Béarn and the Pyrenees

by Louisa Stuart Costello

It is recounted that, while the abbey was in progress, the King of France, Philippe I., came to Poitiers, hoping to induce William to assist him against the Duke of Normandy. The monarch, struck with the grandeur of the new constructions, exclaimed that they were "worthy of a king;" to which the Count replied, haughtily, "Am I not, then, a king?" Philippe did not see fit to make any further rejoinder on so delicate a subject.

The tomb of this redoubted prince was opened in 1822, and the body found quite perfect; as this circumstance, which is by no means unusual, was in former times always considered as a proof of the sanctity of the person interred, it is to be hoped all the stories of Count William's vagaries are mere scandals, invented by evil-disposed persons; and that the history of his having established a convent, all the nuns of which were persons of more than suspected propriety, and having placed a female favourite of his own at their head, had no foundation in truth. Something similar is told of several powerful princes, so it may well be a fable altogether.

The botanical garden of Poitiers now occupies the place where the abbey of St. Cyprian stood, with all its dependencies; we sat on some reversed capitals, which now form seats in a flowery nook, and climbed a stair of a tower where seeds are dried,—the only morsel of the great convent now existing. Bouchet tells one of his strange stories of a monk of this monastery, which is curious, as it relates to that dangerous and powerful subject of the harassed King of England, Henry II., who must have had enough to do to circumvent the art and cunning of the wily archbishop who was always working for his ruin and the exaltation of the Church. The annalist relates that—

"At this period, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, in England, was a fugitive from his country, because the English princes desired to kill and put him to death: for that he would not agree to certain constitutions, statutes, and ordinances, that Henry II. and the princes of England had made against the liberties and privileges of the Church, and the holy canons thereof. For they wished to confer dignities and other benefices and take the fruits, thereby profaning the sanctuary of God. And the said archbishop was seven years, or thereabouts, in France, which land is the refuge of popes and holy personages; and he had great communication and familiarity with the said Pope Alexander, he being in the town of Sens, where he chiefly staid while in France. And the archbishop was sometimes at the abbey of Pontigny, and sometimes at the monastery of St. Columbe. Now, I read what follows in an ancient pancarte of the abbey of St. Cyprian of Poitiers, brought there by a monk of the said, called Babilonius, who, for some grudge owed him by his abbot, was driven from his abbey, and went to complain of his wrong to Pope Alexander at Sens, while the Archbishop Thomas sojourned there; from whom this monk received a holy vial to place in the church of St. Gregory, where reposes the body of the blessed Saint Loubette. I have translated the said writing from Latin into the vulgar tongue, seeing that it contains some curious things. It begins, 'Quando ego Thomas Archiepiscopus,' &c.

"When I, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, exiled from England, took refuge with Pope Alexander, who was also fugitive, in the town of Sens, and there represented to him the bad habits and abuses that the King of England had introduced into the Church; one night as I was in the church of Sainte Colombe, engaged in prayer, supplicating the Queen of Virgins that she would vouchsafe grace to the King of England and his successors, that they might have power and will to be obedient to the Church as her children, and that our Lord Jesus Christ would cause them more fully to love the said Church, suddenly appeared to me the Blessed Virgin Mary, having on her breast a drop of water, glittering like fine gold, and holding in her hand a little vial (ampoule) of stone. And after she had taken from her breast the drop of water and put it in the vial, she spoke to me these words: 'This is the unction with which the kings of England shall be anointed; not those who reign now, but those who are to reign; for those who reign now are wicked, and so will be their successors, and, for their iniquity shall lose many things. However, kings of England shall come, and shall be anointed with this unction, and shall be benign and obedient to the Church, and shall not possess their lands or lordships until they are so anointed. The first of these shall recover, without violence, the countries of Normandy and Aquitaine, which their predecessors had lost. This king shall be great amongst kings, and it will be he who shall re-edify many churches in the Holy Land, and drive all the pagans from Babylon, where he shall erect rich monasteries, and put all the enemies of religion to flight. And when he wears about his neck this drop of golden water, he shall be victorious and augment his kingdom. As for thee, thou shall die a martyr for sustaining the rights of the Church.' I then prayed the holy and sacred Lady to tell me in what sanctuary I should place this sacred deposit; and she replied, that there was in this city a monk of the monastery of St. Cyprian of Poitiers, named Babilonius, who had been unjustly driven forth by his abbot, where he desired to be reinstated by apostolic authority; to him I was ordered to give this vial, in order that he might carry it to the city of Poitiers, and place it in the church of St. Gregory, which is near the church of St. Hilaire, and put it at the extremity of the said church, towards the east, under a great stone, where it would be found when the proper hour arrived to anoint the kings of England, and that the chief of the Pagans should be the cause of the discovery of the said golden drop. Accordingly I enclosed this treasure in a leaden vessel, and gave it to the said monk, Babilonius, to bear to the church of St. Gregory, as it was commanded."

What object Saint Thomas of Canterbury had in thus mystifying the monks of Poitiers, or to what prince or pagan he pointed at, remains a secret: whether the holy vial ever was found cannot now be known; or, if any discovery of such was made in that period of discoveries, the great Revolution, it was probably consigned to destruction with numerous other equally authentic relics. The most remarkable sentence in this pancarte is, perhaps, the prophecy of his own death by the martyr, always admitting that the whole was not composed and arranged after the event had happened.

Bouchet, glad of the opportunity of dwelling on wonders, finishes his tale by relating the circumstances of Becket's murder, and how at his burial a choir of angels led the anthem, which the monks followed: also how the cruel homicides by the judgment of God were suddenly punished; for some of them ate their own fingers, others became mad and demoniacs, and others lost the use of all their limbs.

The relics in the churches of Poitiers were of the most extraordinary value; each vied with the other in wonders of the kind, until all the bones of all the saints in the calendar seemed gathered together in this favoured city. Whenever a prince had offended the Church, he made his peace by presenting some precious offering which was beyond price; as, for instance, in 1109, the Duke of Aquitaine, father of Elionore, after having been pardoned for one of his numerous offences, caused to be enclosed in a magnificent shrine of gold, two bones and part of the beard of the blessed Saint Peter, prince of apostles, which St. Hilaire himself had brought to his church. Soon after, to prove his repentance of some new peccadillo, Guillaume gave certain dismes to the monks and priests of St. Hilaire, with the use of the forest of Moulière.

St. Bernard himself was obliged on one occasion to come to Poitiers to admonish the refractory duke, who chose to have an opinion of his own in acknowledging the pope, and many miracles were performed during his stay. Once St. Bernard severely reprimanded the duke at the altar, in the cathedral, who was for the moment terrified at his denunciations; but no sooner had he left the church than he ordered the altar at which the saint had stood to be demolished; and a priest to proclaim and command the adherence of all persons to whatever pope their duke had adopted; but this impiety was signally visited, for the priest fell down dead at the altar as he was uttering the words. Also the dean, under whose auspices St. Bernard's altar had been destroyed, fell sick immediately, and died mad and in despair, for he cut his throat in his bed: besides which, one of the refractory bishops—he of Limoges—fell from his mule to the ground, and striking his head against a stone, was killed on the spot; and for these reasons and evident signs, Duke William acknowledged his error, and replaced the Bishop of Poitiers, whom he had deposed, in his chair.

This is the William, known by his romantic adventures as "The Armed Hermit," who, no doubt, disgusted with the tyranny of the Church, whose members at that time never ceased to interfere with the monarchs of Europe, resolved to abandon his kingdom, and embrace a life of quiet, as he supposed, "in some horrible desert." He was encouraged in the idea by interested persons, and feigning to die, left a will, by which his young daughter, Elionore, became the heiress of Aquitaine; he then secretly quitted the court, directing his steps to the shrine of St. James, in Galicia, where he joined a holy hermit, and put himself under his tuition. By diabolic temptation it seems, however, that he could never be content in any of the deserts; where, still clothed in armour, cap-à-pié, he endeavoured in vain to forget his belligerent propensities, for, every now and then, when he heard of a siege toward, he would suddenly sally forth, and having assisted in the skirmish, again seized with a fit of repentant devotion, would hurry back to some desolate retreat, and endeavour, by penitence and fasts, to obliterate the sin he had committed.