[86] Prosternabat enim quotidie Deus hostes ejus sub manu ipsius, et augebat regnum ejus, eo quod ambularet recto corde coram eo, et faceret, quæ placita erant in oculis ejus. Gregor. Hist. lib. II., cap. 40.
[87] Austrasia comprised the old Salian possessions in Belgium, and the territories of the Ripuarians and the Alemanni.
[88] Clodomir had left three sons, who were brought up by their grandmother, Clotilda. The two brothers having got possession of two of their nephews, calmly resolved to kill them. Clotaire sheathed his dagger in the breast of one of them, the other embraced the knees of his uncle Childebert, and besought him to spare his life. The tears of the innocent child moved even the harsh Childebert to pity; he entreated his brother to spare him; but that monster remained deaf to all prayers, and threatened even to make Childebert share the fate of the helpless boy, should he continue any longer to withhold him from his murderous hands: Childebert thereupon pushed back the poor innocent, and Clotaire’s dagger speedily sent him to rejoin his brother (532). The third of the children of Clodomir was, indeed, saved from his uncle’s clutches; but he deemed it necessary afterwards to embrace the ecclesiastical profession, in order to secure his safety.
[89] Fredegonda was first Chilperic’s concubine, subsequently, after the murder of Galsuintha, his wife. After a career of blood and crime, of which history affords but few parallels, she died in 579, at the height of prosperity and power, tranquilly in her bed, properly shriven, of course, and with a promise of paradise. Had the female monster been but a little more liberal to the Church, who knows but the Calendar of the Saints might contain an additional name.
[90] Brunehilda was the daughter of Athanagild, King of Spain, and the wife of Sigebert, King of Austrasia. She was in every respect a worthy pendant to Fredegonda; but her final fate was very different from that of her more fortunate rival, whom she survived about sixteen years. In the year 613, she fell into the hands of Fredegonda’s son, Clotaire, who inflicted upon the aged woman the most horrible tortures, and had her finally tied, with one arm and one leg, to the tail of a wild horse, and thus dragged along over a stony road until death took mercy upon her. And all these people professed the religion of Christ, and were surrounded by numbers of most pious bishops! but then, the Church has always been indulgent to those who could and would remember her with rich endowments. Moreover, many of the bishops of that period were themselves such monstrous villains that little or no remonstrance could be expected from them against any royal crime, however so atrocious.—To give one instance out of many: a bishop of Clermont, wishing to compel a priest of his diocese to cede to him a small estate held by the latter, and which he refused to part with, had the unfortunate man shut up in a coffin, with a decaying corpse, and the coffin placed in the vault of the church!
[91] Theuderic, or Thierry, was the younger son of Sigebert’s son Childebert; he murdered his elder brother, Theudebert, and the infant son of the latter, Meroveus (612). He died a year after, and two of his own boys, Sigebert and Corbus, met the same fate at the hands of Clotaire.
CHAPTER II.
