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."
Brunehaut maintained her power under the reigns of her son and her
grandson in Austrasia, the capital of which was Metz. In 599, however,
she was expelled from this kingdom, and went to that of Burgundy, where
her other grandson, Theodoric II., reigned, having his capital at
Orleans. In a letter written to Theodoric by Gregory the Great, the
latter says: "And this in you among other things is enough to call for
praise and admiration, that in such things as you know that our
daughter, your most excellent grandmother, desires for the love of God,
in these you make haste most earnestly to lend your aid, so that thereby
you may reign both happily here, and in a future life with the angels."
It is evident from this that in Burgundy the veteran queen was not
denied the opportunity to exercise that executive talent of which the
Austrasians had wearied. If the accounts given by Frankish historians
may be relied upon, Brunehaut's influence upon her grandson was not in
all respects calculated to fit him for a life among the angels. They
accuse her of having encouraged him in licentious living, in order that
her own power might not be undermined by the introduction into his court
of a lawful queen.
There are several letters extant which were written to her by Pope
Gregory. They all, in that polite manner in which Church dignitaries
treat worldly potentates, speak of her virtuous acts and ignore all
mention of her frailties. Brunehaut would be an exceedingly estimable
woman if nothing more of her were known than what is to be gathered from
these epistles. Gregory was a severe moralist, but he allowed his
condemnation of many faults to be silenced by his gratitude for the
piety of the queen in erecting "the Church of Saint Martin in the
suburbs of Augustodunum (Autun), and a monastery for handmaidens of God,
and also a hospital in the same city." There is also a letter to
Thalassia, the first abbess of this convent, ordaining that the property
donated shall never be alienated from her and her successors; also, that
"on the death of an abbess of the aforementioned monastery, no other
shall be ordained by means of any kind of craftiness or secret scheming,
but that such a one as the king of the same province, with the consent
of the nuns, shall have chosen in the fear of God, and provided for the
ordination of." This also is evidence regarding the interior politics of
the nunneries of that time.
Brunehaut lived a stormy life. Gentleness and modesty, the qualities
most esteemed in feminine character, were the least noticeable in her
nature; they would not have been consonant with either her ambitions or
her methods. She was ever striving with the chieftains of her realm,
endeavoring, with no little success, to force their independence into
submission to regal authority. With the clerics, also, she had her
quarrels. Saint Didier, Bishop of Vienne, was at her instigation
brutally murdered. Saint Columba, even, was visited with her displeasure
because he refused to connive at her faults with the award of his
blessing. In 614, after thirty-nine years of the most strenuous
political life and the most extreme vicissitudes of personal fortune
that ever fell to the lot of any queen, she perished most miserably at
the hands of Clotaire II., the son of her old enemy, Fredegonde. He
caused the venerable queen, now eighty years of age, to be paraded
before the army on the back of a camel; and then, by his order, she was
bound by the hair, one hand, and one foot, to the tail of an unbroken
steed by which she was kicked and dashed to pieces. Thus lived, and thus
died a "Christian" queen who had received high encomiums from one of the
greatest bishops of history.
It must not be supposed, however, that feminine modesty, faithful love,
and the gentleness which is ever venerated in womankind, were entirely
unknown to that rough and licentious age. What could be more pleasing
than the romantic story of Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards? In the
year 584, Authari succeeded to that kingdom. He asked in marriage the
beautiful and pious daughter of Garibald, King of the Bavarians. In
order that he might ascertain whether the attractions of this damsel
were in reality equal to their reputation, and also that he might hasten
matters in case he should be satisfied on this point, Authari
impersonated his own ambassador and visited the court of Garibald in
this guise. He there stated that he was the trusted friend of the
Lombard king, and that Authari had charged him to bring back a minute
report of the charm of his expected bride. Theodelinda submitted to the
inspection; and the supposed ambassador, being at once enamored of her
grace and beauty, hailed her as Queen of the Lombards, and requested
that, according to the custom of his people, she present a cup of wine
to him, her first subject. As she did this, he slyly touched her hand
and then his own lips. This familiarity astonished the maiden, but,
advised by her nurse, she said nothing, and Authari, before leaving the
court, succeeded in gaining her affections. As he left to return home,
he revealed his rank to her by saying, as he drove his huge battle-ax
into the trunk of a tree, "Thus strikes the king of the Langobardi."
After his departure, influenced by the Franks, Garibald withdrew his
consent to his daughter's marriage; whereupon Theodelinda took the
matter into her own hands and fled across the Alps to her lover and was
married to him at Verona. Although she was early left a widow, she had
so completely gained the love and the confidence of the Lombards, that
they intrusted her with the privilege of raising to the throne
whomsoever she might favor with her hand in marriage. Her choice fell
upon a handsome Thuringian named Agilulf. He knew not of his fortune
until it was announced to him by the queen herself in this fashion: one
day, as he bent to kiss her hand in faithful homage, she blushingly
said, "You have the right to kiss my cheek, for you are my king!" So
great was Theodelinda's influence over her people that at her request
the whole nation simultaneously became Christian; and in view of that
event, it is no wonder that she was on the most friendly terms with Pope
Gregory the Great, whose letters to her may still be read. Under her
happy reign, the kingdom of Lombardy was strengthened, and its
constitution established. Agilulf died, and his son and successor,
Adelwald, rendering himself obnoxious, was murdered by some of his
subjects; but to make amends to her for this act, the Lombards placed
the husband of her daughter Gerberga on the throne. Boccaccio, by making
Theodelinda the subject of one of his amorous tales, has taken an
unwarranted and reprehensible liberty with a good queen of whom her age
was justly proud.
It is to these times, also, that the pathetic story of Saint Genevieve
belongs. She was the wife of Count Siegfried of Andernach. He, setting
out against the Moors who were then invading the land, intrusted her to
the care of Golo, his principal servant. This man, having failed in his
repeated attempts on her conjugal faithfulness, accused her of the fault
which he would fain have persuaded her to commit, and procured her
condemnation to death. Her executioners being merciful, spared her life
by having her conveyed far into the recesses of a forest. There she,
with her little daughter, lived for several years in absolute solitude.
They were sheltered by a cave; and a doe, whose tameness was regarded as
a miraculous providence, supplied them with milk. It was no less
regarded as a divine interposition which eventually led Siegfried to the
grotto while following the chase; her innocence being proved, she was
happily reinstated as his wife, and has ever since been honored as a
saint, which doubtless she was.
Christianity, during the latter half of the first millennium, could show
triumphs of sanctification in personal character; it had its heroes of
morality, but it must be confessed that the conversion of the barbaric
nations was not accompanied with a very signal improvement in their
morals. Milman says: "It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious
state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the
descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict
or coalition of barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has
introduced into Christianity all its ferocity, with none of its
generosity or magnanimity; its energy shows itself in atrocity of
cruelty and even of sensuality. Christianity has given to barbarism
hardly more than its superstition and its hatred of heretics and
unbelievers. Throughout, assassinations, parricides, and fratricides
intermingle with adulteries and rapes....
"As to the intercourse of the sexes, wars of conquest where the females
are at the mercy of the victors, especially if female virtue is not in
much respect, would severely try the more rigid morals of the conqueror.
The strength of the Teutonic character, when it had once burst the
bounds of habitual or traditional restraint, might seem to disdain easy
and effeminate vice, and to seek a kind of wild zest in the indulgence
of lust, by mingling it with all other violent passions, rapacity, and
inhumanity. Marriage was a bond contracted and broken on the lightest
occasion. Some of the Merovingian kings took as many wives, either
together or in succession, as suited either their passions or their
politics. Christianity hardly interferes even to interdict incest."
Clotaire and Charibert each married two sisters. The latter was sternly
rebuked by Saint Germanus, but (so the historian informs us) as the king
already had many wives, he bore the rebuke with extreme patience. There
were laws against these irregularities; but, strict as they were in
their terms, they were completely nullified by failure of execution.
These laws, also, are models of the inequality which existed between the
sexes. When punishment for adultery is prescribed, it is always
understood that it refers solely to the wife. The man was burdened by no
legal responsibility in this matter. Free women were not permitted to
marry slaves; to do so reduced them to a position of servitude. This did
not apply to men, excepting such as were too poor to compound the felony
with the abducted slave's owner. The kings were free in this matter.
Under the Carlovingian dynasty, manners were somewhat less ferocious
than those exhibited by the Merovingian kings; but it was rather the
result of the former being more confident of its security than any
evidence of real improvement in morals. Earnest champion of the Church
as was Charlemagne, and much as he honored religion, the records of his
own private life and those of his family are examples of wholesale
libidinosity such as is rarely equalled in history.
Five women were united in marriage to the great emperor. The first was
Desirée, the daughter of the Lombard king, whom Pope Stephen so bitterly
opposed. This union, however, was short lived; during one year only did
Desirée hold the wandering affections of the sturdy monarch. He then
took Hildegarde, a Swabian princess; but in the same indifferent manner
he dissolved this connection, being instigated thereto by the
allegations of a servant named Taland, who was enraged at the contempt
with which the queen received his criminal advances. Charlemagne did not
trouble himself to look into the matter; like Cæsar, he held that his
wife should be above suspicion. There is a pleasing story in regard to
Hildegarde who, after her divorce, went to Rome and devoted herself to a
religious life. By her charitable deeds and acts of piety she gained a
great and well deserved name for sanctity. It is said that one day she
met Taland, who was reduced to the life of a blind mendicant. By the
power of her holiness, she restored his sight, and he, filled with
remorse, confessed his crime and brought about a reconciliation between
Hildegarde and the king. No less naive is the legend related of one of
Charlemagne's daughters. His children included several girls, all
beautiful; but for political reasons their father denied them the
privilege of marriage. He considered that if they were united to the
great nobles of the land, it would mean a division and consequent
weakening of the empire. But love laughed at politics. "His secretary,
young Eginhart, became deeply enamored of his daughter Emma, and the
youthful lovers, fearing his anger should he discover their affection,
met only at night. It happened that one night, while Eginhart was in the
princess's apartment, a fall of snow took place. To return across the
palace court must lead to the inevitable discovery by the traces of his
footsteps. The moment called for resolution; woman's wit came to the
assistance of the perplexed lover, and the faithful and prudent Emma,
taking her lover on her back, bore him across the court. The emperor,
who chanced to be gazing from his window, beheld this strange sight by
the clear moonlight, and the next morning sent for the young couple, who
stood before him in the expectation of being sentenced to death, when
the generous father bestowed upon Eginhart his daughter's hand, and the
Odinwald in fief. The tomb of Emma and Eginhart is still to be seen at
Erbach." Another daughter, Bertha, called after her grandmother--the
mother of Charlemagne, carried on a similar intrigue with Engelbert;
and, though not fortunate enough to receive her father's sanction to
marriage, with a gift of land, she became the mother of Nithart, who was
a famous historian of his time. Charlemagne's own character enabled him
to understand, and his justice prompted him to condone those instincts
which his policy would not allow to be satisfied in a lawful and
conventional manner.
[Illustration 5: _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.
PART SECOND
WOMEN OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE
IX
THE EMPRESS EUDOXIA
From the story of Christian Womanhood in Old Rome on the Tiber we pass
naturally to the story of Christian Womanhood in that New Rome on the
Bosporus, where Constantine the Great had established an imperial city
which was destined to be the centre of the religious and political life
of the civilized peoples of the East for over a thousand years, and to
keep alive during the Dark Ages the torch of civilization.
The victories of the Cæsars in the extensive domain Hellenized by
Alexander the Great had been surpassed only by the victories of the
Christ, and in Constantinople the authority of Church and State blended
in one inseparable union and determined the destinies of millions of men
and women in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
As Greek culture was ever an important factor in the eastern half of the
Roman Empire, the story of the Christian women of the East is but a
continuation of the story of Greek women. Hence, it is our task to
consider how Hellenized womanhood was affected by that new principle
which had entered into the world.
Christianity, with its emphasis on the affections, naturally appealed to
women, who, says Aristotle, "are creatures of passion, as opposed to
men, who are capable of living by reason." And from the days of Mary,
the Mother of Jesus, the women of antiquity accepted in large numbers
the new teaching. They found that their lives were uplifted by it, their
activities enlarged, their influence among men strengthened.
The status of woman among Oriental peoples was consequently considerably
changed. The recognition, so slowly won, that women had immortal souls
equalized them with the other sex, and with the permeation of
Christianity into the life of paganism began the real emancipation of
the female sex. Functions beyond those of housewifery and maternity were
conceded to woman. Chrysostom, in a letter to a Roman lady, after
speaking of the division of duties assigned by nature to men and women,
says that the Christian life had extended woman's sphere beyond the
duties of the home, and had given her an important part to perform in
the work and struggles of the Church for the elevation of mankind. Her
chief function, in his opinion, was that of consoler and ministering
angel. Thus woman was acknowledged to have a mission--a view that has
prevailed through all the Christian ages. In the pursuit of this idea,
many of the loveliest and most highly endowed women of ancient times
devoted themselves to the relief of sickness and suffering and extended
the influence of the Church by this exhibition of the spirit of
humanity.
Christianity was gradually transforming the spirit of the ancient world.
But these earlier centuries of the Christian era were a season of
twilight during which light and darkness mingled. Paganism and
Christianity were waging a silent but determined warfare, and the
latter, by absorbing the best that was in the former, left it but a
hollow shell, the connotation of worldliness and unbelief. The ethical
philosophy of the Greeks and the moral teachings of the Stoics and the
Epicureans had found their logical end in the philosophical doctrines of
Christianity and had prepared the way for the acceptance of the latter.
Christianity continued the idea of conformity to the divine government
of the world taught by the Stoics, and the insistence on friendship and
brotherly love emphasized by the Epicureans, and had given life to these
doctrines by the presentation of a divine example. This evolution of the
highest ethical ideas of the ancients in the nobler spirit of
Christianity had its logical outcome in the prevailing institutions of
the Christian world. Stoicism developed into the asceticism that
appealed so strongly to many consecrated men and women, and Christian
Epicureanism showed itself in the many brotherhoods and sisterhoods
which labored for the betterment of humanity in the care of the sick and
the unfortunate.
One of the effects of the Stoical idea combined with the new conception
of the mission of woman was the prevalence of celibacy. Many women chose
to devote their time to good works rather than to the cares of family
life. Furthermore, "the horror of unchastity--the desecration of the
body, the temple of the soul--which had taken possession of the age with
a sort of morbid excess led to vows of perpetual virginity."
This emphasis on the unmarried life was unfortunate for the race, as it
conduced to degeneracy and depopulation; but it produced many examples
of consecrated and devoted women, who have merited the homage bestowed
on them by later ages.
As regards the relation of the sexes, the greatest contrast lay in the
Christian conception of a purified spiritual love, as compared with the
carnal and sensual love of the pagan peoples. This is illustrated by the
popularity of the celebrated legend of Cyprian and Justina, which was
later versified by the Empress Eudoxia.
Justina was a young and beautiful maiden of Corinth, who was
passionately loved by a handsome pagan youth, Aglaides. Every effort to
win the maiden's affections, which were given to Christ, proving of no
avail, Aglaides determined to enlist in his cause the powers of
darkness. To this end he engaged the services of a powerful magician,
Cyprian by name, who was versed in all the magic lore of the Chaldeans
and the Egyptians. The wizard's art devised every form of temptation,
but the demons who were called up to accomplish the maiden's ruin fled
at the sign of the Cross which she made; and Justina emerged from the
ordeal pure and spotless, untainted by all the arts of the Evil One.
Cyprian, overcome by the beauty and innocence and unbounded faith of the
maiden, was himself inspired with the purest and most intense love for
Justina, and, renouncing all his arts, was converted to Christianity.
The devoted pair suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian.