Le catastrofi ‘naturali’ nella narrazione di un vescovo tardoantico: gli Historiarum libri decem di Gregorio di Tours

In the Christian perspective, before the formulation of adequate scientific explanations, environmental disasters were read as moments of communication between the divine and the human, thus constituting intrinsic elements to the unfolding of history and its orientation according to a providential design. While several biblical verses, in fact, endorse the idea that God placed all the rest of “creation” at the disposal of human beings and under their control (Gen. 1, 28), other episodes tell of terrible plagues that fell inexorably upon entire peoples through divine will (Ex. 7-12). This contribution offers a reflection on the role that natural disasters occupy in the narrative structure of the Historiarum libri and in the interpretation of political events offered by Gregory of Tours, a bishop who lived in the Middle Ages at the time of the Merovingian kings.