35   Cf. Luke 8:50. 36   Cf. Rom. 7:22. 37   Cf. Mark 1:24. 38   Cf. Acts 6:10. 39   PI, chap. 9, p. 118; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 170, also uses holy light in his description of his patron, St. Julian, where a woman recounted a vision of the saint wherein “the gleam of his skin surpassed the whiteness of a lily.” 40   The inability of the unrighteous to find the righteous is a recurring trope in early medieval hagiography. See, e.g., Jonas of Bobbio, Vita sancti Columbani, ed. Bruno Krusch, in Passiones vitaeque sanctorum aevi Merovingici (2), MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 4 (Hanover: Hahn, 1902), Book 1, chap. 20, pp. 90–91: “Venientes ergo milites cum tribuno, peragrantur septa monasterii, virum Dei perquirunt; residebat enim ille in atrio ecclesiae librumque legebat. Ubi cum sepe venissent et propter eum transirent, ita ut nonnulli in eius pedibus suos offenderent et vestimentis suis eius tangerent, obcecatis luminibus, ipsum nequaquam viderent … non enim poteritis vos invenire quem virtus teget divina”; Alexander O’Hara and Ian Wood, trans., Jonas of Bobbio: Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), 22. The Irish wanderer and monastic founder, Columbanus, facing arrest and deportation from Gaul at the order of Queen Brunhilda and her grandson, King Theuderic, was rendered invisible to the soldiers sent to seize him. Although he was “in the vestibule of the church reading a book,” they could not find him, even though they were close enough “that some struck against him with their feet and touched his garments with their garments.” The lesson was that “you will not be able to find him whom the divine power conceals.” 41   Once again, this passage alludes to the perennial, and contested, distinction between miracles and wonders and between religion and magic. Obviously, the point here is that Andrew’s miraculous power is from God, and not of his own manufacture, as that of a magician might be. Such virtus, or holy power, would validate his teachings as “sound.” William E. Klingshirn, “Magic and Divination in the Merovingian World,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World, ed. Bonnie Effros and Isabel Moreira (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 968–87, at 968, believes “the line between spiritual advice and Christian divination may be difficult to draw” because the “lived Merovingian religion” contained elements of both. See the glossary under magus. 42   The identity of the caesar in question turns upon chronology, which is a difficult thing to determine in an apocryphal account. It depends on the dating of Andrew’s martyrdom as a type of terminus ad quem. Given the reference concerning Peter’s death (MA, chap. 20, p. 89), Andrew’s crucifixion would have occurred after AD 67; thus it could have taken place during the reign of Nero (AD 54–68) or during the tumultuous “Year of the Four Emperors” (AD 68–69). 43   These “animal handlers” appear to have had two functions: to lead the bull into the stadium and to wound the animal in order to enrage it, much as picadores still do in Spanish bullfights. 44   A unit of measurement in ancient and medieval times, cubits are often reckoned to be either fourteen or eighteen inches in length, depending on the era and culture. Generally, the measurement described

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the distance from the fingertips to the elbow, the term itself signifying “forearm.” This obviously varied with the size of the people involved. The Greeks had two versions: the pechus of eighteen inches and the pygme of fourteen inches, measured only from the wrist to the elbow. The Romans favored a cubit of just under eighteen inches, although some cultures used a long cubit of as much as twenty-one inches. It is uncertain which value should be assigned to Gregory’s cubits, but as a proud Gallo-Roman it may be assumed he would have had the eighteen-inch one in mind. Accordingly, the snake in the text may have been some seventy-five feet long. Truly a “serpent of wondrous size.” 45   This is a reference to Satan in the Garden of Eden, who is represented in Genesis 3 as a serpent. Cf. Gen. 3:1–5. 46   The distinction between dreams and visions is a difficult one to establish. Generally, a dream occurs at night, while a vision may be experienced in waking hours. Gregory says Andrew’s vision (visum) was at night (nocte), but then calls on his companions to listen to his dream (somnium), suggesting he used the terms interchangeably, much like his treatment of miracula and virtutes. For an excellent analysis of the status and use of these events, see Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000). In addition to providing a fine grounding in the history of visions and dreams, Moreira analyzes whether the experience and power of these visitations was available to common believers or only the spiritual elite. 47   Andrew is experiencing a vision of his eventual death, martyrdom by crucifixion. The poculum Petri or “cup of Peter” is a reference to Matt. 20:22–23, where Jesus used the cup metaphor to describe his impending death on the cross. He also included “cup” for death in his prayer in Gethsemane in Matt. 26:39, Mark 14:36, and Luke 22:42. This fate befell Andrew’s brother Peter, who was crucified, upside down as legend relates, in the late sixties, so Andrew’s death on his cross would seem to have occurred after that. 48   A reaffirmation of the coequal nature of the Trinity, in direct contradistinction to the Arian position that God the Father preceded God the Son. Gregory was much preoccupied with combating Arianism, the central theological issue in the West of his day. 49   Cf. Matt. 13:30. 50   Cf. Mark 4:38–39. 51   “The Way” was an early descriptor of Christianity, apparently based on John 14:6, where Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and referenced in Acts 9:2, where Christians were called followers of The Way. 52   Vengeance was often a controlling factor for Gregory. He frequently described God as Deus ultor, “vengeful God.” God was seen as an intervening deity, punishing immediately those who transgressed. Heavenly vengeance could be enacted through the agency of human beings as well. Even the secular Frankish world in which Gregory functioned struggled with the requirements of feud, or the ritual exaction of vengeance, realizing the ultimately destructive nature of that process. An excellent collection of viewpoints on this is Dominique Barthélemy, François Bougard, and Régine Le Jan, eds., La vengeance, 400–1200 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2006). Of particular interest for our study are the articles by Jean-Marie Moeglin, “Le ‘droit de vengeance’ chez les historiens du droit au Moyen Âge (XIXe–XXe siècles), 101–48, dealing with the historiographical journey of the concept; Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Les émotions de la vengeance,” 237–57, comparing Gregory’s emotional community with the hardening attitudes of the late seventh-century Passio Leudegarii; and Nira Pancer, “La vengeance féminine revisitée: Le cas de Grégoire de Tours,” 307–24, where she concludes that Gregory saw little difference between the violent vengeance of men and women, condemning all such acts. 53   According to Roman marriage laws, a woman was deemed a prostitute if she slept with more than two men and accepted money for the deeds. If a woman left this behavior, as Trofima did, she still retained a type of déclassé dishonor in the public’s eyes (Corpus Iuris Civilis, Digest, trans. Alan Watson,

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116 Notes The Digest of Justinian, vol. 1 [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985], Book 3, chap. 4, p. 83). This marks an entirely different viewpoint from the forgiveness found in Christianity. Cf. the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1–11. Harper, From Shame to Sin, 241–42, notes that in Gregory’s day sexual crimes were punished by private law and not public force. 54   The references to the gospels (evangelium) here and MA, chap. 28, p. 101, raise questions. Since the traditional date for Andrew’s crucifixion is in the 60s, and since the gospels were written at the earliest in the 50s, the chronological window for having copies of these works during Andrew’s ministry is small. This could be an anachronism inserted into the early third-century compilation of the Acts of Andrew and thus carried forward into Gregory’s MA. 55   There does seem to be some confusion as to whether the agent or the brothel-keeper was the one struck dead in the baths along with the proconsul’s wife. In the text of the MGH we read that it is the agent (procurator) who is bathing with the proconsul Lisbius’s wife. When word reaches the proconsul that his wife has died, it is the brothel-keeper (leno) who reportedly shared the same fate with Lisbius’s wife. A variant reading has procuratore for lenone in the text, calling to mind the contemporary use of the word “procurer” for one who supplies prostitutes. 56   Cf. Matt. 21:22. 57   Another point of confusion centers on which parties are involved in the reconciliation following the resuscitation of Calisto, the wife of the proconsul. Although the Latin text reads pacificavit eas (“them”) cum Calisto, seemingly pointing to the fact that more than one female had fallen out with Calisto, the context suggests that Andrew brings about a peace between just Trofima and Calisto, as the variant reading eam (“her”) would support. Moreover, Trofima is the only one summoned (Et vocata Trofime), and only a couple of lines earlier we read that Calisto asks Andrew that she be allowed to make peace with Trofima—and no one else—for the evil inflicted upon her (Facito me prius cum Trofime pacificam, in qua tantum mali congessi). While the use of the plural eas could lead one to wonder whether Calisto’s aged nursemaid (nutrix) was also involved in the reconciliation, again there is nothing in the passage to indicate that the nursemaid felt any animus toward Calisto; in fact, it is the nursemaid herself who in despair and grief implores Andrew to restore her mistress to life. The translation, therefore, reflects all these considerations. 58   The word alumnus can have the meaning of “pupil” but has been translated generally as “foster son”; cf. Raymond Van Dam, trans., Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), 133: “He deigns to protect in this world the foster children who respect his friends” (GM, chap. 106, p. 101: alumnos cultoresque amicorum suorum). As words change their meaning before their spelling, this is an example of the ever-widening gulf between late antique and modern interpretations. Fosterage was a common practice in Roman culture. Philopater chose his foster brother for first resuscitation, but “foster brother” could have a more diverse meaning for ancient and medieval people than today. Fosterage could also signify one who was wet-nursed by the same mother, as indicated in the Latin term conlactaneum (“nursed by the same milk”). Gregory, as a Gallo-Roman, referred to his relationship with St. Julian of Brioude as one of being his “foster son” (alumnus) in PI, chap. 50, pp. 133–34; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 194–95. Perhaps Gregory was signifying their joint access to the “sincere milk of the Word” as in 1 Pet. 2:2. We think of a foster child as being without parents, a status clearly not Gregory’s. While his father may well have died when Gregory was but a boy, his mother, Armentaria, lived at least until the thirty-four-year-old Gregory was installed as bishop of Tours in 573 (cf. VM, Book 3, chap. 10, p. 185; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 264), and appears to have lived for some years beyond that date. The practice of fosterage was quite common among the upper classes in the late antique world, especially if a career choice were involved. The term for Gregory seems to signify a special relationship between the saintly patron and himself as a type of protégé, perhaps as a member of the familia of the saint.

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Notes117

  While Diana (Greek name Artemis) most often appears as the virgin goddess of the hunt in classical literature, over time she also became associated with childbirth. In Callimachus’s Hymn “To Artemis,” trans. A. W. Mair, in Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron: Alexandra. Aratus: Phaenomena, trans. A. W. Mair and G. R. Mair (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1921; reprinted, 1969), lines 20–25, pp. 62–63, Diana asks her father, Zeus, for the power to assist women in childbirth, because she had helped her mother, Leto, in giving birth to her twin brother, Apollo. In Andrew’s day, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Acts 19:23– 41 records a riot that took place in Ephesus over the negative economic impact resulting from the decline in sales of silver shrines to Artemis due to the preaching of the Apostle Paul in that city. Gregory includes a story of Diana’s enduring worship in LH, Book 8, chap. 15, pp. 380–83; Thorpe, History, 445–46: visiting with a Lombard deacon named Vulfoliac, he learned that the man had converted many in the area of Trier and prompted them to pull down and destroy a statue of Diana. 60   In what seems to be a case of divine judgment upon Caliopa regarding her choice of a husband and subsequent pregnancy, Andrew’s pronouncement about the nature of Caliopa’s marriage and the fate of her unborn child are eerily reminiscent of the words spoken by the prophet Nathan to King David in 2 Sam. 12:11–14, concerning his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and David’s attempt to cover up their illicit relationship by having Bathsheba’s husband put in harm’s way in battle, where he was killed. Although sensibilities in general struggle with the biblical notion of the sins of the fathers being visited on the children, such an idea would certainly receive less pushback in the late antique world of Gregory. In VM, Book 2, chap. 24, p. 167; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 239–40, Gregory recounted the story of a woman who became pregnant “on the night before a Sunday” and then delivered a son “whose knees were bent up to his stomach and his heels back to his legs.” Gregory’s judgment on the situation was “that this had happened to his parents because of their sin.” 61   Servus is translated generally in Latin as “slave,” although the term can have multiple meanings and denote various degrees of servitude depending on the situation of the one so designated. Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500–1100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 165, holds that “one reading of unfreedom might well turn into another, depending on the personal circumstances of the dependent and the needs and scope for action of the lord.” Rio also notes that by Gregory’s day there had been a shift in meaning in the term and “household slavery” cannot “be said to correspond to a straightforward survival from the Roman era” (172). By the sixth century even the Church was participating in slavery in the form of servitium, a term for those bound in servitude to the domus ecclesiae, or “church household” circulating around the bishop. See B. W. Reynolds, “The Familia Sancti Martini: Domus ecclesiae on Earth as It is in Heaven,” Journal of Medieval History 11 (1985): 137–43. Gregory often used the word puer, or “boy,” to denote slaves, servants, or other operatives of officials, as in MA, chap. 3, p. 67, chap. 29, p. 103, and chap. 34, p. 107. 62   Once again, a brightly shining countenance is used to convey extreme holiness. 63   This is a reference to the pagan practice of propitiating gods of rivers and lakes with a valuable offering. The Marne River in France was originally called the Matrona, or “Matron,” because of a triad of Celtic goddesses who lived therein and were amenable to receiving offerings. 64   This Nicolaus is a different one from the Nicolaus who appears in chapter 16 of the MA. 65   The duration of Andrew’s prayer vigil for Nicolaus, “from the sixth hour of the day until the ninth,” was based on the first hour being six in the morning [6 a.m.]. Thus, the sixth hour would be noon and the ninth hour would be three in the afternoon [3 p.m.]. This is reminiscent, as is much of Andrew’s ministry, of biblical models. Christ hung on the cross from the sixth to the ninth hour, as is suggested by Matt. 27:45, Mark 15:33–34, and Luke 23:44–45. But this is subject to valid discussion, as the texts state that in the sixth hour darkness came over the land and the unrepentant thief had previously taunted him, indicating that Christ had already hung on the cross for some time. 59

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118 Notes   The reference to “a worthy penance” followed closely by Nicolaus’s death corresponds well to the general view on penance in the sixth century. It was a public act of penitential contrition often reserved for the end of life. Upon completion of penance, one was prohibited from resuming many normal behaviors, e.g., conjugal relations and government or military service. While Rob Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 600–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 15, has observed that there were “many more or less formal ways of doing penance” in Gregory’s world “where diversity was the norm and unity mostly a rhetorical construction,” this public ritual of penance was one of these ways, and a widely known one. The frequent resort to confession and penance, also known as “tariffed penance,” popularized by the Irish wandering churchman Columbanus, who arrived in Gaul in 590, was only a newly planted seed by the time of Gregory’s death in 594. There is no evidence that Gregory knew of Columbanus, although the Irishman did meet one of his successors, Bishop Leoparius. 67   Although the text reads pueros here, it is clear that slaves are the ones described as “gnashing their teeth.” A servus was often referred to as a puer (see note 61 and MA, chap. 3, p. 67 and chap. 34, p. 107), and the word servis appears in the title for chapter 29, p. 60. 68   A reference also to John 1:4–5, and a further use of the light metaphor featuring Christianity dispelling the darkness of unbelief. 69   This seems to be a hagiographical trope of the life and activity of a saint mirroring the ministry of Christ concerning the healing of long-term illnesses. Cf. Jesus’s healing of a man ill for thirty-eight years by the pool of Bethsaida (John 5:1–8) and the healing of a woman who had suffered for twelve years from a bleeding malady (Matt. 9:20–22). Even Gregory’s own mother, Armentaria, had been delivered from a chronic leg pain of thirty-four years’ duration by the healing intervention of St. Martin (VM, Book 3, chap. 10, p. 185). 70   This is yet another reaffirmation of the Trinitarian view over its Arian opposition. Ian Wood, The Transformation of the Roman West (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018), 51, believes that “the general image of Arian-Catholic conflict can be shown to be largely a post-hoc construction, formulated most potently by Gregory of Tours.” While this fails to account for Vandal persecution of Trinitarians in fifth-century North Africa, it does contain much truth. There are, however, other sources of anti-Arian rhetoric that have been identified. Cf. Thomas L. Amos, “Caesarius of Arles, the Medieval Sermon, and Orthodoxy,” Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 35 (1982): 11–20, traces Caesarius’s creation of what would become the standard medieval sermon ending to the opposition to Arianism: “Although they were only one of the steps he [Caesarius] took against Arianism, the endings survived to become a fixed part of the medieval sermon’s structure” (11). 71   An apparent scatological allusion to Arius, founder of Arianism, who died of an intestinal affliction in a latrine in 336, according to Socrates Scholasticus, Church History, trans. A. C. Zenos, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890; reprinted, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), Book 1, chap. 38, pp. 34–35. Writing about a century after the event, Socrates believed Arius’s death was a miraculous confirmation of the truth of the Trinitarian position, a conviction that Gregory would have shared, as he used this model of lethal diarrhea as an indicator of rectitude and punishment in other writings. When priests rebelled against St. Sidonius Apollinaris at Clermont-Ferrand, one of the rebels “went off to the lavatory and while he was occupied in emptying his bowels he lost his soul instead” (LH, Book 2, chap. 23, pp. 68–69; Thorpe, History, 135). Gregory tied this to the fabled death of Arius by judging rebellion against a bishop as “heresy” and a “crime no less serious than that of Arius, who in the same way emptied out his entrails through his back passage in the lavatory.” Gregory also returned to the fate of Arius by linking it to the Arian bishop Athaloc’s demise in LH, Book 9, chap. 15, pp. 429–30; Thorpe, History, 498. 66

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Notes119

  There existed a separate work on the passion of St. Andrew. Gregory, wishing to reduce the now lost Acts of Andrew to a briefer account, does not choose to include the full story of the apostle’s martyrdom. 73   As the use of petroleum was virtually unknown in the ancient and early medieval world, animal and vegetable oils were occasionally used for lighting lamps, personal hygiene, and cooking. By far the most common oil, or oleum, was olive oil. A separate profession, the negotiatores oleari, or oil salesmen, plied their trade at a commodity exchange called the arca olearia. Key to the widespread use of olive oil was onphacium, the oil processed from unripe olives, harvested typically in August. This oil was largely odorless and tasteless and contained so little fat that it was easily absorbed into the skin, making it ideal for the baths as well as head lice prevention. It also served as a suitable vehicle for administering medicine. While the text does not specify olive oil, it remains the probable product of Andrew’s tomb. See Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 321–26. Gregory tells us that the tombs of the saints were often illuminated with oil lamps using these substances. This account of oleum flowing from Andrew’s tomb at Patras, as a confirmation of the saint’s holiness, is repeated almost verbatim in GM, chap. 30, pp. 55–56; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 48–49. 74   The linkage of spiritual things to fragrance was a common trope in hagiography as a legacy of the ancient world, where incense served as a mediator between the worshipers and the gods in religious ceremonies. Cf. Exod. 30:35–37. The use of fragrance was so pervasive that Monique Seefried holds that the Mediterranean peoples “reached an extraordinary level of olfactory culture” during the late Roman Republic and the early Empire. See Giuseppe Donato and Monique Seefried, The Fragrant Past: Perfumes of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1989), 11. The Apostle Paul called the gifts he received while ministering in Philippi a “fragrant offering” that was “an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (Phil. 4:18). He also linked fragrance with holiness in 2 Cor. 2:14–16, saying that Christians “spread everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge” of Christ and drawing distinction between “those who are being saved and those who are perishing” since “To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.” This connection of fragrance with spirituality also suffused the sixth century, as exemplified by Sermon 228 of Caesarius of Arles (ca. 470–542), in which he held that holy living offers to God “the fragrant incense of repentance” (incensum odoriferae conpunctionis), in Sermones, ed. Germain Morin (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953), 903. 75   This is a key marker in crediting Gregory as the author of the MA. His GM, chap. 30, pp. 55–57; Van Dam, Glory of the Martyrs, 48, mentions the miracles at Andrew’s tomb almost exactly as here in the MA. The miraculous appearance of these elements is a confirmation (signum) of Andrew’s ongoing holiness and ability to minister even after death. 76   Gregory was born on November 30, St. Andrew’s feast day, in either 538 or 539. For a discussion of this contested date, see the introduction to this volume, pp. 1 n. 1, 6–7, 11. 77   This appears to be a reference similar to that of Gregory’s description in LH, Book 7, chap. 42, p. 364; Thorpe, History, 426, where he depicted St. Martin as “an old man holding in his hand a tree, the branches of which spread out until they soon covered the whole yard” of an establishment dedicated to him. Gregory also expressed his belief in the restorative, covering power of St. Martin in VM, Book 4, preface, p. 199; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 284–85: “each person then cheerfully rejoices under the protection of his own patron and more eagerly repays the honor that is owed, when he realizes that he has been cleansed by his patron’s power from the illness that he suffered.” 78   As noted, Gregory frequently referred to his special saints, Julian, Martin, and Andrew, as his patrons, also calling himself an alumnus of these holy ones. 79   This is an uncommon use of the adjective temerarius for Gregory. The related noun, temeritas, typically was used by him to indicate a rashness that signified unbelief, such as that demonstrated by 72

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120 Notes those who refused to credit the power of the saints. Here, Gregory is showing not unbelief, but belief in the protective and saving power of St. Andrew. In a similar setting, he had used the phrase audax audeo to indicate rashness or audacity in asking help from St. Martin (VM, Book 2, chap. 40, p. 173: “Sed ego, ut saepe testatus sum, indignum me censeo tanti viri signa depromere. Tamen quia audax audeo, veniam peto legenti. Vi enim me impellit amor patroni, et quia adhuc esse cum denuntiavi praedicatorem, dicam, quid contigerit nuper”; Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles, 249: “As I have often insisted, I think that I am unworthy to record the miracles of such a great man. But because I am rashly daring [to do so], I request the reader’s indulgence. My love for my patron strongly compels me, and because I have noted that he is still preaching, let me record what happened recently”). 80   We are missing chapters 39 and 40 except for their headings. This is a common complaint about Gregory’s works, as Richard Shaw, “Chronology, Composition, and Authorial Conception in the Miracula,” in A Companion to Gregory of Tours, ed. Alexander Callander Murray (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 102–40, at 106 n. 13, has said: “Gregory’s hagiographic works were neither coherent nor complete, as they are often treated; rather, they were left, with one exception, unfinished and ‘unpublished’ at the time of Gregory’s death.” Perhaps these chapters were lost or left unfinished when he died. As he often rewrote or even added material to his works over the years, it could be either. The rather anti-climactic nature of the headings, coming as they do after the main action of the story is completed, could suggest this later interpolation of material. Or it could signify that Gregory felt compelled to relate some miracles worked by Andrew via his tomb and relics as a type of holy addendum. As superintendent of the powerful tomb of St. Martin, Gregory could be expected to support the idea of miracles coming from these connection points to the holy, as his writings abundantly attest.

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Appendix The Geography of Hagiography The ministry of Andrew described in the MA is a wide-ranging one geographically, beginning in Achaea and the mysterious, unidentified Mermidona and concluding in the western Greek port city of Patras. In between, the Apostle journeys to no fewer than ten cities and four regions, in modern Greece and Turkey. The reader may profit from an itinerary listing the general flow of his travels. Here is just such an itinerary. The chapters in which these places are mentioned are given with the names of the cities and regions involved. Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapters 3–4

Achaea and Mermidona: Achaea is generally the northwestern part of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, although it changed its territorial configuration down through the centuries. In Andrew’s day, it may have stretched all the way to Corinth. “Mermidona” remains a mysterious place. his own territory: apparently, Andrew’s geographical area of ministry. This description is a vexed one as Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the 330s, believed Andrew’s assigned area of ministry was “Scythia” or the northern coastline of the Black Sea. But even Eusebius acknowledged the uncertainty of this territory listing by prefacing his remarks with the qualifier “tradition tells us” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1, Books 1–5, trans. Kirsopp Lake [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926; reprinted, 1998], Book 3, chap. 1, p. 191). Amasea: a city in northern Turkey situated along the river trade route from the Black Sea coast inland through the mountains. The sudden appearance of Andrew in Amasea presents a problem for the readers of the MA seeking to chart the apostle’s itinerary. There does seem to be a puzzling lacuna in the MA, as it suggests Achaea as his territory early in chapter 1 but then abruptly describes in chapters 3–8 a lengthy procession through the cities on or near the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey. Andrew then re-enters the Greek lands in chapter 9, which are the setting for the remainder of his ministry.

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122 Appendix

Sinope: a seventh-century BC colony town of Miletus, located on the south shore of the Black Sea in northern Turkey. The Greeks originally viewed this sea as dangerous, calling it Pontus Axeinus or “unfriendly sea,” but once they began to colonize the area, the sea became Pontus Euxinus or “friendly sea,” a name that lingered into more modern times as the “Euxine Sea.” Chapter 6 Nicea: modern-day Iznik, Nicea (or Nicaea) is a city situated beside the Ascanian Lake in northwestern Turkey and has played a decisive role in history from the pivotal church council of 325 to the First Crusade’s capture of the city in 1097. At one point the Romans made it the capital of the province of Bithynia and Pontus. Chapter 7 Nicomedia: modern-day Izmit in northwestern Turkey, Nicomedia was a colony founded by Megara in the seventh century BC. It was a rival to Nicea, serving as the capital of Bithynia at one point. In late Roman times, it became an eastern imperial capital under the Emperor Diocletian’s division of the Empire in 286. Chapter 8 Byzantium: originally a fishing village, by Andrew’s day it had become a significant city. Much later, in 330, Emperor Constantine chose Byzantium as the basis for his new eastern capital of Constantinople, now modern-day Istanbul. Chapter 9 en route to Thrace: Thrace was a region named for a native people, the Thracians, and bounded by the Balkan Mountains in the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. It is now divided up between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. Chapter 10 Perinthus, en route to Macedonia: Perinthus was a colony of Samos on the north shore of the Sea of Marmara between the Bosporus and the Hellespont. It was the capital of the early Roman province of Europa before that name was assigned to an entire continent. Macedonia was the Roman name for the bulk of the old kingdom of Macedon, most notably led by Philip II and his successor son, Alexander the Great. Chapters 11–12 Philippi: originally a mining town called Krenides (“Fountains”), it was renamed for Philip II of Macedon in 356 BC. Chapters 13–14 Thessalonica: a large city on the Thermaic Gulf, it was founded in 315 BC by Cassander, who had married Alexander the Great’s half-sister, Thessalonike. She had received this curious name in honor of her father (Philip II of Macedon) conquering Thessaly, as the name literally means “conquest of Thessaly.” Chapter 5

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Appendix123

Chapters 15–19 Philippi: once again a return to a city prominent in early Christian history. Chapter 20 Thessalonica: a return trip to what is today the second-largest city in Greece. Chapters 21–24 Patras: a city in the northwestern Peloponnesian Peninsula, it was occupied as early as the third millennium BC but became a Roman colony town under Augustus Caesar. As it was the major western port in Greece, it rose in prominence and became the seat of Roman authority in the region. Chapters 25–28 Corinth: an ancient pre-Greek city situated on the isthmus that bears its name, Corinth was extremely rich due to its double port on both the Gulf of Corinth and the Aegean Sea. It became a Roman colony in 44 BC. Chapter 29 to Megara from Lacedaemonia: Megara was a rival town to Athens in Attica. Although superseded by her more famous rival, Megara played a role in the spreading colonization of the Hellenic world, founding, among others, the colony town of Byzantium. Lacedaemonia refers to the central portion of the Peloponnesian Peninsula, historically dominated by Sparta. Chapters 30–38 Patras: the denouement of Andrew’s ministry, Patras is the site of his martyrdom and the repository of his tomb.

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0

50

100 mi

LACEDAEMONIA

PELOPONNESE

ACHAEA

Patras

Thermaic Gulf

Aegean Sea

Philippi

Corinth

Megara

ATTICA

Athens

MACEDONIA

Thessalonica

Hellespont

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

ANATOLIA

Nicea

Sea of Byzantium Nicomedia Marmara

Perinthus

THRACE

Amasea

Sinope

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Indices index of scriptures

Old Testament Genesis 2:24, 77 3:1–5, 89 Exodus 14:25, 79 Joshua 1:5, 93

Psalms 85:8, 99 Isaiah 46:9, 79

New Testament Matthew 3:7, 77 8:28, 71 11:5, 65 12:43, 73 13:30, 91 17:2, 75 20:22, 89 21:22, 95 25:52, 105 Mark 1:24, 83 4:38–39, 91 10:6–9, 77 Luke 1:37, 79 2:47, 79 8:25, 91 8:50, 81 23:34, 67 John 1:9, 105

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5:14, 71 14:6, 93 17:3, 85 Acts 6:10, 85 6:15, 77 7:59, 67 9:2, 93 9:34, 105 12:7, 65 16:24, 65 16:26, 65 16:28, 105 Romans 2:11, 103 7:22, 83 1 Timothy 2:3–4, 89 1 Peter 5:9, 91 1 John 2:16, 71

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128 Indices General Index Achaea, 65, 91, 99, 121, 125 Adimathus, 79 Adriatic Bora, 38 adventus poem, 12 advocatus, 35 Agathias, 18 Alamanni, 13 Alans, 13 Alexander the Great, 45, 122 Algmana, 107 alumnus, ix–x, 116 n. 58, 119 n. 78 Amasea, 67, 121, 125 Ambrose, bishop of Milan, 40 Andrew, Apostle, saint, Acts of Andrew (Acta Andreae), xi, 1–2, 4, 7, 9–10, 24, 111 n. 1, 111 n. 4, 112 n. 15, 113 n. 24, 116 n. 54, 119 n. 72 Book of the Miracles of the Blessed Andrew the Apostle, The (MA), x–xiii, 1–10, 19, 21–22, 24–26, 28–29, 31, 33, 37–38, 44, 46–51, 61, 116 n. 54, 119 n. 75, 121 manuscripts of the MA, 4 n. 8, 5 death/passion of, x, xi, 4, 6, 61, 63, 65, 89, 105, 109, 115 n. 47, 116 n. 54, 119 n. 72, 123 feast day, x–xi, 1, 6–7, 10–11, 119 n. 78 tomb of, 6–7, 109, 119 n. 73, 119 n. 75, 120 n. 80 angel of the Lord, 47, 65, 75, 87, 93 Angers, 16 Anthimus, 91 anthropophagites (“man-eaters”), 111 n. 4 Antiphanes, 61, 103, 105 apocrifus, 48 Arianism, 20, 20 n. 70, 47–49, 111 n. 3, 111 n. 9, 113 n. 19, 115 n. 48, 118 n. 70–71 Arius, 118 n. 71 Armentaria, Gregory’s mother, 11, 17–18, 111 n. 3, 116 n. 58, 118 n. 69 Armentarius, bishop of Langres, 12 Auerbach, Erich, 10 Augustine, bishop of Hippo, saint, 5, 40 n. 148–49 “Augustine”/Anonymous, 41 Austrasia, 13 Autun, 12 Auvergne, 11, 32

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“ballomer,” 17 n. 58 baptism, 36, 48, 67, 69, 73, 111 n. 9 Bartlett, Robert, 14, 40 n. 151 Battle of Frigidus, 38 Battle of Vouillé, 111 n. 4 beatus (“blessed”), 48, 111 n. 1 Beck, Henry G. J., 36 n. 136 birthday, see natalicia Bonnet, Max, 1–2, 4–5, 7–8 breaking of bread (Eucharist), 46, 71, 91 Brittany, 16 Brown, Peter, 25, 32 n. 120, 35 n. 133, 41, 43 Burgundians, 13, 16, 20 Burgundy, see Burgundians Byzantium, x, 73, 75, 122, 123 Caesar, 17 n. 58, 87, 114 n. 42, 123 Caesarius, bishop of Arles, 5, 119 n. 74 Calestus, 73, 113 n. 20 Caliopa, 99, 117 n. 60 Calisto, 95, 116 n. 57 Carpianus, 61, 79 cathedra, 12 Chilperic I, Frankish king, 41, 44 “Christendom,” 14–15 Chronicle of Fredegar, 19 Cicero, Roman orator and statesman, 17 n. 58, 25 n. 89 City of God, The (De civitate Dei), 40 Clermont, 11–12 Clovis, Frankish king, 32, 44 conditus, 35 contact relic, 36 Contreni, John J., 4 n. 8, 6 Convent of the Holy Cross, 12, 18, 34 Corinth, x, 46, 99, 121, 123, 125 Corinthian League, 45 Council of Nicea, 20, 113 n. 20 crimen, 49 crucis signum, see sign of the cross cubit, 87, 114–15 n. 44 curse, see defixio D’Avray, David, 39 defixio (“curse”), 49, 113 n. 30 Demetrius, 67

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Indices129

demons, 49, 71, 99, 113 n. 17, 113 n. 21 casting out of, xii, 61, 69, 71, 73, 101, 112 n. 14 possession or torture by, 61, 69, 81, 83, 85, 95, 101, 103, 105, 107 diabolus (“devil”), 49 diaconate, 12 Diana, goddess, 99, 117 n. 59 Dickie, Matthew W., 50 Diocletian, Roman emperor, 49 divine intervention or judgment, 9, 69, 71, 79, 81, 93, 95, 99, 109, 112 n. 11, 116 n. 60 divine power, 24, 27, 32 n. 120, 32 n. 122, 33–34, 39, 42, 45–46, 50–51, 63, 75, 85, 87, 91, 114 n. 40–41, 119 n. 77, 120 n. 79 potentia absoluta, 39 potentia ordinata, 39 divine revelation, 41–42, 61 dreams and visions, 37, 37 n. 138, 42, 44, 79, 89, 93, 99, 115 n. 46–47 voice or word, 65, 75, 91, 103 dominus, 3, 111 n. 4 doorkeeper, see ostiarius Drew, Katherine Fischer, 13 dropsy (etrops, hydrops), 71, 112 n. 13 Dvornik, Francis, 5, 24 n. 86 Efidama, 105, 107 Egeas, 3, 10, 61, 105, 107, 109, 112 n. 15 Egypt, 67 Encratism, 10, 113 n. 24 Ethiopians, 93 Eucharist, see breaking of bread Eufronius, bishop of Autun, 12 Eufronius, bishop of Tours, 12 Eugenius, Roman imperial usurper, 38 Euhemerism, 45 Euhemerus of Messene, 45 Eusebius, 45 n. 182 Exuos, 49, 61, 77, 113 n. 31, 114 n. 32 Felix, saint, 46 Fletcher, Richard, 22, 27–28 fragrance, see holy fragrance Franks, ix–x, 13–16, 26 Gallo-Romans, 13 Gallus, bishop of Clermont, 12, 32

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Gaul, x, 1, 12–17, 19, 32–34, 37, 47, 114 n. 40, 118 n. 66 Geary, Patrick, 23 n. 82, 35 n. 134 Genovefa, saint (St. Genevieve), 34 Georgius Florentius, see Gregory of Tours gifts, 71, 73, 77, 83, 99, 105, 119 n. 74 Glory of the Confessors, 7–8, 44, 46–47 Glory of the Martyrs, 6–8, 21, 31, 45–46, 49, 119 n. 75 Goffart, Walter, 23, 40–41 Gratinus, 61, 69, 71 Graus, František, 5, 25, 44 n. 180 Gregory of Langres, 11–12 Gregory of Tours birthdate, x, 1 n. 1, 6–7, 7 n. 22, 11, 119 n. 76 family lineage, 12, 12 n. 35–37 name, 7–8, 11 Gregory the Great, pope, xi, 51 Guntram, Frankish king, 13 hagiography, xii, 21–31, 21 n. 70, 22 n. 76, 22 n. 78, 25 n. 91, 114 n. 40 Hannibal, 45 Harper, Kyle, 112 n. 15, 116 n. 53 Head, Thomas, 21–22 Heene, Katrien, 29 n. 108 Heinzelmann, Martin, 9, 16, 23, 26 n. 94 Hellespont, 73, 122, 125 Herakles, 45 Hilary of Poitiers, saint, 34 Histories, x, xii–xiii, 1, 5, 8–9, 13, 16–20, 23–24, 31, 37, 47 History of the Franks, see Histories History of the Wars, 18 Humfress, Caroline, 49 Huns, 13 holy deeds (virtutes), 24–25, 29, 40–42, 47, 51, 65, 83, 114 n. 41 holy fragrance, 109, 119 n. 74 holy light, 47, 65, 75, 79, 85, 99, 113 n. 22, 114 n. 39 inheritance, see “partible inheritance” Isidore of Seville, 41 Italy, 45 James, Apostle, saint, 4

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130 Indices James, Edward, 34 James, Montague Rhodes, 2 Jerome, saint, 49 Johannis, miracle recipient, 42 John, Apostle, saint, 44, 89 John of Biclar, 18 Julian of Brioude, saint, ix–xi, 32–36, 43, 119 n. 78, also see On the Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian and Passio sancti Iuliani martyris Jussen, Bernhard, 42, 43 n. 170 Justina, 12 Justinian, Roman emperor, 18 Keener, Craig S., 38 n. 140–41 Kitchen, John, 26 n. 92, 34 n. 131 Klingshirn, William E., 114 n. 41 Kreiner, Jamie, 25 n. 91, 26 n. 92 Lacedaemonia, 105, 123, 125 Lactantius, 49 Langres, 11–12 Last Supper, 46 Le Mans, 16 Leontius, 3, 99 Liber de passione et virtutibus sancti Iuliani martyris (PI), see On the Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian Liber historiae Francorum, 19, 44 Liber in gloria confessorum (GC), see Glory of the Confessors Liber in gloria martyrum (GM), see Glory of the Martyrs Liber vitae patrum (VP), see Life of the Fathers Libri historiarum X (LH), see Histories Life of the Fathers, 8, 27, 34 Lifshitz, Felice, 22 n. 76, 23 light, see holy light Lisbius, 3, 61, 93, 95, 99, 101, 105 Loire River (Liger), xiii, 16 Lombards, 20 Lyon, 12 Lysimachus, 79 Maastricht, 16 MacDonald, Dennis R., 2, 2 n. 6, 4 n. 9, 10 n. 31

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Macedonia, x, 47, 73, 75, 83, 87, 91, 93, 97, 107, 122, 125 Marius of Avenches, 18 Martianus Capella, 45 n. 182 Martin, saint, ix–xii, 15–16, 28, 30, 33–37, 41–43, 48, 112 n. 13–14, 118 n. 69, 119 n. 77–78, 120 n. 79–80 De vita beati Martini (Life of St. Martin), 33, 37 Libri de virtutibus sancti Martini episcopi (VM), 24, 28, 41–42, 44, 46 Mary, virgin, 31, 34 Mary Magdalene, 3 Mathisen, Ralph W., 12 Matthew, Apostle, saint, 61, 65 Maura and Britta, saints, 34 Maximilla, 10, 61, 105, 107, 109, 112 n. 15 McDermott, William C., 5, 22–23 n. 80 Medias, 61, 81 Megara, 103, 105, 123, 125 Mermidona, 24, 24 n. 86, 46, 54, 61, 65, 67, 111 n. 4, 121 mirabilibus sacrae scripturae, De, 41 miracles (miracula), 38–48, 50 freeing of prisoners, 44 n. 180, 46, 65, 67, 111 n. 8 healing, xii, 27 n. 97, 42, 46, 61, 63, 65, 71, 79, 81, 83, 93, 99, 101, 105, 107, 118 n. 69 in hagiographical writing, xii, 21–27, 30–31, 46, 48 involving nature, 27 n. 97, 46, 61, 65, 69, 91, 109 protection from harm, xii, 46–47, 67, 69, 73, 75, 77, 85, 87, 89, 93, 109, 114 n. 40 restoration of life, xii, 27 n. 97, 46–47, 61, 65, 67, 73, 81, 87, 89, 95, 97, 99 restoration of sight, 27 n. 97, 42, 46–47, 61, 63, 65, 67, 79, 105 theory, 5, 39–40, 54 Merovingians, 13–14, 16, 25, 35 Metropolitan, 16 Miles, Richard, 45 Mitchell, Kathleen, 26 n. 94, 48 n. 195 Monegund, saint, 34 Monism, 20 Moreira, Isabel, 37 n. 138, 42

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Indices131

Nantes, 16 natalicia (“birthday”), x, 11 Nelson, Janet L., 15 Neustria, 13 Nicea, 20, 46, 61, 71, 73, 113 n. 20, 122, 125 Nicolaus of Corinth, 3, 61, 101, 103, 117 n. 64, 118 n. 66 Nicolaus of Philippi, 83 Nicomedia, 46, 73, 122, 125 Noble, Thomas F. X., 14, 19, 21 oleum (“oil”), x, 119 n. 73 On the Suffering and Miracles of the Martyr St. Julian, 24, 27 Orléans, 13 Orosius, Paulus, 45 n. 182 ostiarius (“doorkeeper”), 36 Oswalt, John N., 23 n. 82 Palestine, 4 Palm Sunday, 46 Paris, 14 parricide, 69, 111 n. 10 “partible inheritance,” 13 Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus, 5, 9 Passio sancti Iuliani martyris, 33 n. 124 Passio sanctorum martyrium septem dormientum, see Passion of the Seven Holy Martyrs Sleeping at Ephesus Patras, x, 4, 6, 46, 91, 105, 107, 119 n. 75, 121, 123, 125 pauperes, 113 n. 31 peccatum, 49 penance (paenitentia), 50, 103, 118 n. 66 Perinthus, 75, 122, 125 Perpetuus, bishop of Tours, 33 “personality of the law,” 13 Peter, Apostle, saint, x, xiii, 44, 89, 111 n. 8, 114 n. 42, 115 n. 47 Peter, brother of Gregory, 15 Philionedis, 3, 81, 83 Philippi, 46–47, 75, 77, 81, 119 n. 74, 122–23, 125 Philopater, 3, 97, 99 poculum Petri (“cup of Peter”), 115 n. 47 poena cullei (“penalty of the sack”), 111 n. 10

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Poitiers, 18 potentia absoluta, see divine power potentia ordinata, see divine power praesentia, 32 n. 120, 43–44 praetorium, 50, 87, 95, 107, 109 Prieur, Jean-Marc, 1, 2 n. 4, 6, 24 n. 86 proconsul, 3, 47, 50, 61, 63, 69, 71, 85, 87, 89, 93, 95, 99, 105, 107, 109, 111 n. 10 Procopius of Caesarea, 18 pseudepigrapha, 10 pseudo-prophet, 37 puer, 50, 117 n. 61, 118 n. 67 Radegund, saint, 18, 34 Ragnemod, bishop of Paris, 17, 37 Reimitz, Helmut, 13–15, 18–19 n. 61 Rennes, 16 reverentia, 36, 43, 46 Rio, Alice, 117 n. 61 Rosenwein, Barbara H., 115 n. 52 rusticitas (“rusticity”), 32, 32 n. 122, 46, 50 Second Punic War, 45 servus, 51, 117 n. 61, 118 n. 67, also see puer sexual immorality adultery/fornication, 71, 93, 95, 99, 116 n. 53 incest, 50, 69, 77, 113 n. 25 prostitution/human trafficking, 93, 95, 99, 112 n. 15, 115 n. 53, 116 n. 55 Shaw, Richard, 120 n. 80 sign of the cross (crucis signum), 49, 75, 109 signs (signa) and portents, 40, 47, 51, 97, 99, 107 Sinope, 69, 122, 125 slavery, see servus and puer Smith, Julia M. H., 29, 36 n. 136 sorcery, 47, 49–50, 79 Sosias, 105 Sostratus of Amasea (?), 61, 69 Sostratus of Macedonia, 61, 97, 99 Spiegel, Gabrielle M., 26–27 Statocleus, 63, 107 Sulpicius Severus, 33, 37 temeritas (“rashness”), 32 n. 122, 46, 119–20 n. 79 Ten Books of History, see Histories territoria (“surrounding countryside”), 13

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132 Indices “territoriality of the law,” 13 Tetricus, bishop of Langres, 12 Theodoret, 38 n. 142 Theodosius, Roman emperor, 38 Theogonis, bishop of Nicea, 113 n. 20 Thessalonica, 46, 77, 79, 81, 85, 91, 113 n. 31, 122–23, 125 Theuws, Frans, 15 Thomas, Apostle, saint, 5 Thorpe, Lewis, 19 Thrace, x, 75, 122, 125 Tours, 11–12, 15–16, 32–33, 37–39, 42 Trinity, 20, 41 n. 161, 67, 107, 111 n. 9, 115 n. 48, 118 n. 70 Trofima, 3, 61, 93, 95, 115–16 n. 53, 116 n. 57 trophea (“triumphs”), 51 Tyerman, Christopher, 39 Vandals, 20 Van Dam, Raymond, 1 n. 1, 6, 8, 10 n. 31, 21 n. 72, 31 n. 116, 32 n. 122, 33

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Venantius, saint, 42 Venantius Fortunatus, 9, 12, 18 vengeance, 93, 95, 113 n. 11, 115 n. 52 against Arians, 47–48, 118 n. 71 Vergil, Roman poet, 45 n. 182 Vettius Epagatus, 12 Virinus, 61, 85, 87 virtus, see holy deeds virtutes, see holy deeds Visigothic Spain, 14 Visigoths, 16, 20, 32 Vodolazkin, Eugene, 28 n. 104 Wallace-Hadrill, J. M., 28, 30, 39 Ward, Benedicta, 18, 30 n. 112, 33, 40 Warus, 97 Way, The, 93, 115 n. 51 Wood, Ian N., 6, 8, 16 n. 56, 113 n. 25, 118 n. 70 Zelzer, Klaus, 5

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