I, Gregory, have written the ten books of this History [of the Franks], seven books of Miracles and one on the Lives of the Fathers. I have composed a book of Commentaries on the Psalms. I also wrote a book on the Offices of the Church.
I know very well that my style in these books is lacking in polish. Nevertheless I conjure you all, you Bishops of the Lord who will have charge of Tours cathedral after my unworthy self, I conjure you all, I say, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Judgement 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, for otherwise when you emerge in confusion from this Judgement Day you will be condemned with the Devil. Keep them in your possession, intact, with no amendments and just as I have left them to you.
Whoever you are, you Bishop of God, even if our own Martianus Capella himself has given you instruction in the Seven Arts, if he has taught you grammar so that you may read, if he has shown you by his dialectic how to follow the parts of a disputation, by his rhetoric how to recognize the different meters, by his geometry how to reckon the measurements of sufaces and lines, by his astronomy how to observe the stars in their courses, by his arithmetic how to add and subtract numbers in their relationships, by his book on harmony how to set together in your songs the modulation of mellifluous sounds, even if you are an acknowledged master in all these skills, and if, as a result, what I have written seems uncouth to you, despite all this, do not, I beg you, do violence to my books.
You may rewrite them in verse if you wish to, supposing that they find favor in your sight; but KEEP THEM INTACT.
--Gregory of Tours, ~594 AD
Trans. by Lewis Thorpe
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