Selected Reading

Essay on Saint Radegund
By E. I. Watkin

The Western Empire fell to the barbarians and the succeeding Dark Ages are often regarded as similar to our own. In some respects the resemblance is undeniable. In both cases security and prosperity are followed by disorder and insecurity. Both witness widespread and appalling suffering and the destruction of priceless remains of past culture. Both are tormented by wars and the fear of war, "men's hearts failing for fear of what may come on earth". In other respects, however, the periods are the antithesis each of the other. Ours is a period of a triumphant and seemingly still advancing secularism, whose strength lies in the physical sciences and their technical achievement. And never before has the state been so powerful, ruling vast masses despotically, sacrificing them lavishly for its economic and military purposes, and well-nigh irresistible. In a mechanised mass civilization in which economic values are supreme, the individual is dwarfed to impotence and spiritual values fade out of sight.

In the post-Roman period on the other hand, power and achievement lay with religion and its representatives. The wisest and morally best, whatever of culture survived in the progressive decay and persistent anarchy, served the Church. Like the ark riding the deluge the Church preserved with her religious treasure, not only culture and the graces of cultured living, but even the elementary decencies of civilized behaviour, and did so in face of violence from without and in spite of unworthy servants within.

In this time, so like yet so totally unlike our own, lived the great woman venerated as St. Radegund. Born about 518 (some two years before the Romano-British general incorrectly known to posterity as King Arthur won the last of many victories in which the cavalry he had trained defeated the Saxon invader) she died ten years before St. Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet to convert Kent.

Yet St. Radegund is no shadowy figure more legendary than historical. Nor, like so many contemporary saints, is she the subject of some wholly unreliable life concocted by a hagiographer of later centuries in accordance with a conventional recipe, and often with unashamed plagiarism from the lives of other saints. Her life is known from contemporary sources, related by those who knew her intimately. Her friend of years, the poet Venantius Fortunatus, wrote her life. And a little later a nun of the convent she founded, brought up by the saint, Baudonivia by name, wrote a supplementary life. Neither, it must be admitted, rose to the height of the opportunity. Neither has given us the full-length portrait for which they possessed such ample material. Each felt it his or her duty, not to depict the woman known so long and so well, but to make a stained-glass window in her honour and for their readers' edification. Consequently the bulk of these lives consists of the two ingredients of hagiography as then practised: an account of austerities and an account of miracles. Fortunatus does not even mention, though Baudonivia does, Radegund's foundation of the convent at Poitiers or the event which gave it its name--the arrival of a relic of the True Cross which the Byzantine Emperor Justin sent at her request. Nevertheless, here and there the saint's personality pierces through in a word or action.

And in his poems Fortunatus has revealed another aspect of her character, a more humanly attractive woman in lighter moments of cultivated relaxation and warm friendship, indulgent, too indulgent perhaps, to the weakness of souls of stuff less stern than her own.

Finally, to place her life and work in its historical setting and in wider connections, we have the information of St. Gregory, the saintly Bishop of Tours who played such a prominent part in the public life of his time, and the historian whose writings illuminate so vividly the historical scene of sixth-century Gaul. And Gregory knew the saint well and laid her body in its tomb.

Radegund was a German princess, the daughter of Berthaire, a Thuringian king. At that time Thuringia was ruled by three brothers. One of the three, Radegund's uncle Hermenefred, murdered her father, and with the aid of the Frankish King, Clovis' son Theuderic, defeated the third and became sole ruler. Thus Radegund's infancy was darkened by a crime of savage violence such as was almost common form in the annals of these barbarian kingdoms. But although he killed her father, her uncle Hermenefred showed no ill will to his little niece. Perhaps he intended her to be the future bride of his son Hamalafred. Radegund had a brother who was probably younger than herself, and Hamalafred was the big brother of her first childish days. Her affection for him is evident from a poem written in her name by Fortunatus and embalming her memories of him. He was father and mother, sister and brother to her. She cherishes memories of her cousin taking her in his arms and kissing her.

But these days of home life did not last long. Her uncle Hermenefred broke faith with his Frankish allies. Theuderic, assisted by his brother Clothaire, attacked and crushed the Thuringian chief. Hamalafred fled to the East to enter, it would seem likely, the service of the Eastern Emperor. Radegund was ten or twelve years old. Clothaire carried her off--one of the many displaced persons, as common then as today--and brought her up at Athies with a view to possible future marriage. With her he took her brother, who was probably brought up with her. Whether she was now baptised or already a Christian I do not know. Since the conversion of the Franks was so recent, it seems unlikely that Thuringia was Christian.

She received as good an education as time and place could afford and acquired the appreciation of letters she would show later; but above all the profound religious devotion which issued in sanctity. Certainly at the time of her marriage she was already in spirit a religious, a woman of cultured tastes, regal bearing, and personal beauty. As soon as he judged her age sufficient, Clothaire decided to marry her. She made a somewhat futile gesture of flight, but bowed to the inevitable, and they were married at Soissons. A girl much less sensitive, refined, holy, and modest than Radegund might well have shrunk from such a husband. For, like most of his race, Clothaire was a savage of uncontrolled passions. Though even as pagans the Franks were monogamous, the chiefs had always been permitted a harem, and conversion had not disposed them to renounce their privileged polygamy. It is often quite impossible to tell which of a king's wives was his wife as the Church understands the term. Nor did the Gallic bishops, and though many are reckoned among the saints, take any action against their polygamous rulers. Clothaire certainly was no monogamist. We hear of six consorts of whom Radegund was the second.

With his own hand he had murdered two of the children, sons of his brother Clodomer. And shortly before his death he set fire to a hut containing his rebel son--he had, it is true, pardoned an earlier rebellion--and burned him alive with his wife and daughters. Such was the man to whom this sensitive, cultured, and devout girl was bound in matrimony.

As queen, we are told, she lived a life more suited to a nun in her cloister. She lavished money and food on the poor and on religious. She gave away a tithe of her revenues. At Athies she built a hospice for the sick poor, where she bathed the women herself and washed the men's heads, and finally gave her patients a hot drink. At the royal table she refused the banquet spread before her and contrived to eat unobserved a meagre vegetable meal. And she would rise from table to attend, or sing herself, the Divine Office. At night she would leave her husband's bed to pray in her oratory, outstretched on sack cloth, returning numb with cold. Throughout Lent she wore a hair shirt under her royal robes, and when Clothaire was absent redoubled the length and fervour of her devotions. Whole nights she would spend at prayer in chapels lit by tapers her own hands had made. Sometimes Clothaire would notice her absence from his table, to be informed that she was engaged in her devotions. A husband of far milder temper might well have resented her austerities and protracted absence from her place beside him. But surprisingly his violence, it would seem, was never more than verbal, and even so he would apologise and offer presents in atonement. No doubt he found consolation in women of earthier mould. But the fact remains that this uncontrolled savage was evidently in awe of Radegund. He was conscious of a supernatural power in her which he shrank from offending, and when he did so he was afraid. For the Catholic religion, however superstitiously and crudely understood, was a reality to these Merovingian chiefs. Nor is human conduct of apiece. The vivid writings of St. Gregory of Tours read like a combination of the Acta Sanctorum and the Daily News.

Clothaire entertained for Radegund not only awe but reverence. She was even able to obtain from him the lives of many condemned criminals. And she caused a surviving pagan sanctuary to be destroyed. The ill-assorted union continued about six years and might have dragged on indefinitely if her husband had not, for some unknown motive, had her brother murdered. This was too much. Radegund, not held back by children, decided to leave Clothaire and embrace her religious vocation. She made her way to Noyon where St. Medard was bishop, and asked him to give her the veil. Understandably, he hesitated to separate the Queen from her royal husband, the more so when a band of Frankish nobles threatened him in his cathedral. Radegund retired to the sacristy, put on the religious habit, and returning to the altar, told Medard that if from human respect he refused her request, God would require her soul at his hands. Since he did fear God, he consented and consecrated her a deaconess.

At this time of anxiety and dedication, Radegund was comforted by a vision promising her a place in our Lord's breast--as we would put it today, in his Heart. Her first step was to lavish in alms or the adornment of churches her royal wardrobe of rich garments and jewels. After a visit to St. Martin's shrine at Tours--the holiest sanctuary in Gaul--she retired to Saix, an estate given to her by Clothaire. She redoubled her austerities. Fortunatus tells us that from the time of her consecration she ate nothing but vegetables--not even fish, eggs, or fruit--and drank only honey water or pear juice. Yet Fortunatus addressed a poem to her with a present of fruit. She must therefore have relaxed her rule on occasion. She continued and increased hercharities. Every Thursday and Saturday she washed the heads of a crowd of filthy paupers, ridding them of their scurf, cleansing their sores, even removing vermin and pouring oil into wounds. Women she washed from head to foot with soap, gave them clean clothes and a meal at which she waited upon them herself, wiping the hands and mouths of those too weak to do it for themselves. The sick and blind she fed with a spoon. Every Sunday she provided a meal for the poor at which she handed round the first cup of wine herself.

But her special delight was to serve lepers. She laid their table, washed their faces, hands, nails, and sores with warm water, waited on each of her guests, and sent them away with a present of money or clothing. The leprous women she embraced and kissed their faces. Amaid ventured to remonstrate: "Most reverend lady, who will kiss you if you embrace lepers in this way?" "If you don't kiss me," was her reply, "I couldn't care less."

Radegund now moved on to Poitiers, which would be her home for the remainder of her life. Here she erected her convent, first called St. Mary's and later dedicated to the Holy Cross. She gathered there some two hundred nuns, many from noble Frankish or Gallo-Roman families and some of royal blood. She adopted the rule of St. Caesarius, of which she obtained a copy from the younger St. Caesaria. The convent was strictly enclosed against its inmates leaving their enclosure. The nuns could not even follow their foundress to her grave, but watched the funeral from the walls. But it was by no means so strictly kept against visitors from outside. Fortunatus, as we shall see, could dine in the parlour in the company of Radegund and the Abbess Agnes. The convent was equipped with well-appointed baths. They must have been of the normal Roman type, in which hot air played a considerable part--much like a modern Turkish bath. These baths cannot have been strictly or permanently in the enclosure, for the men serving the convent, workmen and agricultural labourers, were allowed to use them from the beginning of Lent to Pentecost. Austere as she was, Radegundwas not, like so many saints, tolerant of dirt. Many recorded incidents prove her love of bathing and cleanliness. Altogether the Abbey was an imposing edifice and spacious, "occupying more ground than villas or townships".

Radegund appointed as Abbess, Agnes, a young woman whom she had brought up and who was, as Fortunatus is never tired of insisting, her spiritual daughter, a woman of charm and culture and of a gentle and gracious disposition. The humility of her intention is unquestionable, but it is quite clear that Radegund was the Superior in fact though not in name. Agnes was not the woman to assert her will against that of her spiritual mother, and Radegund was nothing if not strong-minded. She knew what she thought right and did it.

She stoutly refused to allow the daughter of King Chilperic to leave the convent at her father's command and make a marriage politically desirable. Many of her two hundred nuns were holy women. Many, however, were far from holy. Many were women of noble or royal birth who did not regard Merovingian wedlock as an attractive prospect but preferred the life of maiden ladies in an aristocratic community. Radegund, we can hardly doubt, made concessions to their human weakness.

All this while, Clothaire had taken no steps to reclaim his wife or punish her desertion. As we have seen, he entertained for Radegund an awe born of a genuine if superstitious faith.

There came, however, a moment when the resentment of injured pride, combined perhaps with a genuine affection for his lost queen, moved him to take action. He came to Tours with the intention of proceeding to Poitiers to take her back. Radegund wrote to St. Germanus, Bishop of Paris, who had accompanied the King, begging his intervention, and betook herself to prayer. Germanus implored the King to abandon his purpose. He was successful. Not only did Clothaire leave Radegund in peace, he wrote to her begging her to forgive his abandoned design. After Clothaire's death Radegund secured a solemn pledge of protection for her Abbey from his four sons, bearing their signatures or marks, and at the same time placed it under the special care of the Gallicepiscopate.

Her personal austerities were now carried even further. She kept every weekday as a fast. All year round, except in Easter time and on great feasts, her bed was sackcloth and ashes. She took more than her share of the most menial tasks. She swept the floors, even the dirtiest. She drew water, cooked and cleaned vegetables, and washed the kitchen utensils. She brought in wood and lit the fire. She tended the sick. She even cleaned the latrines. This was too much for one historian, who writes, "The meanest, most disgusting offices, such as no modern pen would venture to describe, were performed by a Queen of France. "But she was no longer a queen, not even officially an abbess. This dirty work--a thousand years before Queen Elizabeth's godson invented the water-closet--had to be performed by someone. We should rather admire the humility which did not shrink from performing the most unpleasant service.

Nor did Radegund forget the welfare of the country. She would write to the kings, constantly at war, entreating them, unfortunately without much effect, to make and keep peace.

The Caesarian rule encouraged, indeed demanded, education. Every nun must be able to read--she must also know the Psalter by heart. And two hours every day were to be spent in reading. This was congenial to Radegund, who loved books. She read Gregory either of Nyssa or Nazianzen, Basil, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Sedulius, and Orosius. Whether she read the Greek Fathers in the original or in a Latin translation we are not told. Whatever time was left over from Psalmody or domestic chores she devoted to reading or hearing others read. And she would often comment to her nuns on what was being read. Sleep she cut down to a minimum. Even when she lay down for a brief rest, a nun was deputed to read until she fell asleep--another form of the habit of reading in bed. "When the reader thought she had fallen off and stopped reading ... she would say: Why are you silent? Go on reading and don't leave off." Baudonivia, who tells us this, may well have been the reader in question. A little inconsiderate you may think. Possibly. As I remarked earlier, human conduct is not of a piece and even saints are not exceptions.

In the main, however, Radegund, so severe upon herself, was indulgent to the human weakness of others. "Stern and unbending toward herself," Baudonivia observes, "she was full of compassion for others." We can translate this general statement into concrete details through the poems addressed to Radegund and Agnes by Fortunatus. Here we see her as the Christian humanist, indulging particular friendships, enjoying cultured conversation and permitting--even encouraging--in a friend an enjoyment of the good food and wine she denied to herself. The friendship between Radegund, Agnes, and Fortunatus made the parlour of Holy Cross an oasis of learning and peace and civilised living in a desert of war and savagery. This aspect, however, of Radegund's life cannot be studied without knowledge of the friend on whom it centered, the poet Venantius Fortunatus or, to give him his full name, Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus.

Fortunatus was an Italian, born near Treviso and educated at Ravenna. He came to France about 565 to return thanks to St. Martin for the cure of a diseased eye. He made himself popular with bishops, noblemen, and princes by addressing to them complimentary poems. St. Gregory of Toursin particular befriended him. Finally he settled at Poitiers and his friendship with Radegund and Agnes began. Though he is not enrolled in the Martyrology, his feast is kept in several dioceses. He is therefore entitled to the name of saint--though the honours of sanctity were easily won in the sixth century. Indeed, if a Merovingian bishop does not figure among the saints, he was not, one suspects, a very satisfactory bishop. And when he died Fortunatus was Bishop of Poitiers. In his earlier days he certainly tried to make the best of both worlds. His first principle of conduct was to avoid being mixed up in any unpleasantness. Since being involved in unpleasantness might mean torture and death, I am not disposed to blame him for this.

Characteristic of Fortunatus is his picture of himself given at the beginning of a letter to St. Felix, Bishop of Nantes; lying on the beach yawning and dozing with a volume of his friend's composition in his hand and dipping lazily into it until, so he says, Felix' eloquence roused him from his torpor.

Fortunatus' best known compositions are the Passiontide hymns, Vexilla Regis and Pange Lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis. He also wrote the Salve festa dies, the poem which celebrates so jubilantly nature's resurrection from the grave of winter to greet her risen Lord, in better days sung in part as a processional before the Masses of Easter and Ascension.

His numerous poems to Radegund and Agnes are in quite another vein: occasional verses and tokens of friendship. Radegund he regarded as his spiritual mother; Agnes, about the same age as himself, as his spiritual sister. And his friendship for his "mother" and "sister", though pure as light, was warm. When Radegund enters her Lenten retreat the sky clouds over for him until the sunshine--Radegund, "my light"--returns at Easter. Her return indeed brings harvest and vintage in April. And Agnes is his heart's delight, "deliciae animae meae\kern1pt", his "honey". He wishes he could help Radegund in the kitchen and scullery, in the garden, or fetching water from the well. He expresses his pleasure in his friends' singing on St. Martin's feast. Away from home and oppressed by anxiety, he wishes she could put on Daedalus' wings and fly back to them. He joins Agnesin urging Radegund to drink some wine for the sake of her health.

Presents pass between them to the accompaniment of verses by Fortunatus. Did the season permit, he would send lilies or roses. But he can send nothing more than vetches--some species or other of brightly coloured wild pea--and violets. And a poem equally charming apologises for a bunch of violets and crocuses. He sends chestnuts in a basket woven by himself, plums from his orchard, or his life of St. Marcellus. Trifles, but "between friends", he observes, "trifling gifts are gracious beyond their worth." And he apologises for the poor container in which he sends a present of fruit.

He often thanks for presents of food, food parcels, or meals served to him in the parlour. He thanks his friends for vegetables steeped in honey, followed by a mountain of meat surrounded by delicacies from sea and land. All, he says, is now in his stomach. He thanks for meat served on a silver plate with vegetables swimming in gravy, for vegetables on a marble dish tasting sweet as the honey which flavoured them, fowls on a glass dish, apples deliciously scented, and a jug of milk. There is a cream mould bearing the marks of Agnes' fingers. He thanks Agnes for eggs and plums. Radegund and Agnes had told him to eat two eggs, but, he must confess, he has drunk four in an egg flip. He writes of a dinner at the convent when table and sideboard were smothered with roses; and of another dinner when he hopes that by her conversation Radegund will redouble the satisfaction he receives from the feast of milk, vegetables, eggs, and butter with which, as he rather crudely says, he has distended his stomach. But his critics will take most scandal at a poem in which he confesses to having drunk not wisely but too well, so that the wine went to his head. He became muddle-headed, could hardly keep his eyes open. He was in no condition to compose or write verses. The dinner table, in fact, seemed to be swimming in wine. However, on his return home, before he goes to bed, he sends these verses of excuse. Certainly a strange scene when a saint dines with a saint in the convent of Holy Cross. I hope none of my readers when next they hear Vexilla Regis sung on Good Friday will be distracted by the thought of its author in so different an aspect as man and poet. In this instance, at any rate, Radegund seems to have pushed indulgence too far, though we do not know what she said or wrote to Fortunatus when he returned to sobriety. But we must remember that drunkenness, within limits at least, was regarded at that time as a venial offence. The biographer of St. Sampson, the contemporary Celtic saint, relates to his credit that no one ever saw him the worse for drink.

But, as he insists himself, Fortunatus appreciated his friends' conversation more than the menu. He found it more satisfying. Nor was it always serious. He speaks of Radegund's "delicious and versatile humour". It is in keeping with this lighter vein that she played a game of chance, in the nature, it would seem, of draughts.

Fortunatus was undeniably an epicure and a bon vivant, though he could appreciate Radegund's abstinence. But his hymns prove him a man of strong Christian faith and personal devotion. We cannot in fact better sum up his character than in the words of an eighteenth-century epitaph: "He united the natural enjoyment of the pleasures of this world with a 'prayerful hope' of those of the world to come."

Radegund shared to the full the contemporary devotion to relics. He most famous relic was that of the True Cross. She sent to Constantinople to ask for it from the Emperor Justin II. It was probably on this occasion that the metrical letter composed by Fortunatus in her name was sent to her cousin Hamalafred begging him, wherever he might be, to reply. He must surely have been known or believed to be in the imperial service. Despite some absurd rhetorical touches, it is a moving document. The affection of a child for the older cousin is recalled and revived.

Justin was gracious. He sent a relic of the Cross in a reliquary adorned with gold and jewels, other relics, and a copy of the Gospels bound in gold and studded with gems. But it would seem that news was returned of Hamalafred's death. For another metrical letter was written in Radegund's name to a relative named Artachis, which informs us of his death and of her grief.

These precious relics were at hand, when a hitch arose. The Bishop of Poitiers, Maroveus, refused to perform the ceremony of their solemn reception. The motive of his hostility to Radegund, shown on other occasions, is obscure. Possibly he disapproved of her government of her convent. Possibly he was jealous of a royal foundation placed under the official protection of the Frankish kings and the Gallicepiscopate and regarded it as an unwelcome imperium in imperio. Nothing could be done but to invite a bishop from outside to preside over the function. This, however, would be the intrusion of one bishop into the diocese of another. Today a matter of this kind would be referred to the Holy See. But Rome was far off and the Church of Gaul, though in communion with Rome and acknowledging in principle papal supremacy, was an Erastian institution. Radegund, therefore, turned to her stepson, King Sigebert, and he deputed Bishop Euphroniusof Tours to act.

So the Cross made its triumphant entry into the convent, henceforth to bear its name, and was solemnly enshrined. Now it was that Fortunatus rose to his opportunity and composed for the occasion the two hymns which ever since have celebrated throughout the western Church the victory won on Calvary--the Vexilla Regis and the PangeLingua gloriosi proelium. The Pange Lingua indeed was and is set to the marching tune of the Roman legionaries, sung at least since the days when they followed Julius Caesar to his conquests.

It is quite usual today--perhaps in reaction from past excesses--for the biographer of a saint to pass over without mention the miracles which bulk so largely in the original sources. They seem to be a nettle which even Catholics shrink from touching. No faithful historian, however, can reject unexamined or ignore miracles related by such contemporaries as Fortunatus and Baudonivia in detail, and often with the names of their subjects. In the limited space of this short study it is impossible to evaluate the many cures attributed to Radegund. Some were, perhaps, the result of her medical treatments reinforced by suggestion, but to others recorded by eye-witnesses no natural cause appears assignable.

A year before her death, Baudonivia tells us, Radegund dreamed she saw a handsome young man richly clad. When he drew close and addressed her in affectionate terms, she took alarm and repulsed his attentions. He told her he was the heavenly Bridegroom she had loved so well and that she would be a priceless jewel in his crown.

The material, and to a large extent the form even, of visions authentically divine in origin are drawn from the subject's subconscious. A genuine intuition, therefore, of heavenly reward may well have taken a form determined by the saint's lifelong desire for the pure affection of a man genuinely loved, a desire shown by her love for her murdered brother and her cousin and her friendship for Fortunatus, a desire frustrated and polluted by her union with Clothaire. It was, however, as the dream also shows, mixed with the knowledge that it had been and must be sacrificed for the love of Christ. The dream, perhaps told to Baudonivia, at the time reveals the woman in the saint, and her womanhood as the material of her sanctity.

As she lay ill on what proved to be her deathbed, she was insistent that Psalms should be sung. Or she would speak of the judgment and heaven, even at times when she seemed to be talking in her sleep.

On August 13, 587, the end came. Bishop Maroveus was conveniently away on a visitation and in no hurry to return. The funeral could not wait for him nor for an appeal to the civil power. Once more the Bishop of Tours was called in. He was now the historian St. Gregory; and he and Baudonivia have both left us accounts of the funeral. Both speak of the beauty of the dead woman's face. "It was a lovely as a lily or rose", says Baudonivia. "It surpassed the beauty of lilies or roses", says St. Gregory. And Baudonivia remarks that the sight filled St. Gregory with awe "as if he saw the most holy Mother of the Lord Jesus herself".

Around the bier the nuns stood lamenting. But the language of their rhetorical panegyric owes much to convention and something probably to Gregory. Weeping, they crowded on to the wall as the funeral cortège passed beneath, and sobs interrupted the Psalms and antiphons of the clerics. The body was laid, packed with spices, in the wooden coffin Radegund had prepared. But the lid was left open, to be closed by the diocesan when he celebrated the funeral Mass.

Fortunatus wrote no elegy. His grief lay too deep for verse. We hear nothing of Agnes. Presumably she followed her spiritual mother shortly to the grave. Two years later there was another abbess at Holy Cross.

* * *

When St. Catherine of Siena was reproached for the indulgence she showed to Francesco Malavolti, a disciple who in her absence had returned to his unconverted life, "Never mind," she replied, "one day I shall cast such a noose around his neck that he shall never escape from me any more." She did. After her death Malavolti became an Olivetan monk. So, I conjecture, mutatis mutandis, Radegund might have replied, if blamed for her indulgence to Fortunatus' addiction to the pleasures of the table and occasional excesses in drinking. After her death she held him fast and brought him closer to herself as he drew closer to God.

Certainly he was judged worthy to be chosen shortly before his death Bishop of Poitiers, and in that office he died in the odour of sanctity.

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