ABSTRACT
The miracle tales of Gregory of Tours, Gregory the Great, and the Lives of the Fathers of Mérida call to mind an eschatological utopia, grounded in the recent past but functioning to remind people of their eternal future. Both the past and the life-to-come take on frightening new characteristics in these texts. These cautionary tales served to remind people of the eternal consequences of their actions in this life, to recast the pre-Christian Latin West as a violent dystopia, and to establish the ideal of a new political order, one which promised peace but was often even more violent in practice.
