THE YEARS OF THE WANDERINGS
Until the period of the migrations of the Teutons, the precursors of
which were the hapless attempts of the Cimbri and the Teutones to invade
the Roman Empire, the ancient world, as known to history, was sharply
divided into two parts: the Roman world and the world of the Barbarians.
The consequences of the invasion and infiltration of the Germanic
barbarians into the northern and western provinces of the Roman Empire
were the ethnographic combinations from which arose well-nigh all the
nations of modern Europe. It is those barbarians who created the mixture
of blood, of ideas and ideals, of institutions and customs, from which
every State of Europe was born. Their influence for good, as for evil,
was lasting and universal.
The combinations of the Teutonic races during the fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth centuries, until the race movement came to some sort
of a standstill under the Carlovingian dynasty, were numberless. When we
consider those tribes rushing one upon another, the newcomers ever
pressing upon those before them, as waves beating upon a shore, and see
the first germs of incipient civilization overwhelmed again and again by
swift following surges of barbarity, or even savagery, when we observe
newly formed states crushed and swallowed up by opposing states, we have
great difficulty in perceiving anything but the play of the blind,
brutal forces of nature. The changes are countless, a tremendous
revolution endures for centuries, and everything is in a state of flux;
and yet, such were the influences evolved from this chaos that there is
no modern Caucasian state, however remote, where the Germanic impulses
springing from the migration period are not to-day visible.
But, in spite of the existing confusion, there was no epoch of human
history when the influence of thought is more plainly manifest than in
the time of the Teutonic upheaval that left no stone unturned. There was
no German knight who did not endeavor to adopt some shred of the Roman
Empire which he helped to tear to pieces.
Christianity, too, which for centuries was but a vague longing in the
hearts of most men, began to arise and to assert itself, at first
indefinitely, still groping in darkness and strongly intermingled with
the ingrained and venerated pagan conceptions, then more and more as a
living issue. Christianity so gained in force that at the time of
supreme need it saved humanity from sinking back into the degeneracy of
the Roman bacchanal. Under the action of Christianity the ephemeral
barbarian confederacy crystallizes into a permanent political
organization.
At the end of the third century of our era the Teutonic race is already,
though indistinctly, consolidated into four large nationalities, or
tribe leagues, with two inferior, though independent, branches. Where
Tacitus, in the angle between the Rhine and the Main, had seen Sigambri,
Bructeri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chatti, there is now one great, though
loose, confederation: the Franks. Between the North Sea, the Rhine, and
the Elbe are the Saxons with the Angli in the north, and the Thuringians
in the south. In the angle between the Rhine and the Danube, the beehive
of all tribes (all man), is the confederation of the Alemanni, mixed
with Suevi (_Schwaben_); behind them, pressing toward and beyond the
Rhine, are the Burgundians; and following closely are the Langobards,
who appear on the middle Danube. Near the Baltic, which derives its name
from the Gothic dynasty of the Balti, we have the Turcilingi, the Rugii,
the Sciri, and the Heruli who were tattooed blue. Between the upper Elbe
and the Oder Rivers, the Quadi (in Moravia) and Marcomanni (Bohemia)
seem to disappear gradually, and are probably merged into the Suevi.
The Gothic or Scandinavian race is agitated by the same movements,
disputing with Finnish tribes (related to the Turks and the Hungarians)
the Danish and Scandinavian peninsulas and the isles of the Baltic:
Gothia, Ostrogothia, Westrogothia, and the Isle of Gothland. At the same
time they spread over the plains of eastern Europe. The Visigoths under
the dynasty of the Balti and the Ostrogoths under the Amali occupy the
steppes of Russia; behind them are the Gepidas. The Jutes (from whom is
derived the name of Danish Jutland) and the Vandals, perhaps mixed with
the Slavic Wends, occupy the Baltic for two centuries. The race of the
Slavs, as yet existing in almost complete historical darkness, is known
to Tacitus but dimly by the name of Wends.
When brought in contact with the Romans, the purely Germanic
individuality ceases, the tribes become Romanized; their gods change,
their habits, their religion: a new world, undreamed in its southern
radiance and sunny luxury, opens before their eyes, accustomed to the
dreary north; victory itself carries with it corruption. In the third
century Rome is no longer feared, in the fourth it is already considered
a German prey. The infiltration goes on through the engagement of
Teutons for Roman military service. The German soldiers, with their
barbarous strength of body, soon reappear as Roman comites, duces,
patricti, counts, dukes, patricians, _i. e._, supreme civil and military
officers at the court; they enter also in masses as laborers, servants,
_fcederati_, or auxiliaries. From such or from simple legionaries they
rise to be dignitaries of a rank but a shade under imperial, like the
Vandals Stilicho and Rufmus, who for a time uphold the existence of the
Roman Empire.
It is true, then, that in those centuries of upheaval the Teutons lost
many of their racial characteristics, of their stock of primeval sagas,
but they also gained immensely from the intellectual, spiritual, and
cultural influence of the southern nations that furnished them with a
stupendous stock of basic material for their future progress.
Christianization and amalgamation instilled into their Teutonic spirit
the germs of that Romanticism which we are wont to consider as purely
Germanic, while in reality it is an elixir of the Christian-Roman
fountain assimilated by the Teutonic soul. The Roman Catholic Church
working upon the soul through the senses the only possible way to reach
and penetrate the soul of primitive man, who is unfit for abstract
thought, created the "divine arts" poetry, music, architecture, in the
progressive sequence of the centuries of German history.
In religious symbolism lies the root of Romanticism, the blossom of
mediaeval life: Romanticism, a Romance word in sound, is German in
spirit. Its soul is the romantic ideal of love: woman is its centre. It
radiates first from a fervent soul with an ecstatic, passionate devotion
to the Christian _Allmutter_, the mother of God, the Holy Virgin, Saint
Mary, who was from the first deeply revered by the Teutons, owing to
their inherent veneration for woman. Among the Germans of all times,
even the most corrupted and dissolute, this spark of veneration is not
entirely extinct. Love is surrounded with a halo in contrast with the
severe Oriental treatment of women by the Church Fathers. The harsh
words of the Gospels, "Woman, what have I to do with thee!" is
transformed into: "Pure woman, and mother mine!"
Thus the picture drawn by the Edda truly called the Norse Bible of the
Teutonic race of the doomsday of the world, the _Gotterdammerung_, is
nothing if not a representation of the whirl of the immigration. Yet all
that is valuable, culturally speaking, rises like a phoenix from the
ashes. As, in the ingenious words of the poet, "Conquered Greece
conquered, on her part, the fierce Roman conqueror and carried her
(intellectual) arms into Latium," so conquered Rome transformed the
fierce Germanic conqueror into a new man. The unity of the Roman Empire
had furthered Christianity, and the complete German conquest mightily
influenced the entire Germanic race in the direction of Romanization and
Christianization, though the latter for long remained crude and was
affected by the cult of the gods of Olympus as well as of those of
Asenheim and Niflheim, and, even where not so affected, Christianity was
divided between Arianism and the Orthodox Romanism. With the political
conquest, however, a new order was by no means assured. The Empire was
destroyed, it is true, but nothing firm, solid, or steady took its
place. The wavering new political aggregates put in its stead were no
longer purely Teutonic. They succumbed too easily to the treacherous and
manifold, if silent, influences that on every side assailed them. The
majority of such political groups, whether in Italy, in Gaul, in Spain,
or in North Africa, lost their nationality and even the German language:
they became Roman mongrels and some even turned against their old
mother, Germania.
Even at home, the Roman Christian foreign culture seemed for a time
destined to overwhelm Germanism, but the Alemanni in the south and the
Saxons in the north and west proved too strong for denationalization and
carried Teutonic principles triumphantly through all the phases of the
struggle.
Having thus described the tribal existence of the Teutons in Germania
proper, in order to give to our study of the cultural history of German
womanhood full point, a word must be said about German colonization
abroad.
The Burgundians, after a checkered career of adventurous wanderings from
North Germany to the Alpine mountains of Savoy, conquered southeast Gaul
in the fifth century. In the southwest, or ancient Aquitaine, the
Visigoths settled, and, crossing the Pyrenees, conquered a large part of
Spain.
When Odoacer, the German king of the wandering hosts, had dethroned the
last shadow Emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustulus an ill-starred,
diminutive reminiscence of Rome's glorious inception as kingdom and
empire the Heruli were the dominant race. Their rule lasted but thirteen
ominous years. The Ostrogoths, under the great Theodoric, Dietrich von
Bern, the paramount hero of Germanic saga and song, replaced them and
founded a more permanent government. In northern Italy, the Langobards
succeeded the Ostrogoths and gradually extended their rule southward,
and pressing upon the Italian domain of the Bishops of Rome, who, by
this time, had asserted their supremacy and headship of the ruling
church of the world, brought about that cataclysm which finally
submerged the power of Rome under the flood of the Prankish universal
empire. The Salian Franks had, in the fifth century, conquered northern
Gaul from the Batavian coast to the Somme River; the Ripuarian Franks
formed a state along the Rhine, the Maas, and the Moselle, with Cologne
as a capital. Chlodwig, the Salian Frank, one of the most cunning and
unscrupulous kings in history, began, in A. D. 480, the unification of
the Franks and the adjacent German tribes into one nation. After the
subjugation of the Alemanni, the principal role, the hegemony within the
Teutonic race, belongs to the Franks. Christianity becomes a political
lever by which they extend their sway from north and east and finally
create that Carlovingian-Prankish Empire which inaugurated the Middle
Ages proper and founded therewith a stable Germanic civilization.
Up to this time, in spite of Christianity, the pagan imprint is still
very strong. The Latin titles _rex, dux, comes,_ are applied to the
German chiefs, as they were in Italy under Roman rule; sovereignty
passed but slowly from the body of the freemen to individual chiefs, a
transition finally accomplished by Charlemagne yet the old spirit of
German liberty was not rooted out. The ancient Teutonic laws and
traditions, though committed to mediaeval Latinity, are German in spirit.
The political status remains as of old. There are two great divisions of
the people: the free men and the unfree. The former are subdivided into
nobles (_adalinge_ or _edelinge_) and common freemen (_Gemeinfreie,
liberi_); the unfree are either tributary (_Horige, liten or lassen,
manumitted_), or real serfs (_Schalke, servi_). Exactly the same
division holds true for women. The serfs, men and women, are without
rights, and are valued as chattels, though manumission or absolute
liberation is possible. Bravery in war creates a "nobility of arms"
(_Waffenadel_), based upon the sword; and thus renders this species of
nobility accessible to all in the same manner that, among the
Carlovingians, "court nobility" (_Amtsadel_) may be obtained by the
ministeriales, or civil servants, as the reward of merit or by the favor
of the king. Women serfs, because of beauty or of manifest superiority,
often become concubines, mistresses, and even wives of nobles and
princes, and sometimes of kings.
Blood relationship, family, and the rulership of the housefather are in
this early period the base and centre of social order. So the legal
relation between man and woman is command and obedience; protection and
responsibility. The wife is subordinate, and has no official voice or
vote in the community or the body politic. Woman could not be a witness
before a court, and in most states she was excluded from rulership over
land and people, though this rule was frequently circumvented, broken,
or repealed, for we early meet with women rulers or ruling women, who
will be separately treated.
Though the laws in favor of woman's equality with man are still
precarious, yet customs and traditions, as well as the ancient and
innate veneration of German men for women, frame regulations for their
strong protection. It is well known that every crime, including murder,
but excluding high treason or assassination of the military chief, is
atoned for by the payment to the family of the insulted, injured, or
murdered person of an expiatory sum of money (_Suhngeld_ or _Wergeld_)
or cattle, according to the valuation by the ancient Teutonic law. This
law, among most of the tribes, attributed higher value to woman, because
she is defenceless, than to man. The wergeld, according to Alemannic and
Bavarian law, is double for a woman, and, according to Saxon law, the
double wergeld applies while a woman is able to bear children. The
Prankish law prescribes in ordinary cases a treble wergeld, namely, six
hundred solidi (shillings) or cows (which are equal in value); and in
the case of a pregnant woman the expiatory sum is seven hundred solidi.
Johannes Scherr informs us how the Salian law determines accurately the
fines for misdemeanors against womanly modesty. It says that a man who
immodestly strokes the hand of a woman shall be fined fifteen shillings,
and if her upper arm is stroked, thirty-five shillings, while if her
bosom be touched he must pay forty-five shillings or cows. Many
centuries later, in the highly polished, super-refined period of the
Love Song (_Minnesang_), the wergeld, for an offence against a woman, on
the contrary, sank to one-half of that inflicted for an act against a
man, and this in spite of the increasing love service to women
(_Fraitendiensf_), which, however, was degenerating to sensualism.
[Illustration 3:
_A TEUTONIC ALLIANCE
After the painting by Ferdinand Leeke_ Women serfs, because of beauty or
of manifest superiority, often became.... even wives of great leaders.
A Teutonic marriage was concluded when the bridal couch was entered and
"one cover touched both."
Not until the fourteenth century did the legality of marriage become
dependent upon the conscent of the Church; on the morning after the
marriage, the wife received the bridal gifts from her husband;
henceforth she enjoyed all the marital rights, but remained subordinate
to her husband, who could chastise her of even sell her into slavery.]
In the early times the housefather has the guardianship, _mundium_ (from
Old High German _munt_, hand), over his wife, daughters, sisters, and
also the duty of protecting them. The father has the right to sell his
sons during their minority and his daughters until their marriage, and
this barbarous action is common. At the death of the father, the
guardianship passes to the next male relative, (the sword relative,
_Schwertmagen_, as opposed to the spindle relative, _Spillmageri_). In
case of legal marriage, guardianship passes to the husband.
The law of inheritance is greatly in favor of sons, and daughters are
frequently entirely excluded from participation in the heritage, or
their share is reduced to one-half or one-third of the son's
inheritance. This is, however, only in the case of real estate (_Odal_)
probably because it needs the sword of the male protector, for the
remaining or movable property is equally divided.
The conception of caste privileges, social birthright
(_Ebenburtigkeif_), is very strongly developed, inasmuch as women lose
caste by marriage with inferiors and give up every claim to the
inheritance of their blood relations (_Sippe_); and the caste
degradation results at one period in the exclusion from the inheritance
of a free father of the children of an unfree woman.
It is but natural that, in the loosening of all the bonds of social
order, during the wanderings, the ancient Tacitean purity and monogamy
was, to a large extent, lost. Among the high classes, concubinage was
the rule, since the lord had absolute power over the unfree maidens, and
war and conquest have it in their nature to blot out all natural rights.
We meet concubines, called _Fritten_ or _Kebse_, everywhere in the lives
of the great kings and chiefs. The Merovingian Franks are especially
famous, or rather infamous, for their sexual sins. Charlemagne and Louis
the Pious held concubines. The Church, especially at the synod of
Mayence, A.D. 851, began to thunder against licentiousness, but in vain.
Nor did the monasteries always remain pure from the taint. Winfrid, or
Bonifatius, the apostle of the Germans par excellence, complains of the
Prankish _diacons_ (deacons) who kept four or more concubines.
Frequently, however, the Church submitted, on political grounds, to a
recognition of two or more lawful wives taken by one man. But the sense
of dignity and self-respect on the part of the women themselves, as we
have seen in the case of Harald Fairhair, finally forced monogamy upon
the full blooded, semi-barbarous Teutonic warriors, as the leading
principle of a lawful marriage.
Teutonic marriage is concluded when the bridal couch is entered and "one
cover touched both" (_eine Decke das Paar besetting_). To the very end
of the Middle Ages the Church function is quite an indifferent matter,
though as early as the Carlovingian time the Church prescribed a
"confession of marriage in the Church" and "a priestly blessing." In the
_Nibelungenlied_, Siegfried and Kriemhilde, Gunther and Brunhild, marry
without mention of a priest, yet on the morning of the bridal night the
two couples go to the cathedral where a mass is sung. This latter
statement is due to the attempt of the mediaeval Christian poet to color,
from numberless constituent parts of varied antiquity, the ancient
Germanic heroic saga, originating in paganism, to the advantage of the
newer religion. The _Nibelungenlied_ arose about the beginning of the
thirteenth century, and, with all its grandeur and splendor, is "like
unto an ancient grove of the Teutonic gods forced below the roof of a
Christian cathedral." The shining Valkyrie-patterned Brunhild, so
magnificent in the pagan naturalness of her divinity and her
surroundings, appears in the _Lied_ as a gloomy, hermaphroditic being
between two different and irreconcilable worlds. She is unfit for the
Christian frame and setting that have been given her. Thus it is with
Kriemhilde, with Siegfried, with Hagen. Their virtues and qualities and
passions are not yet fully infused with the light which emanates from
the Crucifixion.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the legality of marriage
first becomes dependent upon the consent of the Church. On the morning
after the bridal night the wife, whose hair is now put up, no more
allowed to wave freely as that of a virgin, receives the morning gift
from her husband. She henceforth enjoys all the marital rights, but
remains subordinate to the husband. He is the administrator of her
fortune and has, _ipso facto_, its usufruct. But at his death one-half
or one-third of the property acquired during his married life belongs to
the wife according to the law of the Saxon and Ripuarian Franks.
Chastisement of the wife still belongs to the husband; he might even
inflict death or slavery for adultery. Divorce is possible if the wife
is barren or the husband impotent.
Most interesting, historically speaking, is the circle of women
surrounding Theodoric the Great, for the sagas have associated with him
all the powerful women of the legendary history of the German tribes. He
may be truly called the political forerunner of the Habsburg dynasty of
the Middle Ages in the policy of strengthening dynasties by marrying
royal women to powerful kings. Such marriages enhanced the strength and
extent of Ostrogothic rule and cemented alliances with the other
Teutonic tribes. Following, consciously or unconsciously, the rule of
Theodoric, the Habsburgers, during the Middle Ages, built up by their
judicious political marriages their tremendous dynastic power
(_Hausmacht_), which finally became superior to that of the Holy Roman
Empire itself.
These marriages gave rise to the proverb: Let others wage wars; thou,
happy Austria, get married, for what realms the God of War gives to
others are given to thee by the sweet Goddess of Love (_Bella gerant
alii, tu, felix Austria, nube; nam quce Mars aliis, dat tibi regna
Venus_). Theodoric married his sister, Amalfreda, to the Vandal king
Thrasimund; his daughter Theodicusa to Alaric; his daughter Ostrogotha
to the Burgundian prince Sigismund; his niece Amalberga to the
Thuringian king Hermanfrid. Political marriages, then, are as old as
German history.
Amalasuntha, one of the daughters of Theodoric, shines preeminently in
history as the worthy daughter of the greatest German king of the
creative epoch. Her contemporaries, the authors Cassiodorus and
Procopius, praise her as an ingenuous, high-minded, lofty woman, an
excellent ruler, and a noble protector of arts and sciences. Early
widowed through the death of Eutharich, also a scion of the race of the
Amali, she becomes, upon the demise of her great father, regent and
guardian of her minor son, Athalarich. Reared in Graeco-Roman culture,
Amalasuntha inclined in her life and thoughts toward the Roman element
in the state, and was to a certain extent estranged from the
semi-barbarous Ostrogoths, who unwillingly submitted to her guardianship
over her son, their king, and even more unwillingly to her rule over
themselves. Though her rule was mild and wise, yet the discontent of the
national party increased. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the head of
the noble queen for keeping young Athalarich removed from the company of
the youth of Gothic race, for surrounding him with aged men, "though the
mildest and wisest of their people," and for sending him to a Latin
school of rhetoricians. For this was the training of a Roman emperor,
not of a Gothic king, and their ancestors had taught them to despise
such education. The queen was forced to yield to the popular demand, and
the consequences of her surrender justified her fears. In the company of
young Gothic nobles, Athalarich soon learned all the evil which the
young barbarians had drawn from the Roman mire. His new friends had
almost roused the youth to open rebellion against the "woman's rule,"
when, fortunately, he succumbed to the unaccustomed life to which his
delicate constitution was not equal. By his opportune death, history is
spared the record of the horrible tragedy of matricide which, in all
probability, would have been enacted by the misguided prince a tragedy
occurring frequently in the history of the Merovingian dynasty.
Amalasuntha's fate is full of tragic pathos. A great ruler and an
extraordinary woman, she had indeed the qualities to become the
benefactress of her nation, had not the epoch of unrest and agitation,
the unsteadiness and the irreconcilable conflict between an overripe
Roman civilization and Germanic barbarism, made her a victim of untoward
circumstances.
In order to strengthen her tottering throne, she elevated to the
position of her husband and king the last prince of the race of the
Amali, the unworthy Theodat, a man of whom Procopius says that "the
principle of never tolerating a neighbor beside himself had raised him
to power and riches." Immediately upon his ascending the throne, he
openly sided with the so-called nationalist party against Amalasuntha,
and murdered the last friends and partisans of the hapless queen. In her
despair she appealed to the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, emperor,
Justinian, and implored him for protection and hospitable reception. But
she did not escape to Constantinople. Theodat seized her and sent her as
a prisoner to a fortress on a small island in the Bolsen lake. Shortly
after the arrival of the Byzantine ambassador, who brought her a
courteous invitation to the court of Constantinople, she disappeared in
a mysterious way, whether by Theodat's orders or through the intrigues
of the Byzantine is not known; but the king hated her; and the
ambassador, according to Procopius's narrative in his _Historia arcana_,
had been bribed by Empress Theodora, the infamous wife of Justinian, to
prevent by any means the appearance at the corrupt Byzantine court of
the highly cultured, royal Gothic lady.
The history of the Langobards, a Germanic race which plays a great role
in the Migration period in shaping the fate of Italy, and, by driving
the Popes into the arms of the Franks, in elevating that race and the
Carlovingian dynasty, furnishes us a kaleidoscopic sequence of royal
women, who exhibit all the vices and passions, crimes and virtues.
Paul Warnefried, a Langobard noble, calling himself, in his clerical
capacity, as an author, Paulus Diaconus, is, through his historical
work, _De Gestis Langobardorum_, the principal source of our knowledge
concerning his great but barbarous race.
For the first time in the history of the Langobards we meet with a
wicked woman in the person of the murderess Rumetruda, daughter of the
seventh Langobard king, Tato, who, through her lust of blood,
precipitated her people into a terrible war with the Heruli.
Looking from the window of her palace she perceived one day a Herulian
embassy, which, under the guidance of the brother of the king, had just
concluded an alliance with the Langobards, and was now returning to its
own country. The demoniacal woman sent to the prince of the Heruli a
cordial invitation to a cup of wine. No hospitable feelings, however,
had induced Rumetruda to send the invitation, but curiosity and scorn at
the somewhat abnormal, heavy-set shape of the foreign prince. Soon she
began to mock and ridicule him concerning his stature and finally
enraged him to such a degree that he also began to upbraid her with
insulting words. Revenge arose in the soul of the cruel woman, and,
having conciliated him politely and forced him back upon his seat, she
proceeded to the execution of her murderous plan. Behind the seat of her
royal guest there was a large window covered with costly curtains,
behind these she placed a number of Langobard warriors, bidding them
hurl their spears against the curtain. Pierced by several lances, the
prince of the Heruli sank to the ground; the flagitious woman had
satisfied her revenge at the expense of the peace and the alliance
between the Langobards and the Heruli. A terrible war was kindled by
this violation of the sanctity of ambassadorial rights.
The savagery of these times of bloodshed in the constant wars, when
every race had to be "hammer or anvil," appears in the stirring history
of the death of King Alboin, the Langobard. The latter had, with the aid
of the Avars, defeated the old enemies of his tribe, the Gepidae, and
with his own hand slain their king, Kunimund. According to a barbarous
custom of his time, he had a drinking cup fashioned from the skull of
the slain enemy. Rosamunde, the beautiful daughter of the unfortunate
king, Alboin took for his wife, his former consort, the Prankish
Clodsunda, having just died. Sometime after these events, it happened
that Alboin at a great feast held at Verona, was seized by the desire of
drinking wine from the skull of his dead enemy. Flushed with wine, and
careless of the feelings of his wife, he bade her, following his
example, drink from the ghastly cup. Rage and desire for revenge filled
Rosamunde's heart, but of necessity she obeyed the cruel order, though
at the same moment she resolved upon a terrible retribution for the
horrible deed. Through her personal charms she won Helmichis, the royal
shield bearer, and while Alboin lay sleeping upon his couch after a
heavy repast, he was pierced by the murderer's sword. To make sure of
his death, Rosamunde had fastened Alboin's weapon to the bedpost so that
he might the more safely be delivered into the hands of her lover.
Helmichis's hope to succeed to Alboin's throne was vain. He was
compelled to flee with Rosamunde to the eastern Roman prefect, Longinus,
at Ravenna. Tired of her now useless tool, Helmichis, the treacherous
woman was easily persuaded by Longinus to do away with the murderer and
to marry the prefect. She offered to Helmichis, who was arising from his
bath, a cup of poisoned wine. While drinking it, either the taste of the
wine or a triumphant glance in the eye of his mistress suggested his
fate, and, sword in hand, he forced Rosamunde to drink the rest of the
poison and thus to die with him.
Turning from this ghastly tragedy, we may read the first story of
romanticism. This is the tale of the love and marriage of fair-locked
Authari, a successor of Alboin in the kingship of the Langobards, to
Theodelinda, daughter of Garibald the Bavarian duke. A brilliant
embassy, headed by King Authari himself, who was incognito, arrived at
the Bavarian court to sue for the hand of the beautiful princess. At a
solemn festival, King Authari besought that Theodelinda herself should
give him a draught of wine. The lady gratified his desire, and Authari,
charmed by so much loveliness, caressingly stroked the hand of his
future bride; she, blushing at his boldness, modestly cast down her
eyes. Later on, she complained to her nurse of the boldness, but the
wise old woman consolingly assured her: "No simple Langobard nobleman
would have dared the deed; this man can be no other but the king himself
and your bridegroom." Having obtained the consent of the duke and the
princess, the Langobard embassy, accompanied by a host of Bavarian
nobles, joyfully rode homeward. Arrived at the frontier, Authari, his
heart swelling with love, raised himself aloft in his saddle and hurled
his battle-ax with a powerful arm deep into a tree, exclaiming: "This is
the throw of Authari, the Langobard." Unfortunately, the romance ended
shortly after the marriage. Authari died one year later, as the rumor
goes, by poison. Theodelinda became a passionate missionary of
Christianity among the German tribes; and it is a general fact that
royal women, as we shall see later in the case of the Christianization
of the Franks, were the most ardent propagators of the faith.
Christianity appealed especially to women because of its spirit of
humility, of charity, and of submission to a higher will. The Church
showed due gratitude by canonizing many noble and deeply pious women of
the time. After the death of Authari, Theodelinda, seeing that the reins
of rulership were too heavy for her, looked for the worthiest of the
Langobard princes, to whom she might offer her hand and heart. Agilulf,
the brave Duke of Turin, was her choice. A prophetess had, on the day of
Theodelinda's marriage with Authari, prophesied to Agilulf that he would
become the consort of the Bavarian princess. Theodelinda now summoned
him and offered a cup of welcome, which the duke accepted with a
grateful kiss on her hand. Blushingly she withdrew her hand, with the
words: "he should not kiss her hand who was permitted to kiss her lips
and cheeks." The overjoyed vassal, who had always suppressed his love
for his queen, saw his most secret desire fulfilled, and lovingly
embraced her. And the queen never had to regret her choice.
In strange contrast to the attractive and poetic queen Theodelinda
stands the detestable Romilda, wife of Duke Gisulf of the Forum Julium.
At the time of the invasions of the savage Avars, she was compelled,
with her husband and her children, to take refuge in the fortress of the
Forum Julium. One day she noticed, from the height of the wall, the
handsome form of the young Avar prince Cacon, and the undutiful woman
was seized with a violent passion for the fair barbarian. Secretly she
sent him a message that she would open the fortress for him, if he vowed
to take her for his wife after the conquest. The Avar consented; and
having become master of the important stronghold, he married Romilda.
But after the bridal night, to shame and disgrace her, he turned her
over to twelve Avar warriors; and when they had wrought their will upon
her, he caused her to be impaled on a pole in the open field,
exclaiming: "This is the husband thou art worthy to have!" Paulus
Diaconus, while condemning Romilda, praises the exemplary conduct of her
two chaste daughters, Appa and Gaila, who, to protect their virtue,
placed pieces of putrid meat between their breasts. This heroic measure
drove the assailants back, but unjustly secured to the entire Langobard
nation the reputation of a bad odor. Pope Hadrian evidently credited the
slander, for, when he seeks the aid of Charlemagne against Desiderius,
he writes of the "perjurious and stinking nation of the Langobards." But
our two chaste virgins escaped and were richly rewarded for their
virtue, as one was married to the Alemannian duke and the other, to the
Bavarian.
We find a curious lack of foresight related of another Langobard queen,
Hermilinda, wife of Cunipert. The queen once surprised Theodata, a
wondrously beautiful Roman slave, of patrician family, in the bath. Her
form was exquisite, her golden hair flowed down to her very feet, and
the queen could not help praising her charms to the king. The
consequence was that in due course of time Theodata gave constant
pleasure to Cunipert, and Hermilinda became an inmate of a fine
monastery named after her, where she died in the odor of sanctity.
The migration of the Teutonic peoples had been in great measure
spontaneous, it is true, but the impetus of the avalanche had
undoubtedly been tremendously increased by the irruption of a mysterious
nomad people, the Huns, who broke forth from the steppes of middle Asia
like a hurricane, hurled the Alans to the ground, overpowered the
Ostrogoths, pushed the Visigoths over the Danube into the eastern Roman
Empire, and, occupying the Roman province of Pannonia (Hungary), made it
the centre of an empire which, though loosely connected, extended, more
or less, over the length and breadth of Europe. About the middle of the
fifth century the Huns arose anew from their Pannonian seat, and again
threw Europe in a turmoil. The moving spirit of that commotion of
savagery and barbarity which seemed to shake the three continents known
to antiquity was Attila, called Etzel in the German lays and sagas, the
"scourge of God" (_Godegisel_). His hordes were estimated at more than
half a million warriors. His death was an event of immense political
significance, and appears in the German saga in many romantic forms. The
historian Jordanes relates, after Priscus, that Attila died suddenly of
violence during his bridal night, while lying intoxicated beside his
young wife Ildico (_HildikS_). In the morning his servants found him in
his blood, but without wounds, beside him was the young wife with
downcast eyes, weeping under her veil. The circumstances of his death
were such as to throw suspicion upon the young woman. Ammianus
Marcellinus reported as a fact that "Attila came to his death at night
by the hands of a woman." But the legendists have tried to establish
motives for the deed of violence, and nothing was more natural than the
story that Ildico committed the deed out of revenge for Attila's murder
of her relatives. According to the poet Saxo and the _Quedlinburg
Chronicle_ she avenged the murder of her father.
The famous _Nibelungenlied_, however, in its fundamental Norse form
shapes the story as follows: Attila, the Terror of Europe, is the
consort of the Burgundian princess Hild. He conquers and treacherously
kills her brothers, the Burgundian kings Gundaheri, Godomar, and
Gislahari, sons of Gibica, and afterward meets his death by the hand of
their sister, his wife.
Felix Dahn has immortalized Ildico by his genius, and made her the most
ideal, heroic woman of the Migration period. Reared in the palace of her
father, King Visigast, in the land of the Rugii, she gives her tender
love to Daghar, the son of Dagomuth, King of the Sciri; but a dark cloud
hovers over her young life. Attila has heard of her incomparable beauty,
and is still further aroused by the descriptions of her charms given by
Ellak, his son by a Gothic princess. The Hun resolves upon the
possession of Ildico.
Accompanied by her father and her betrothed, Ildico appears, by order of
Attila, at the Hunnish court in Pannonia, where she is received with
barbarous splendor and conducted into the reception hall. Here she sees
the terrible Hun for the first time, but she was not frightened by the
hideousness of the man; proudly erect she looked in his face firmly,
defiantly, menacingly. He recognized in this glance such a cold,
fathomless hate that he involuntarily closed his eyes before her: a
slight shiver of a mysterious fear moved his frame; he dared not meet
again her eye which pierced him, but he drank her overwhelming charms
with the unbridled passion of the barbarian. Then the feast began,
accompanied by the wild, discordant song of a Hunnish bard, in which he
hurled scorn against the Germans. The bitter stanzas aroused Daghar to
warlike poesy, which nearly cost his life at the hands of the wrathful
Hunnish princes. Attila personally interfered so that hospitality should
not be violated even toward hated Germans. But only for a moment is the
protection extended, for by accident Attila obtained information of a
mighty conspiracy of Visigast, Daghar, and Ardarich, king of the
Gepidae, and then the full cup of his wrath is poured over the German
princes, whom he reproaches with perjury and murderous intentions
against himself. Foaming, he announces their punishment. The old king
shall be put on the cross, the youth shall be impaled "behind my
sleeping hall! Thou shalt hear his screams of agony, fair bride, while
thou becomest mine."
The night arrives; the king of the Huns orders the sleeping hall to be
prepared. For the first time in forty-six years he has the high pitcher
of gold filled with unmixed Gazzatine wine and placed in his bridal
chamber. He desires to gain courage to face the glances of the
beautiful, but terrible bride. She is locked in the bridal chamber; no
weapon, no means of escape can be found by her despairing search. To her
enters the "scourge of God." He tries to win her by the promise that her
son to be born shall become the lord over the world, the successor of
Attila. She rejects the very thought of becoming the mother of a son
whose father should be Attila, she would rather crush the head of the
monster at birth. To give himself courage for the struggle with the
proud, chaste German princess, the king drinks the heavy wine in eager
draughts, and, unaccustomed to the potion, sinks into a heavy sleep.
Ildico strangles him with her own golden hair, as he lies in drunken
stupor.
When on the next day, after the long bridal night, the vassals of Attila
break the heavy oaken entrance, they find their master dead on the
floor, in a pool of blood. A loud, boisterous, barbaric mourning and
lamentation arises in the Hunnish camp over the death of the greatest
hero and ruler of their race. The fate of Ildico and her relatives seems
sealed. But at the most critical moment help appears in the person of
Ardarich, King of the Gepidae, and his retinue, who at the last moment
save the Germans from the revenge of the exasperated Huns. The German
tribes rise in masses and, after a few months, the liberation from the
Hunnish yoke is accomplished.
The fame and glory of fair Ildico as the liberator of her people from
the yoke of Attila rings from tribe to tribe in epic sagas and lyric
lays. The song of Daghar, her bridegroom, in honor of the heroine,
immortalizes her thus:
"Hail to you, heroes in golden hair,
Good Goths, Gepidae, sprightly with spears;
Greetings to you, glorious Germans!
Exult rejoicing to sounding harps:
He failed and fell, terror of holiness,
Scourge of God, Etzel the Evil!
Sword struck him not, nor shaft of the spear.
No: in darkness of night, vicious viper
Had crushed its hideous head.
Woman of woe, Ildico, the mighty maid,
Avenged with awe the races of men
And holy honor with heroic deed.
Sing to the harp the wailing song,
Raise it rousing to Daghar's bride,
The shimmering, shining savior,
Guarding German men prison-bound:
Ildico, idol of fame,
Hail to thee, lofty one, hail!" (H. S.)
The extensive Hunnish circle of lays throws light on the life and love
of German womanhood during the centuries of wanderings; and so powerful
is the influence and impression made by the Asiatic onslaught, that
there is hardly a German saga of any importance that does not stand in
some kind of relation to the Hunnish conquerors. To "sing and say" was
an ancient talent of the Teutonic race, whose warlike life, with its
bravery and heroism, inspired mightily to music and song. But the
migrations, with their powerful changes, the contact with formerly
unknown peoples, altered considerably the trend of the ancient
traditions and the sagas of a world which they had abandoned. Indeed,
many of the ancient racial sagas vanished from the memory of the
Germanic tribes. Christianization and Romanization instilled into the
souls of the race the germs of romanticism which rapidly overspread the
old Germanic paganism with a luxuriant growth of new ideas founded on
new ideals, and, great as that poetry is, it shows everywhere a contrast
and a conflict between two different states of existence.
The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, in its original Teutonic tongue, introduces us
to the primeval life of Germanic heroism and warlike turmoil at the dawn
of a still mystic past. The oldest High German lay, of _Hildebrand and
Hadubrand_, telling of a superhuman duel between father and son, reveals
to us the Titanic fierceness of the era of wanderings. We discover,
however, in the third great poetic remnant, the _Saga of Walthari of
Aquitaine_, not only the same descriptions of tremendous conflicts, of
perfidy and greed, of joy over blood and wounds, but also the new
elements of love and the loveliness and delicacy of the relations
between the hero and his bride. The ancient legend, however, is
transmitted to us only in the Latin garment in which Ekkehard, the monk
of Saint Galle, clothed it in the tenth century, when the German
language was at its lowest ebb and ecclesiastical Latin covered
everything. But though the garment be Latin, the spirit of the saga is
thoroughly German.
_Walthari of Aquitaine_, though composed in the tenth century, is a
monument of love, and tells us graphically of the position of woman, at
least in the upper stratum of ancient society, at the time of its
composition. Attila, King of the Huns, who appears here in a very
different light from that which throws such ghastly rays upon him in
Felix Dahn's novel, Ildico, is represented in the epic of Walthari as
almost a Germanic hero; and his career is pictured as a glorious
conquest, in which he crushes all resistance. Like a torrent in flood,
his hosts roll over the land of the Franks, the Burgundians, and the
Aquitanians. Resistance is out of the question; hostages are demanded
and given to guarantee faithfulness and peace. Hagen, Hildegund, "the
pearl of Burgundy," and Walthari are taken to King Etzel's court. Here
the romance begins. Hildegund, through the grace of her manners, her
beauty, and her skill as a housekeeper, endears herself to Queen
Ospirin, Attila's wife, who makes her treasurer and stewardess of her
household. Hagen and Walthari become the heroes and heads of the Hunnish
army. Hagen, however, seizes the first opportunity for flight on the
news of King Gibich's death reaching him, believing himself thereby
freed from all obligation toward Attila. Walthari, who has become better
beloved by the Hunnish king than were his own sons, also meditates
escape, a great longing for fatherland, parents, and friends having
seized him. In the hope of escape, he declines marriage with the noble
Hunnish maiden offered him by the king, under the pretext that love
would interfere with his duties as a warrior and leader; for he who has
once tasted the delights of love is weakened and unfit for deeds of
valor. At this time a distant subject tribe revolts. Walthari is placed
at the head of the army sent to crush the revolution, accomplishes acts
of great heroism, and returns victorious. A triumphal feast is
celebrated, and while the king and his retainers are overcome by wine
and sleep Walthari prepares for escape.
Long before, however, he had won the consent of the maiden to whom he
had once been betrothed as a child, and whom he secretly loves, to
follow him in his flight. Weary and thirsty, he met Hildegund and asked
for a drink. He tenderly kissed her hand and, while drinking, held and
pressed it lovingly. He reminded her how they were betrothed as
children. Hildegund, however, with maidenly modesty, mistook his
advances for scorn. Said she: "Why dost thou let thy tongue speak
whereof thy heart knows naught? Thou dost not desire a maiden like
myself." But he convinces her, and in humble confidence Hildegund
declares she will follow whither her beloved one will lead.
Now the occasion offers itself during the feast of victory. Well armed,
and with horses laden with treasures, the lovers flee from the Hunnish
court. During the day they hide in thickets; at night they ride over
wild, almost impassable paths. Not once does an unchaste desire enter
the heart of the hero, though he is brimming over with life and love.
Thus they reach the Rhine, cross it near Worms, and seek a safe refuge
in the Vosges Forest (_Wasgenwald_), to take the first rest since the
night of their flight. Hildegund sings her hero to sleep; Walthari, his
head in her lap, intrusts himself to the watchfulness of his love. But
Gunther, King of the Franks, has heard of the treasures which Walthari
carries; and despite the resistance of Hagen, who is pained by the
necessity of fighting against his former brother in arms, he attacks the
fleeing hero with twelve of his best warriors, including Hagen himself.
Hildegund takes the approaching warriors for Huns, awakens Walthari,
'and entreats him to kill her, that she may not fall into the hands of
the enemy. No one shall ever touch her body, as she is not to be his. It
is not our task here to describe the ghastliness of the wounds
inflicted, and Walthari's victory at the cost of the loss of a leg.
Hildegund, in true old German fashion, again appears as an angel of
mercy: she tends the wounds of the warriors and mixes their wine, as
merry jests and friendly speeches cement the reconciliation. Walthari
and Hildegund travel on to Aquitaine, where they are received with joy,
and celebrate their marriage. Thus, we are able to gather from the
Walthari Saga the traits of womanly modesty, humility, faithfulness. The
woman's watch over the sleeping hero is especially touching. Her purity
makes her ask for death when she sees the end of her hero and her own
shame. Chaste and undefiled, she enters the realm of her future husband.
Most important among all the tribes of the German nation, and of most
abiding value and influence for the future not only of Germany, but of
Europe, were the Franks.
The early history of that great and important people, or rather bundle
of tribes, is wholly legendary. Their legends describe certain
characteristics of weakness and vice of the men of that Merovingian
dynasty which again furnishes us rich material for the study of royal
womanhood, which, with few exceptions, was of the most depraved
character. Our principal contemporary source is a _History of the
Franks_ by Gregory, Bishop of Tours (A. D. 538-593). Though called the
"Father of French History," we must confess that his honesty is equalled
only by his credulity. The history of the Merovingian women belongs
locally to France, but racially to Germany; it would, therefore, be
impossible to leave it unnoticed in this volume.
One of the earliest kings of the Merovingian dynasty was Childeric, who,
owing to his luxury and vices, was driven out by the Franks. He retired
in exile to Bisinus, King of the Thuringians, where he seduced Basina
the wife of the hospitable king. Childeric had left behind in Frankland
a loyal friend with whom he had divided a gold piece, the friend
promising when times were auspicious to send his half as a signal for
Childeric's return. Eight years passed. The gold token reached the
wandering king and he was restored to his realm. Basina soon afterward
joined him at his court. She followed him, she said, because he was the
bravest man she knew, but she warned him that she would desert him if
she could find a better and mightier man than he was. This woman bore
Clovis, a son who was worthy of his mother. In 493, Clovis took for his
wife a Christian woman, Clotilde, the pious and beautiful daughter of
Chilperic of Burgundy. The importance of this marriage of Clotilde to
the pagan Clovis is self-evident, and it may have been suggested by the
famous bishop, Saint Remigius. Clotilde at once began earnest efforts to
convert her royal husband, but at first without avail. Everything tends
to prove that Clovis was exceedingly tolerant, or perhaps rather
indifferent, toward the Christian religion. His resistance was entirely
passive, and without prejudice. Clovis's sister, Lantechilde, was an
Arian, so was Autofleda, Theodoric's wife; but Albofleda, another sister
of Clovis, remained a pagan. Clovis allowed the Christian baptism of his
first son, who died in infancy. He reproached his wife, because he in a
measure ascribed the infant's death to the influence of baptism, yet he
consented to the baptism of the second son, Chlodomir, who fell ill, but
survived. There was no spirit of propaganda in the naturalistic religion
of the pagan king; he gave his wife a free scope, but refused to adopt
the doctrine she advocated. In the fifteenth year of his reign, Clovis
was at war with the powerful Alemanni. During the battle of Tolbiacum
(_Zulpich_) he sees with apprehension the ranks of the Franks giving way
before the rage of their opponents, and vows to adopt the religion of
Christ, if He grants him victory. "O Christ," he exclaims, according to
Gregorius of Tours, "I invoke devoutly thine glorious help. If thou
accord me victory over these enemies, I shall believe in thee and shall
be baptized in thine name. I have invoked my gods, but they are not
ready to aid me." After the victory, he loyally executed the promise he
had made to the God of Clotilde, the queen perhaps taking good care that
the vow should be fulfilled. Bishop Remigius, with that prudence and
political wisdom which always guided the princes of the Church,
proceeded very slowly in the matter until he was assured that the
consent of the Franks had been obtained. Three thousand of them allowed
themselves to be baptized with their king, an event of the greatest
importance in the world's history, for thereby the advance of Arianism
was checked and heathenism was cast down. Clotilde, a woman and a queen,
thus inaugurates the Christianization of the Germans, for Clovis thus
becomes a "new Constantine" and the precursor of Charlemagne, the
unifier of the Germans, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation. The words of Bishop Remigius are fulfilled: "Bend thine
head, proud Sigambrian: adore what thou hast burned heretofore; burn
what thou hast adored heretofore." From this time on Clovis's life is
but a chain of successes. It is true that all those successes of the
most Christian king (_rex christianissimus_), a title bestowed upon him
and his successors, were attained by atrocity and perfidy surpassed only
in the later history of his own dynasty, and then by the female members
of the royal line. The central point of his policy was the murder of the
smaller Prankish kings so that he might be the sole chief of the entire
people. He caused Sigebert of Cologne to be slain by his own son, whom
he then assassinated, thereby securing for himself the kingship over the
Ripuarian Franks. He dispossessed Chararic and his son and, later,
killed both for the sake of greater security. He slew Racagnar, King of
Cambrai, and the latter's brother, Richard, with his own hand, and,
later on, murdered their brother, Rigomer; so that the tale of deaths is
a long one. The manner in which the Christian religion aided Clovis in
the execution of his ambitious plans, shows with terrible truth how
deeply in the sixth century the ideal of Christianity had sunk from its
lofty height. No one of his contemporaries ever reproached Clovis for
his crimes; the Franks sang them in lays; and the pious Bishop Gregory
of Tours having related the murder of Sigebert, adds naively: "Every day
God thus felled his enemies to the ground and increased his kingdom
because he walked with a pure heart before the Lord and did what was
agreeable in his sight."
His four sons, when among them was divided the Prankish realm, soon
found a pretext to wage a religious war against the Arian Burgundians.
Their king, Sigismund, after the death of his first wife, Ostrogotha, a
daughter of the great Theodoric, took a second wife who, like a real
stepmother, ill-treated the young son of the king. When the youth once
bitterly reproached his stepmother for wearing the garments and jewels
of his mother, the wicked woman persuaded the king that his son aspired
to his throne. She attained her purpose: the youth was murdered. But
Nemesis soon overtook the murderer of his son: he lost his throne and
his life in battle against the Franks.
Besides Clotilde, the pious wife of Clovis, we meet, among the many
women of terrible moral depravity, with another saintly woman in the
Prankish dynasty. Chlotar, the youngest of Clevis's four sons, after
having conquered the Thuringians, though he had numberless wives and
concubines, took Radegundis, the daughter of the defeated Hermanfrid,
for a wife. But the saintly woman shrank from the touch of the immoral
king, and threw herself on the icy stone pavement, unmindful of the pain
it gave her body, for her soul was filled with the agitation of ardent
religious passion, and spent her time in prayer and devotion. When she
returned to the bridal chamber, neither the heat of the fire, nor the
impure royal bed could restore the natural heat of her body; and the
king declared that he possessed rather a nun than a wife. Radegundis
succeeded in obtaining a divorce from Chlotar and retired to a cloister,
where she obtained the dignity of a deaconess, an honor which canonical
regulations reserved only to virgins. In the cloister founded by her in
the neighborhood of Poitiers, Radegundis introduced a very strict
discipline, she enriched the house with precious relics, and passed the
rest of her life in pious devotions and expiations for the sins of
Chlotar, who was sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of moral
corruption.
A story is told by Gregory of Tours concerning Ingundis, one of the
concubines of Chlotar, the pious bishop calls her _uxor_ (wife),
however, which is worth repeating. Ingundis, in the full possession of
the love of Chlotar, begged of him to secure a worthy husband for her
sister Aregundia, and expatiated on the physical qualities and moral
virtues of her sister. Chlotar betook himself to her country residence,
and as she pleased him well he married her. Then he returned to Ingundis
and informed her that he had given her sister the best man he could find
in the realm of the Franks, namely, himself. With bitter disappointment
in her heart, she, according to the statement of the chronicler, meekly
submitted, saying: "What may seem good in the eyes of my lord, he may
do; only may thy maid live in the grace of the king."
The fratricidal and internecine wars of Clovis's four sons were yet
surpassed during the next generation by crimes and atrocities which
overstepped all the limits and bounds of nature. Of Chlotar's four sons,
only Sigebert's character is praiseworthy. Gregory relates that Sigebert
was greatly ashamed of the disgraceful alliances of his brothers, who
married daughters of the people of the lowest strata of society and
changed them as lust and caprice prompted. Sigebert, however, married
the daughter of Athanagild, King of the Visigoths. Her name was
Brunehild (_Brunehaut_), a woman of great beauty and excessive vices and
passions, whose name is linked in history with those of the greatest
female criminals of royal blood.
Chilperic, Sigebert's degenerate brother, jealous of the latter's
alliance, asked in marriage Galswintha, Brunehild's sister, but he soon
sacrificed her to the ambition of Fredegond, one of his concubines, who
had the queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired
woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts
to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection
that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons.
Beginning with this marriage, atrocities do not cease until the entire
family becomes extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a
French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten
and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Perigord."
Brunehild undertook to avenge her sister; the terrible struggle began
between the Prankish slave girl and the daughter of the King of the
Visigoths, a dramatic strife which has left an enduring memory in the
annals of the history of crime. A son of Chilperic joins his father's
enemy, and, with his aid, Sigebert is victorious everywhere; but when,
in his city of Vitry, he is on the point of being raised upon the shield
as king over the land of his brother, Sigebert is assassinated by two
emissaries of Fredegond, who thus once more saves her husband by crime.
The widowed Brunehild was at the time in Paris with her five-year-old
son Childebert, and, as it seemed, at the mercy of Chilperic. But upon
the news of Sigebert's death, Gundovald, an Austrasian chief, brought
Childebert from Paris and had him proclaimed king. Brunehild was exiled
to the basilica of Saint Martin's Cathedral, at Rouen. The oath of
Fredegond upon sacred relics that she will not harm the fugitives is
violated at once. She murders two sons of Chilperic, also Bishop
Tractesetatus, who had solemnized the marriage. Brunehild saved herself
by flight, and an even more sanguinary civil war ensues, in the course
of which Chilperic too is murdered. At last the flagitious murderess
Fredegond, at the age of sixty, equally dreaded and abhorred by friend
and foe, dies strange to say by a natural death.
[Illustration 4:
_FREDEGOND WATCHING THE MARRIAGE OF CHILPERIC AND GALSWINTHA
After the painting by L. Alma-Tadema_
_Chilperic had taken a most unwilling bride, Galswintha, daughter of a
king of the Visigoths and younger sister of Brunehild, notwithstanding
the fierce jealousy of one of his concubines, Fredegond, who soon had
the new queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired
woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts
to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection
that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons.
Beginning with this marriage, atrocities did not cease until the entire
family became extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a
French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten
and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Perigord"._]
Her rival and lifelong enemy Brunehild, who had vied with her in crimes
and vices, met with a far more terrible end. After many years of further
struggle she fell into the hands of Chlotar II., a son of Fredegond, who
inflicted upon her a terrible punishment. Having charged her with the
murder of at least ten Merovingian princes, he caused her, though a
matron of seventy, to be frightfully tortured for several days; then she
was placed on a camel and led for shame through the camp. Finally, she
was tied to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to death: the hoofs of
the horse crushed the limbs of the sinful queen into a shapeless mass. I
know of no poem in the whole range of German literature which gives a
more ghastly picture of that realistic scene of atrocity than one in
which Ferdinand Freiligrath relates:
"How once in the fields of the river Marne near Chalons
Chlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful Brunehild
Tied by her silver hair to a wild stallion;
To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp.
The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struck
The aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb.
Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow.
The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shuddering
Beheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgment
Of their wrathful king Chlotar.
The glow of the red fires burning before every tent
Fell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance.
With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dust
The camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered
with her blood...."
(H. S.)
We gladly leave the chapter of the Prankish nation under the
Merovingians, for it is stained with the uninterrupted tragedy of brutal
superstition, lust, perjury, treason, incest, murder of the closest
blood relatives, malice, and cruelty. Such scenes as the Langobard
Alboin's deeds and death, Brunehild's end, and the countless unspeakable
vices mentioned by Bishop Gregory of Tours demonstrate sufficiently the
terrible corruption of which even the best races are capable, when
released from all the bonds of legal restraint in the time of peace, and
when torn, root and branch, from a healthy native soil.
Even more characteristic is perhaps the poetic literature of the time,
in which the unnatural vices are transformed and reflected as lofty
virtues. What is the historian of culture to say when the contemporary
presbyter and bishop, the pious poet, Venantius Fortunatus, glorifies
and elevates both Brunehild and Fredegond as mirrors of virtue and
grace? The latter, the slave girl who attained the crown through murder
and prostitution, is to him the queen "who adorns the realm by her
virtues. Wise in council, skilful, provident, useful to the Court;
powerful of mind, magnanimous, excelling in all merits." Brunehild, on
the other hand, "The ethereal Brunehild, shining more brilliantly than
the stars, surpasses the light of the gems by the light of her
countenance of milk and blood. The lilies mixed with roses cannot
compare with her. She is a sapphire, a white diamond, a crystal, an
emerald, a iaspis, nay, more, for all must yield the palm to her; Spain
[referring to the Visigoths having occupied southern France and northern
Spain] has produced a new jewel."