Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

Aurelian returned and told Clovis all that had passed and the instructions he had received from Clotilde. "Clovis, pleased with his success and with Clotilde's notion, at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to demand his niece in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, and flattered at the idea of making a friend of Clovis, promised to give her to him. Then the deputation, having offered the denier and the sou, according to the custom of the Franks, espoused Clotilde in the name of Clovis, and demanded that she be given up to be married. Without any delay, the council was assembled at Chalons, and preparations were made for the nuptials. The Franks, having arrived with all speed, received her from the hands of Gondebaud, put her into a covered carriage and escorted her to Clovis, together with much treasure. She, however, having already learned that Aridius was on his way back, said to the Frankish lords, 'If ye would take me into the presence of your lord, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horseback, and get you hence as fast as you may; for never in this carriage shall I reach the presence of your lord.'

"Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles; and Gondebaud, on seeing him, said, 'Thou knowest that we have made friends with the Franks, and that I have given my niece to Clovis to wife.' 'This,' answered Aridius, 'is no bond of friendship, but the beginning of perpetual strife; thou shouldst have remembered, my lord, that thou didst slay Clotilde's father, that thou didst drown her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers' heads and cast their bodies into a well. If Clotilde become powerful, she will avenge the wrongs of her relatives. Send thou forthwith a troop in chase, and have her brought back to thee. It will be easier for thee to bear the wrath of one person than to be perpetually at strife, thyself and thine, with all the Franks.' And Gondebaud did send forthwith a troop in chase to fetch back Clotilde with the carriage and all the treasure; but she, on approaching Villers (where Clovis was waiting for her), in the territory of Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and left over a space of twelve leagues in the country whence she was departing, to plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of Clovis, she cried aloud, 'I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!'"

The kingdom to which Clovis welcomed his queen was not large. It comprised no more than the island of the Batavians, and the dioceses of Tournay and Arras. Nevertheless, this marriage was of exceeding importance in the history of Europe, for by virtue of his qualities Clovis was destined to go far in conquest, and to establish the beginning of a great nation; and the question of his conversion, whether to Arianism or to Catholicism, was fairly certain to be answered by his matrimonial alliance. The time had come when political wisdom provided the most effective argument against paganism.

It was not at once, however, that Clotilde was able to bring about the conversion of her husband. The most she could accomplish was to gain his consent, after the birth of their first son, to the baptism of the latter. The child dying a few days afterward, serious misgivings arose in the king's mind as to whether he had not been ill advised in permitting the Christian rite. But Clotilde's second son also was baptized, and fell sick. Said Clovis: "It cannot be otherwise with him than with his brother; baptized in the name of your Christ, he is going to die." The child lived, and thereby Clotilde was placed to better advantage in attacking her husband's mind with her Christian arguments. He was brought to the point of decision when, in his battle at Tolbiac against the Alemannians, the day seeming about to be lost, Aurelian cried: "My lord king, believe only on the Lord of heaven, whom the queen, my mistress, preacheth!" Clovis exclaimed: "Christ Jesus, Thou whom my queen Clotilde calleth the Son of the Living God, I have invoked my own gods, and they have withdrawn from me; I believe that they have no power, since they aid not those who call upon them. Thee, very God and Lord, I invoke; if Thou give me victory over these foes; if I find in Thee the power the people proclaim of Thee, I will believe on Thee, and will be baptized in Thy name." The fortune of battle immediately turned in favor of the Franks.

On his return home, to make sure that her husband would fulfil his vow while his gratitude was warm, Clotilde sent for Saint Remi, the holy Bishop of Rheims, to perfect her own instructions and receive him into the Church. Clovis was baptized, as were also the majority of his subjects. To what extent the doctrines of Christianity had taken possession of his mind may be gathered from the anecdote which recounts how, after hearing from the bishop's lips the story of the sufferings of Christ, he shouted: "Had I been present at the head of my valiant Franks, I would have revenged his injuries!" As Gibbon says: "The savage conqueror of Gaul was incapable of examining the proofs of a religion which depended upon the laborious investigation of historic evidence and speculative theology. He was still more incapable of feeling the mild influence of the gospel, which persuades and purifies the heart of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a perpetual violation of moral and Christian duties: his hands were stained with blood in peace as well as in war." He took part in a synod of the Gallican Church, and immediately murdered in cold blood all the princes of the Merovingian race. Into what, a pit the Christianity of those times had fallen may be understood when we find Gregory of Tours, after calmly reciting the murders of Clovis, concluding with these words: "For God thus daily prostrated his enemies under his hands, and enlarged his kingdom, because he walked before him with an upright heart, and did that which was pleasing in his sight." Clovis was the only strictly orthodox sovereign of that day--a day when orthodoxy was permitted to cover a multitude of sins.

After making himself sole monarch of the Frankish race, Clovis died in the year 511, and was buried in the church which had been erected by Clotilde. The queen survived her husband many years, but did not exercise any noticeable influence. She could not even save her two little grandsons from the ambitious cruelty of her sons--Clotaire and Childebert. These sent a message to Clotilde saying: "Send the children to us, that we may place them on the throne." Having sent them, there soon came to her another messenger, bearing a sword and a pair of shears. Unshorn locks were essential as a mark of the kingly race among the Franks; the messenger said therefore: "Most glorious queen, thy sons, our masters, desire to know thy will touching these children; wilt thou that they live with shorn hair or that they be put to death?" Clotilde, in her astonishment and despair, answered: "If they be not set upon the throne, I would rather know that they were dead than shorn." The messenger hastened back to the two kings and, with fatal and wilful inaccuracy, said: "Finish ye your work, for the queen favoring your plans, willeth that ye accomplish them." Forthwith the two children were murdered in the most cold-blooded fashion. The tale is rendered the more shocking by the addition of the fact that Guntheuque, the mother of the lads, had become the wife of that uncle who killed them.

The Merovingians allowed themselves as much license in love as they did freedom from restraint in regard to the sterner passions. Nominal Christians though they were, they felt no compunction of conscience as to polygamy, when the vagaries of their fancy could be satisfied only by its practice. Gregory of Tours records how: "King Clotaire I. had to wife Ingonde, and her only did he love, when she made to him the following request: 'My lord,' said she, 'hath made of his handmaid what seemeth to him good; and now, to crown his favors, let my lord deign to hear what his handmaid demandeth. I pray you be graciously pleased to find for my sister Aregonde, your slave, a man both capable and rich, so that I be rather exalted than abased thereby, and be enabled to serve you still more faithfully.' At these words, Clotaire, who was but too voluptuously disposed by nature, conceived a fancy for Aregonde, betook himself to the country house where she dwelt, and united her to him in marriage. When the union had taken place, he returned to Ingonde, and said to her, 'I have labored to procure for thee the favor thou didst so sweetly demand, and, on looking for a man of wealth and capability worthy to be united to thy sister, I could find none better than myself: know, therefore, that I have taken her to wife, and I trow that it will not displease thee.' 'What seemeth good in my master's eyes, that let him,' replied Ingonde; 'only let thy servant abide still in the king's grace.'"

From the above, it is noticeable that a servile manner of speech to their husbands was customary to the Frankish women of that time. It is possible that it was little more than an affectation. Doubtless the women of character and strength then, as ever, were not without means of holding their own. Chilperic, the King of Soissons, who was a son of Clotaire, added to the not brief list of his wives--we may give him the benefit of the doubt as to whether they were contemporaneous--Galsuinthe, daughter of the King of Spain. Her attractiveness consisted in no small measure of the wealth she brought him. But he became enamored of Fredegonde. Galsuinthe could not brook this, and she offered to willingly relinquish her dowry if he would send her back to her father. Chilperic adopted a solution of the difficulty that was more to his mind. The queen was found dead in her bed. She had been strangled by a slave. Chilperic mourned for a season which was more remarkable for its brevity than his sorrow was marked by its intensity, and then took Fredegonde for his wife. This queen exerted an influence upon the affairs of her time, both political and ecclesiastical. In her life and character was fully illustrated that strong mixture of viciousness and affected piety which occasions such a sad commentary on the Christianity of her time. She was the daughter of peasants, and owed her rise solely to her beauty and her mental gifts. Her numerous murders included her stepson, a king, and the Archbishop of Rouen. How much regard she entertained for her own personal chastity may be judged from the fact that she took a public oath, with three bishops and four hundred nobles as her vouchers, that her son was the true offspring of her husband, Chilperic. Whether the value of this great mass of testimony consisted in a personal denial of responsibility on the part of all the men whose position and character might be prejudicial to Chilperic's paternity is not made clear. And yet, despite all this, the following pious act is recorded to her: her child was ill; "he was a little brother, when his elder brother, Chlodebert, was attacked with the same symptoms. His mother, Fredegonde, seeing him in danger of death, and touched by tardy repentance, said to the king, 'Long hath divine mercy borne with our misdeeds; it hath warned us by fevers and other maladies, and we have not mended our ways, and now we are losing our sons; now the tears of the poor, the lamentations of widows, and the sighs of orphans are causing them to perish, and leaving us no hope of laying by for anyone. We heap up riches and know not for whom. Our treasures, all laden with plunder and curses, are like to remain without possessors. Our cellars are they not bursting with wine, and our granaries with corn? Our coffers were they not full to the brim with gold and silver and precious stones and necklaces and other imperial ornaments? And yet that which was our most beautiful possession we are losing! Come then, if thou wilt, and let us burn all these wicked lists!' Having thus spoken, and beating her breast, the queen had brought to her the rolls, which Mark had consigned to her of each of the cities that belonged to her, and cast them into the fire. Then, turning again to the king, 'What!' she cried, 'dost thou hesitate? Do thou even as I; if we lose our dear children, at least we escape everlasting punishment!'" It may be taken for granted that Fredegonde's "works meet for repentance" on this occasion have not suffered in the recital by Gregory of Tours. She may have exhorted her husband to acts of mercy; nevertheless she planned and saw executed the assassination of Chilperic, being fearful lest he discover the guilty connection which had sprung up between herself and an officer of her household. By this act, she became the sovereign guardian of her infant, and held this potential position during the last thirteen years of her life. Guizot thus summarizes her character: "She was a true type of the strong-willed, artful, and perverse woman in barbarous times; she started low down in the scale and rose very high without a corresponding elevation of soul; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of passion, and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort of crime. However, she died quietly at Paris in 597 or 598, powerful and dreaded, and leaving on the throne of Neustria her son, Clotaire II., who, fifteen years later, was to become sole king of all the Frankish dominions."

Contemporaneous with Fredegonde, and exerting a stronger and indeed more salutary influence upon her age, though scarcely superior in her moral character, was Brunehaut, Queen of the Franks of Austrasia. She was a younger sister of Galsuinthe, by the murder of whom the way was opened to Chilperic's bed and throne for Fredegonde. The King of Austrasia was Sigebert, brother of Chilperic. Among those fierce Merovingians kinship of the closest degree had no deterring influence on their passions. In a war between these two brothers, Sigebert was assassinated in his tent by the emissaries of Fredegonde. Brunehaut fell into the latter's power, and only the fact that she managed to make her way into the Cathedral of Paris, and thus claim right of asylum, saved her life. Thence she was sent to Rouen, where she met and married a son of Chilperic by a former wife. This so enraged Fredegonde that she persecuted her stepson until, in despair, he prevailed on a faithful servant to take his life. In the meantime, the Austrasians, who had the custody of Brunehaut's infant son, demanded their queen from Chilperic; she was surrendered to them, and was instated as queen-guardian of her son.

Brunehaut was in every sense a born ruler. A princess by birth, she also possessed a mind that was capable of formulating plans which united her people with herself in the enjoyment of the fruits of success as well as in the labor of accomplishment. Faults she had in abundance. As callous in regard to bloodshed and as loose in her morals as were the barbarians of her time, she was not without conscience as to the opportunities of her position, and she labored in many ways for the public good. Brunehaut came from Spain, where the Visigoths retained much of the Roman civilization. She endeavored to introduce some of these advantages into Austrasia, which was peopled by the least cultivated of the Franks; but, though forcing her reforms by sheer strength of will and intellect, the result was her expulsion from the land. The history of her rule is thus epitomized by Guizot: "She clung stoutly to the efficacious exercise of the royal authority; she took a practical interest in the public works, highways, bridges, monuments, and the progress of material civilization; the Roman roads in a short time received and for a long while kept in Austrasia the name of Brunehaufs Causeways; there used to be shown, in a forest near Bourges, Brunehaufs castle, Brunehaufs tower at Etampes, Brunehaufs stone near Tournay, and Brunehaufs fort near Cahors. In the royal domains, and wheresoever she went, she showed abundant charity to the poor, and many ages after her death the people of those districts still spoke of Brunehaufs Alms. She liked and protected men of letters, rare and mediocre indeed at that time, but the only beings, such as they were, with the notion of seeking and giving any kind of intellectual enjoyment; and they in turn took pleasure in celebrating her name and her deserts. The most renowned of all during that age, Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, dedicated nearly all his little poems to two queens: one, Brunehaut, plunging amidst all the struggles and pleasures of the world; the other, Saint Radegonde, sometime wife of Clotaire I, who had fled in all haste from a throne to bury herself at Poitiers, in a convent she had founded there. To compensate, Brunehaut was detested by the majority of the Austrasian chiefs, those Leudes, land owners and warriors, whose sturdy and turbulent independence she was continually fighting against. She supported against them, with indomitable courage, the royal officers, the servants of the palace, her agents, and frequently her favorites."