Death and Afterlife in the Pages of Gregory of Tours is a self-proclaimed intellectual biography (17) of the author of ten books of history and seven books of miracles, which refreshingly makes use of the bishop's entire corpus and broader historical context in order to get inside his head. Jones begins with an introduction which gives a thorough review of scholarship on Gregory of Tours since Martin Heinzelmann's 1994 study, Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, which was originally published in German and later translated into English by Christopher Carroll (Cambridge University Press, 2001). After that, Jones lays out his aim of demonstrating that Gregory developed a particularly non-Augustinian moral theology over the course of his life and career and that Gregory's personal experiences with “Death” were instrumental in the development of his theology. In so doing, Jones is careful to consider Gregory's theology within the historical realities of the bishop's subject matter. He acknowledges that death, violence, and illness were ever-present in Gregory's life, and reports of such matters in his Ten Books of Histories cannot be dismissed as only theological rhetoric, even when they functioned in service of his theology. This is a welcome perspective, which Jones articulates most clearly in the conclusion of his book: “In seeking to advance ‘Gregorian studies,’ hopefully future historians will further strive to examine the writer's literary techniques in such a way that does not distance him from the society in which he was a participant” (292).

Jones presents his analysis in a two-part study on “Death” and the “Afterlife.” In part 1, “Death,” he argues that Gregory's experiences with Death, and what he was taught to believe about it by his parents and mentors throughout his youth and young adulthood, induced him to write his miracle stories and eventually his Histories. Jones capitalizes the “d” in “Death” in a self-conscious personification of Death modeled after Gregory himself, who portrayed death as an agent through his use of active verbs with death as their subject (25). This personification of Death works because it signals the sections where Jones is reconstructing Gregory's life by giving it an air of creative nonfiction, which is essentially what those sections are. While an accurate reconstruction of Gregory's early life is impossible, a creative rendering of what his life might have looked like from the perspective of Death offers a fruitful way to consider questions about his theology.

In the final chapter of part 1, Jones examines the mature Gregory and his theology after he became a bishop and began to write his Histories. The chapter subsection “Bishop, Author, Pastor” is the most problematic piece of the book, however, because in his attempt to argue against the influence of Augustine on Gregory's moral theology, Jones misrepresents Gregory. Jones correctly acknowledges that Gregory's understanding of Augustine's theology of grace was mediated through Caesarius of Arles (whose more nuanced theology that accepted a role for both grace and human action in salvation was widely accepted in Gregory's day). Yet, he takes Gregory's commitment to human actions one step further with a statement that runs through the rest of the book and is not substantiated by evidence: “Unlike the bishop of Arles, Gregory believed it completely incumbent upon Christians to seek divine protection, support and grace as conferred through the saints” (122, emphasis added). Jones states this position more clearly, arguing from a statement in the prologue to Gregory's Life of the Fathers 10 about how people should always seek God's help, that Gregory thought “a living holy person's willful acts of desiring and seeking preceded any grant of divine help” (126). Not only does this statement presume a direct engagement with the prevenient grace doctrine of Augustine—which Jones had already demonstrated was not the case—but it also assumes incorrectly that Gregory thought the seeking of divine help preceded the grant of help, which Jones seems to be conflating with grace. This conclusion results in Jones's unfortunate use of the phrase “merit grace” elsewhere, which does not accurately reflect Gregory's words (e.g., 131).

Fortunately, part 2, “Afterlife,” in which Jones argues that Gregory wrote his Histories as a moral theology to teach people how to follow the examples of good and bad kings by signaling who went to heaven and who went to hell and what they did in their lives to get there, succeeds despite problems theorizing Gregory's understanding of grace. Jones need not have made a case for Gregory subverting prevenient grace for this argument to work; like Caesarius before him (and Augustine before him), Gregory understood the importance of human actions with regard to salvation and used his miracles and Histories to relate that lesson to his audiences.

The second half of the book is thus a comprehensive discussion of everyone Gregory sent to heaven in his narration of events, and the much larger group of people who he believed went to hell. This thorough, heavily footnoted treatment of Gregory's interpretation of the afterlives of famous Merovingians in order to induce readers to behave morally and seek the help of the saints is an interesting and welcome intervention in the field. It shows Gregory building on the work of Caesarius of Arles by using moral exempla to teach Christians to live moral lives in the hopes of a heavenly afterlife. Significantly, Jones treats each subject as more than just an exemplum but also as an actual historical figure whose afterlife, as much as their life, was complicated.

As comprehensive as it is, this book will remain an excellent resource for death in Gregory of Tours. Its expansive index makes it easy to use and ensures scholars of Gregory and sixth-century Gaul will return to it after reading.