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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 9, 15. Of His Embassy to Our Kings

In Spain at this time¹ King Recared, touched by God’s pity, convoked the bishops of his own church and said: ‘Between you and those bishops who proclaim themselves Catholics, wherefore are causes of offence spread without ceasing? why is it that these by their faith perform many miracles, while ye are unable to do as they? Meet together, therefore, I pray you; discuss the doctrines of both parties, and let us discover which are true. Then either must they accept our arguments, and believe what you profess, or you in your turn must recognize the truth of their creed and believe that which they preach.’ It was done; and in an assembly of bishops of the two parties the heretics made the profession of faith which I have above several times set down as uttered by them. In like manner the Catholic bishops replied with those arguments by which, in the preceding books, I have shown the Arians to have been so often confuted.² The king maintained that the heretic bishops wrought no miracles for the healing of the sick, and recalled how in his father’s time one of their bishops, vaunting his power to restore sight to the blind by his false faith, laid his hands on a blind man, but condemned him to perpetual blindness thereby, and so went away confounded; which thing I have recounted in full in my book of Miracles.³ He then called aside the bishops of the Lord, and having questioned them upon their doctrines, learned that one God is to be worshipped under the distinction of three Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and that the Son was not inferior to the Father or to the Holy Ghost, nor the Holy Ghost inferior to the Father or to the Son; and that we are to confess this Trinity, equal and omnipotent, to be the true God. Having understood this verity, Recared put an end to all dispute, submitted to the Catholic law, and received the sign of the blessed Cross with unction of holy chrism, believing on our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, equal to the Father with the Holy Ghost, reigning world without end. Amen. He then sent messengers to the province of Narbonne⁴ to relate what he had done, that the people in those parts might join with him in the like faith. There was at that time a bishop of the Arian sect named Athaloc. This man so troubled the churches of God by vain propositions and false interpretation of the Scriptures that he might have been taken for that very Arius whose entrails, according to the historian Eusebius,⁵ gushed forth in the privy. But when he sought to prevent the people of his sect from believing the truth, and only a few flatterers were upon his side, he was filled with bitterness. He went into his cell, and laying down his head upon his bed, there breathed out his perverse spirit. So the heretical people in that province confessed the Trinity one and indivisible, and departed from their false belief.

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