Portents were similarly seen in many other lands. In the land of the Franks a black panther was seen walking on the rooftops of Armentières, which greatly frightened the inhabitants of that city. Not for nothing had the prophet said ‘a leopard or panther shall lie in wait against their cities. Everyone who goes out of them shall be torn to pieces’. Except that in this case the last bit wasn’t true as the panther was lured into drowsiness by a tainted dart fired by an apothecary to the animals of the region. Anyway, the main point was clear for all to see.
In Nantes, which as you know is also in the kingdom of the Franks, a local chronicle spoke out to all, warning against the bites of serpents throughout the region and cited the words of a physician of Angers on the topic. Yet all who were sane knew that a far greater risk of venom lay in the receipt of letters from Bishop Felix of that same city. Once again, the foolishness of secular chroniclers was visible to all.
Indeed, such is the rashness of the people of that city that some years ago they invited a sculptor from the land of Cathay to construct an enormous graven image of a snake. What an affront to the saints of Gaul who expelled the slithery serpents of paganism from their cities in the days of the martyrs!
https://www.nantes-tourisme.com/en/contemporary-art/serpent-d-ocean
It can be only this that leads to the plague of snakes in their territory, as I mentioned in a missive to Bishop Felix, but the latter only replied that I was angered because the youths of Nantes had recently beaten the pueri of Tours 4-0! At that I gnashed my teeth but said no more, for verily the four goals had all been against the run of play and could only have resulted from the application of devilish arts, or a biased ref.
Meanwhile, a strange portent was seen in the land of the North Aremoricans where a beast like unto a small bear, which they call a raccoon, climbed into a device for the sharing of small meals to passers-by, and made its home there. As the prophet Daniel hath said, ‘and behold, another beast, a second one, resembling a bear. And it was raised up on one side and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth, and thus they said to it ‘arise. Devour much meat.’ Except that in this case it was not so much meat as fruit-based snacks. The local chronicle referred also to sightings of zombie raccoons, but I will make no comment on the rash superstitions of the common people.
However, the greatest portent of all in that land was a plague of portentous holes in the ground, like unto those about which I have told you earlier, in the kingdom of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots. These holes appeared in the various estates of Donald Dux, the ruler of that land. A scribe of that land attempted to explain these portents in terms of the nature of the ground, and accompanied his account with a strangely irrelevant picture of a large hole that had appeared in the land of the Rus. Clearly, however, this was a sign of the Lord’s great wrath with the ruler and people of that realm as anyone wise to these things would have known.
But let that be enough of what is vulgarly called a ‘round-up’ of strange stories, for now I must return to my History.
Gregorius Turonensis: Historian and Political Commentator 