So you, too, if you manfully, not tepidly, place the sign of salvation on your forehead or in your heart and resist sins, you will be made a martyr, for the martyrs themselves are deemed worthy not because of their strength but because of God's assistance through the sign of the Cross. As I have often said, the Lord himself struggles and triumphs in them. Therefore, it is necessary that we seek their patronage, so that we may be worthy to be helped by their approbation. What we cannot be worthy to obtain by our own merits we can receive by their intercessions. Hence, by using the help of the Holy Trinity, we are worthy of being [considered] martyrs and we renounce fleshly desires, as was said by he who crowns in heaven with precious stones those who faithfully struggle for him. He deigns to protect in this world the foster-children who venerate his friends, and he maintains that the martyrs, whom he receives as immortals in the beauty of Paradise, will help when they are called upon by his people. In the Day of Judgment, when eternal glory surrounds them, the grace of their mediation will either excuse us or a mild punishment will pass over us. He will not condemn to eternity for their sins the defendants whom he redeemed deserving of the precious blood [of the martyrs].

With these words, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) concludes his short treatise, the Glory of the Martyrs, in which he glorifies the deeds of the martyrs by describing miracles that were performed by or are related to martyrs from the entire Mediterranean world. These stories, alongside others that appear in the rest of Gregory's hagiographical collections, stand at the center of this study.

As accounts that depict all kinds of miracles that took place in various places and involve people from all walks of life, these stories offer a rare glimpse into the social, political, cultural, and religious history of sixth-century Merovingian Gaul. Gregory of Tours, a bishop and a Gallo-Roman, composed these works during the twenty years he served at the bishop of Tours and he used them in order to teach his audience about their past, their community, and the meaning of being Christians.