He was descended of a most illustrious family among the Frisons, and
according to the author of his life, was great-grandson to Radbod,
king of that country, before it was conquered by the French. He was
trained up in piety and sacred literature among the clergy of the
church of Utrecht. His fasts and other austerities were excessive,
and his watchings in fervent prayer were not less inimitable. Being
ordained priest, he was charged by bishop Ricfrid with the care of
instructing the catechumens, and that good prelate dying in 820, he
was chosen the eighth bishop of Utrecht from St. Willibrord.[206]
The holy man, with many tears, before the clergy and people,
declared, in moving terms, his incapacity and unworthiness, but
by the authority of the emperor Louis Debonnaire was compelled to
submit. He therefore repaired to his metropolitan, the archbishop
of Mentz, and at Aix-la-Chapelle received the investiture by the
ring and crosier, and was consecrated by the bishops in presence of
the emperor, who zealously recommended to him the extirpation of
the remains of idolatry in Friesland. The new bishop was met by the
clergy and others of his church, and by them honorably conducted from
the Rhine to Utrecht. He immediately applied himself to establish
everywhere the best order, and sent zealous and virtuous laborers
into the northern parts, to root out the relics of idolatry which
still subsisted there.
Charlemagne, by treating with severity the conquered Frisons and
Saxons, had alienated their minds from his empire; but upon his
death in 814, Louis his son, whom he had made in his own life-time
king of Aquitain, came to the empire, by excluding his little nephew
Bernard, king of Italy, grandson of Pepin, elder brother to this
Louis, whom their father made king of Italy, but who died in 810,
leaving that kingdom to his son and grandson both named Bernard.
Louis upon his accession to the throne eased the Saxons of their
heavy taxes, and showed them so much lenity that he gained their
hearts to the empire for ever, and from his courtesy and from this
and other actions of clemency was surnamed _The Debonnaire_, or the
Gracious. He lost his queen Irmingarde, who died at Angiers in 818,
by whom he had three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis. The first he
made king of Italy,[207] the second king of Aquitain, and Louis king
of Bavaria; reserving to himself the rest of Bavaria and France. In
819 he married Judith, daughter of Guelph, count of Aldorff, by whom
he had Charles _the Bald_, afterward emperor and king of France.
She was an ambitious and wanton woman; her adulteries gave great
scandal to the people, and her overbearing insolence and continual
intrigues embroiled the state, and drove the three eldest sons into
open rebellion against their father.[208] Nothing can excuse the
methods to which these unnatural princes had recourse, under pretence
of remedying the public disorders, which sprang from the weakness
of their father, and the malice of a hated mother-in-law. But the
scandals of her lewdness stirred up the zeal of our holy pastor to
act the part of a second John the Baptist. The contemporary author
of the life of Wala, abbot of Lorbie, who was deeply concerned in
the secret transactions of that court, confidently charges her with
incest and adultery with her relation and favorite minister, Bernard
count of Barcelona. The author of the life of St. Frederic says, her
marriage with Louis was incestuous, and within the forbidden degrees
of affinity; but this circumstance could not have escaped the censure
of her enemies; and from their silence is rejected by Mabillon and
others as fabulous.
Whatever the scandals of her gallantries were, St. Frederic, the
neighborhood of whose see gave him free access to the court, then
chiefly kept at Aix-la-Chapelle, admonished her of them with an
apostolic freedom and charity, but without any other effect than that
of drawing upon himself the fury and resentment of a second Jezebel,
if we may believe the historians of that age. Our saint suffered
also another persecution. The inhabitants of Wallacria, now called
Walcheren, one of the principal islands of Zealand, belonging to the
Netherlands, were of all others the most barbarous, and most averse
to the maxims of the gospel. On which account St. Frederic, when he
sent priests into the northern uncultivated provinces of his diocess,
took this most dangerous and difficult part chiefly to himself; and
nothing here gave him more trouble than the incestuous marriages
contracted within the forbidden degrees, and the separation of the
parties. To extirpate this inveterate evil he employed assiduous
exhortations, tears, watching, prayer, and fasting; summoned an
assembly of the principal persons of the island, and earnestly
recommended the means to banish this abuse from among them, broke
many such pretended marriages, and reconciled many persons that had
done sincere penance to God and his Church. He composed a prayer
to the Blessed Trinity with an exposition of that adorable mystery
against heresies, which for many ages was used in the Netherlands
with great devotion. The reputation of his sanctity made him to be
considered as one of the most illustrious prelates of the Church, as
appears from a poem of Rabanus Maurus, his contemporary, in praise of
his virtue, published with notes among his poetical works, together
with those of Fortunatus by F. Brower, S. J.[209]
Whilst this holy pastor was intent only upon the duties of his
charge, one day when he came from the altar having said mass, as he
was going to kneel down in the chapel of St. John Baptist to perform
his thanksgiving and other private devotions, he was stabbed in
the bowels by two assassins. He expired in a few minutes, reciting
that verse of the hundred and fourteenth psalm,--_I will please
the Lord in the land of the living_. The author of his life says
these assassins were employed by the empress Judith, who could not
pardon the liberty he had taken to reprove her incest. William of
Malmesbury[210] and other historians assert the same; and this seems
clearly to have been the true cause and manner of his martyrdom;
William Heda,[211] Beka,[212] Emmius,[213] and many others confirm
the same. Baronius in his annals, Mabillon, Le Cointe, and Baillet
think these assassins were rather sent by some of the incestuous
inhabitants of Wallacria, but this opinion is destitute of the
authority of ancient historians. The martyr’s body was buried in the
same church of St. Saviour, called Oude-Munster, at Utrecht. His
death happened on the 17th of July, 838, as Mabillon has proved. See
the life of St. Frederic with the notes of Cuper the Bollandist,
Julij, t. 4, p. 452, and Batavia Sacra, p. 99. Also Heda’s History of
the Bishops of Utrecht, Beka and Emmius.