was a polygamist, and also from the fact that he watched his soldiers
amuse themselves with the awful death agonies of two hundred maidens,
whom they tore limb from limb with wild horses and crushed under the
wheels of heavy wagons.
Placidia died in the year 450. She was buried at Ravenna; and, with some
ambiguity of meaning, it is said that there her corpse, seated in a
chair of cypress wood, was preserved for ages. Her son perished by the
avenging hand of a senator whose wife he had perfidiously violated. He
was the last emperor of the house of Theodosius; and his mother was the
last woman, with a name in history, who was worthy of mention in the
records of the perishing Western Empire.
With the death of Placidia, we arrive at the end of a cycle in the
evolution of the human race. It was contemporaneous with the terminus of
ancient Aryan civilization--it was during a climacteric in human
history. Again the world was to revert to the rudeness necessarily
accompanying the vigorous strength which characterizes the setting forth
of a new race. The world began again--polished manners and social order
gave place to strenuosity and individualism. The strong hand again
became the one thing needful. Literature was silent, and art was
forgotten. Of the glory of classic civilization there remained only a
memory; and even this grew faint, for the struggle for existence became
exacting. Nevertheless, from all that Rome had done and had been there
remained an imperishable deposit. From the ruins of one civilization
there is gathered the foundations for the succeeding.
Rome left, among
other contributions to absolute progress, the idea of nationality and a
belief in the necessity of popular law. In these two respects, woman
shared in the determined progress of the world. The Roman woman
manifested the capacity of her sex to place a steady hand on the helm of
the state; she wrested for herself some of those legal rights to which,
by virtue of her humanity at least, she is indubitably entitled.
VIII
WOMEN OF THE FRANKISH CHURCH
We may now consider ourselves to have nearly passed the transition
period between the Classic and the Middle Ages, and to have begun to
enter that indefinite range of history known as Mediævalism--indefinite
as to character rather than extent of period. A new world opens to our
view; a world which we examine under the influence of the romanticist
more than under that of the philosopher. In the age to which our
researches have now brought us we find that the life of woman has wholly
changed. Evolution has taken a new beginning. In place of the state as
the symbol and the object of power and progress individualism has come
to the front and asserted itself. There is now more play for personal
initiation on the part of the multitude. The activity of the individual
is more directly attributable to his personal motives and culminates
more fully in his own desires. Consequently, though woman is still held
down to an inferior level, and is hampered by unequal laws, she has more
room in which to assert herself, and she plays a stronger part in
historical events. Practically, though not theoretically, she is still
given in marriage without her consent; but she is no longer regarded as
a mere possession. Her surroundings also have wonderfully changed. In
place of the porticoed villa with its marble floor and beautiful
statuary, its highly decorated atrium and sparkling fountains, she is
now seen in what was the rudiment of the turreted castle with its rough
hall and rush-strewn floor. She has lost the learning by which she was
wont to delight her idle hours with classic poetry and Greek philosophy;
if she can read at all, her accomplishment is a rare one, and the most
powerful stimulus to her imagination is the song of illiterate bards who
recite the heroic achievements of her race. In this she has reverted to
literature in its embryonic condition. Her religion has gained morality,
though emphatically more in theory than in practice, but it has
distinctly lost in poetry. Elegance has disappeared from every phase of
her life. When she rides abroad it is no longer in a splendidly equipped
litter, but, in hardier fashion, upon horseback. While for her to lead
men-at-arms is an extreme rarity, she is far likelier to attain ruling
authority than she was under the refined civilization of older times.
With the Franks, however, supreme rule by a woman, in any direct manner,
was rendered impossible by the ancient Salic law which prescribed that
"no portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full
territorial ownership of the head of the family) should pass into the
possession of women, but it should belong altogether to the virile sex."
To us the early Mediæval life seems more remote and less intelligible
than that of the classic age. We are more at home in the villas of Rome
than in the castles of Charlemagne. This is partly because the
literature of the latter age has not presented such a satisfying picture
as have the immortal productions of the former; but more largely because
the genius of modern civilization has its counterpart in the social
ideas of classic times, rather than in the individualistic motive of
mediævalism.
The period covered by this chapter extends over four hundred years, from
the end of the fifth century to the tenth. In our selection of
characters from the successive generations during that term, we shall
have an eye to their utility as representing types of the feminine, even
more than to their aptitude for illustrating any special development in
civilized habits. Evolution proceeded slowly in those days, and,
consequently, a century or two did not greatly change social habits.
Somewhere about the middle of the fifth century, a Frankish chief named
Childeric was driven from his own people by the varying fortunes of war.
He took refuge among the Thuringians, and rewarded their kindness by
seducing Basina, the wife of their king. After his return, she left her
husband and joined her lover, becoming his recognized wife. Childeric's
guilt in this affair is somewhat mitigated by the spirit of Basina, who
declared that she chose the Frank solely because she knew no man who was
wiser, stronger or handsomer, surely a frank admission of natural
sentiment. The offspring of this free union was Clovis, the founder of
the kingdom of the Franks, and the means whereby it became Christian.
While still a youth, though established in the chieftainship by his
valor in marauding expeditions, Clovis heard of the beauty and the
desirable character of Clotilde, the niece of Gondebaud, King of the
Burgundians. She had been brought up amidst the most barbarous scenes
which those times could produce. Her father and her two brothers had
been put to death by her uncle, who had also caused her mother Agrippina
to be thrown into the Rhone, with a stone fastened to her neck, and
drowned. Clotilde and her sister Chrona, he permitted to live. The
latter had become a nun, while Clotilde, no less religious, was living
at Geneva where, as it is said, she employed her whole time in works of
piety and charity. Clovis sent to Gondebaud asking the hand of his
niece; but it appears that at first his suit was not favorably looked
upon, for the Frank resorted to unusual measures whereby he gained his
end and provided the material for an interesting story.
It is told as
follows by Fredegaire in his commentary on the history by Gregory of
Tours: "As he was not allowed to see Clotilde, Clovis charged a certain
Roman, named Aurelian, to use all his wit to come nigh her. Aurelian
repaired alone to the spot, clothed in rags and with his wallet upon his
back, like a mendicant. To ensure confidence in himself, he took with
him the ring of Clovis. On his arrival at Geneva, Clotilde received him
as a pilgrim charitably, and whilst she was washing his feet, Aurelian,
bending toward her, said under his breath, 'Lady, I have great matters
to announce to thee if thou deign to permit me secret revelation.' She
consenting, replied, 'Say on.' 'Clovis, King of the Franks,' said he,
'hath sent me to thee: if it be the will of God, he would fain raise
thee to his high rank by marriage; and that thou mayest be certified
thereof, he sendeth thee this ring.' She accepted this ring with great
joy, and said to Aurelian, 'Take for recompense of thy pains these
hundred sous in gold and this ring of mine. Return promptly to thy lord;
if he would fain unite me to him in marriage, let him send without delay
messengers to demand me of my uncle Gondebaud, and let the messengers
who shall come take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have
obtained permission; if they haste not, I fear lest a certain sage, one
Aridius, may return from Constantinople; and if he arrive beforehand,
all this matter will by his counsel come to naught.'"
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