THE LEGEND OF THE ROSES
After the painting by J. Nogales.
We have seen that, save for the story of Hildegarde, the women of Charlemagne's family did not present examples of Christian piety or devotion, but it may be in place here to mention that Saint Rosalie, the patron saint of Palermo, was of a family said to have descended from that of Charlemagne. Saint Rosalie, becoming filled with a spirit of devotion, retired to a grotto on Mount Pelegrino, where in solitude she passed her time in prayer and penitence. Of her is told the legend that, surreptitiously conveying bread concealed in her apron to feed the hungry, without her father's consent, she was discovered by him and requested to open her apron, when it was found that the bread had been changed into magnificent roses.
Charlemagne died in 813. From that time until the end of the tenth century there were no women who can, by the greatest elasticity of which the term is susceptible, be called Christian, and who, at the same time were of any note in history. The gloom of the dark ages had not begun to lift. There was nothing to stimulate the woman of ordinary birth to the exercise of any powers save the most inferior. The broadening influence of literature was unknown. Charlemagne encouraged study among his courtiers; but he could not revive the smouldering embers. During the succeeding centuries, Greek lore came to be forgotten in the Western world. The manners, even among the noblest dames, were inconceivably rude. Every woman, not excepting the daughters of the emperor, worked with her hands in the common affairs of the household. What the morals of the time were, we have already seen. Convents sprang up everywhere, sheltering a great number of women, of both high and low degree.
They were refuges from the barbarities which accompanied warfare, and, to a lesser degree, safeguards against the temptation of the world, the flesh and the devil. The former fanatical enthusiasm for celibacy had greatly subsided; bishops and priests not infrequently were married, and even the nunneries gave occasion for lively stories which became traditional. It was an age when two sisters, Marozia and Theodora, both prostitutes, could decide the succession to the papal tiara. The former secured it for her bastard son, and also for her grandson, the infamous John XII., during whose pontificate, as Gibbon puts it, "the Lateran palace was turned in a school for prostitution, and his rapes of virgins and widows deterred the female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be violated by his successor." It was an age fitted in all ways to produce such a story as that of Pope Joan, which, though it was probably not founded on fact, is a worthy illustration of the moral condition of the rulers of the Church in that time.
We have seen that, save for the story of Hildegarde, the women of Charlemagne's family did not present examples of Christian piety or devotion, but it may be in place here to mention that Saint Rosalie, the patron saint of Palermo, was of a family said to have descended from that of Charlemagne. Saint Rosalie, becoming filled with a spirit of devotion, retired to a grotto on Mount Pelegrino, where in solitude she passed her time in prayer and penitence. Miraculous power was ascribed by the Sicilians to this saint, and of her is told the legend that, surreptitiously conveying bread concealed in her apron to feed the hungry, without her father's consent, she was discovered by him and requested to open her apron, when it was found that the bread had been changed into magnificent roses.