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THE HISTORY OF THE FRANKS BY GREGORY, BISHOP OF TOURS, is an historical record of great importance. The events which it relates are derails of the perishing of the Roman Empire and the beginning of a great modern state and for these events it is often the sole authority. However although Gregory was relating history mainly contemporaneous or recent, we must allow largely for error and prejudice in his statements of fact.

It is rather as an unconscious revelation that the work is of especial value. The language and style, the intellectual attitude with which it was conceived and written, and the vivid and realistic picture, unintentionally given, of a primitive society, all combine to make the History of the Franks a landmark in European culture.

After reading it the intelligent modern will no longer have pleasing illusions about sixth-century society.

Gregory’s life covers the years from 538 to 594. He was a product of central Gaul, spending his whole life in the Loire basin except for brief stays elsewhere[1].The river Loire may be regarded
as the southern limit of Frankish colonization and Gregory therefore lived on the frontier of the barbarians.

He was born and grew up at Clermont in Auvergne, a city to which an inexhaustibly fertile mountain valley is tributary. In this valley his father owned an estate. Its wealth brought Clermont much trouble during the disorderly period that followed the break-up of Roman rule, and Gregory gives a hint of the eagerness which the Frankish kings felt to possess this country.[2]

After 573 Gregory lived at Tours in the lower Loire valley. This city with its pleasant climate and moderately productive territorial background had more than a local importance in this age. It lay on the main thoroughfare between Spain and Aquitania and the north. Five Roman roads centred in it and the traffic of the Loire passed by it.

The reader of Gregory’s history judges that sooner or later it was visited by every one of importance at the time. It was here that the Frankish influences of the north and the Roman influences of the south had their chief contact.

However the natural advantages of Tours at this time were surpassed by the supernatural ones. Thanks to the legend of St. Martin this conveniently situated city had become “the religious Metropolis” of Gaul. St. Martin had made a great impression on his generation[3].

A Roman soldier, turned monk and then bishop of Tours, he was a man of heroic character and force. He had devoted himself chiefly to the task of Christianising the pagani or rural population of Gaul and had won a remarkable ascendancy over the minds of a superstitious people, and this went on increasing for centuries after his death.

THE PLANE TRUTH BY MY BROTHER BOB (ROBERT J. SCHADEWALD) has been a work in progress since at least 1984, although I’m sure the idea of it dates to the 1970s. It’s a work that is unfinished in places, perhaps more detailed than one would have thought possible in places, perfectly constructed in places, and all over the (flat) map in still other places. Bob worked on The Plane Truth until the week he died in 2000. Of all things, completing this book to his satisfaction was of the utmost importance to him. I believe that the book remained unfinished because Bob felt that it never met his standards closely enough to be published. Bob hovered over this book and wouldn’t allow it to come to fruition. My brother was an incredibly talented writer, but in some ways, I think, he was never totally satisfied with anything he had written. So he kept writing and rewriting this book. The dull glow of this not-quite-finished hue is evident in places within this work, but also the eloquence and beauty of Bob’s finished writing shines in other places.

The Plane Truth is offered for what it is: an unfinished scholarly work on the history and background of flat-earth belief sprinkled through with the characters and colourful personalities of those involved. “It’s a small, flat world” was a phrase Bob often used when hearing of some unlikely coincidence. For Bob, flat-earth analogy could fit almost any situation. When he discussed creationism (the precursor of intelligent design) he would explain the argumentation creationists used by comparing it to the argumentation Victorian, England, flat-earthers used. (Spoiler alert: they’re the same.) When creationists promoted a Two-Model Theory (creation/evolution) bill to be taught in schools, Bob wrote a bill called A Balanced Treatment of Flat-Earth Science and Spherical-Earth Science Act. The reaction of Charles Johnson (then president of the Flat Earth Society) can be found in Chapter 9: “Johnson and Johnson”.

It’s hard to know how Bob would have felt now with so many references to flat earth in use. Some examples include Thomas Friedman’s books, The World is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded; Flat Earth Productions (a digital visual effects company); Flat Earth Veggie Crisps; and, here in Minnesota, Flat Earth beer. I know for certain that he would have loved that last one.

My brother was a student of pseudoscience. It fascinated Bob to try to understand how someone could so firmly believe in an idea that almost everyone else would consider an indicator of insanity or, at least, naiveté. Bob studied not only flat-earth belief, but also creationism, perpetual motion, alternative geodesy (geocentricity, hollow earth, pole shift), Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, and Tesla-mania, to name a few. Of all the pseudosciences Bob studied, flat-earth belief was one of the first and always his favourite. He studied flat-earth belief and history from about 1974. He formed acquaintances with as many people as he could find who believed that the Earth is flat. He travelled to England to research original materials of the British flat-earthers, and he corresponded with like-minded people all over the world in his quest to find out as much as he could about the development and fluctuations of flat-earth belief. He was considered a world expert on the topic.