Yet we must not think that this century was barren of beginnings. The Merving kings—Clovis, and Childebert, and Clotaire the First, and Charibert—had now given place to Chilperic on the throne of France. Indeed, some writers are inclined to make this sixth century the true commencement of the Middle Ages, and it is very certain that we can see a great deal in the story of Fortunatus which is mediaeval. Moreover, Mohammed was born in 570, at Mecca, while our future bishop was traversing Gaul. And nearly contemporary with our author’s birth—that is, in 533—comes the announcement of the supremacy of the Roman bishop, which culminated in 590 in the strong administration of Gregory the Great. Fortunatus lived, therefore, in days when Latin Christianity was taking shape, and when the most aggressive of false religions was springing up. We have indeed said, in effect, that the Western Empire was at an end, and that the Monarchy of France had begun in 476.
Thus, as he looked backward, the Italian refugee could recall the successive blows of barbarian swords—the swords of Alaric, and Genseric, and Attila, and Odoacer—under which Rome had fallen. When Alboin started his raid from Pannonia in 568, with Lombards (Longobardi) and Gepidae and twenty thousand Saxons, it was surely enough to make a troubadour take refuge at Tours.
Our materials for the biography of Fortunatus from this point in the story become more available. He kept an itinerary, which was lost; but he wrote often to Gregory of Tours, and this seems to be the only correspondence which he conducted in a natural and ordinary manner. From it we learn that he crossed the mountains in a “snowy July,” and had written either “on horseback or half asleep.” He passed some time at Metz and Rheims. His days and nights were spent in travelling and feasting and in preparing songs and odes, to the consternation of his modern biographer, Luchi, who does not find much evidence of piety in these proceedings.
Fortunatus is his own exponent, and his language, literally translated, gives us a vivid picture of the way in which he made friends with everybody. “Travelling among the barbarians” (he writes to Gregory), “on a long journey, either weary of the way or drunk beneath the icy chill, at the exhortation of the muse (I know not whether more cold or sober), a new Orpheus I gave voices to the wood, and the wood replied.” The sentence illustrates not merely his experience but also his style of composition, which is turgid and frequently obscure. His panegyrics, for example, abound in the most fulsome flattery, arrayed bombastically in a string of nouns, verbs, and adjectives half a page long. The real idea walks within much of his Latin, like a pigmy in a great court train, ridiculously small and ridiculously pretentious.