Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/411

Bathilda Troyes she was a generous protector; while for that of Corbie she took off the girdle from her waist as a gift to the brethren there. To Luxeuil and the other Burgundian monasteries she was a lavish patron, and it was she who called St. Leger from his uncle's see, and who, later, when the rival bishops were shedding blood in the streets of Autun, appointed him to the vacant post. The most cherished of all her labours was the reconstruction of the great nunnery at Chelles, not far from Paris, on the site of the ruined buildings which the wife of the first Clovis had founded more than 150 years before, and which she, the wife of the second, was to restore to far greater splendour. Here in 648 Hereswitha, the mother of Ealdwulf, king of the East Angles, had already settled; and here her sister Hilda, Caedmon's patroness, who afterwards founded the great abbey of Whitby, once had thoughts of going. Its possessions and rights were confirmed by her own hands and those of her sons, and curses were solemnly invoked on any abbess who in future times should diminish its estates, or alienate any part of its domains as a benefice. ‘Which document,’ says one of her contemporary biographers, ‘whoever cares may see in the archives of the church.’ To rule over this large nunnery she begged from the abbess of Joaire one of the nuns there, Bertila, whose fame had reached the court, and who was accordingly appointed abbess. The churches of St. Denys, St. Germains, St. Medard (at Soissons), St. Martin's (at Tours), and many others shared her care.

In an interesting passage from the life of St. Eligius, which claims to have been written by his fellow-saint, St. Audoen, we see Bathilda almost face to face in all her religious enthusiasm and devotion. She seems to have held St. Eligius in greater regard than any other churchman of the age. It was he who, a few years back, had calmed her fears lest her first-born should be a girl, who fixed its name before its birth, and had, with that artificer's skill in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, devised a special cradle for the child. He is likewise said to have predicted Bathilda's regency, her eldest son's decease, and other events. When, in the night of 30 Nov. 659, Eligius died at Noyon, the queen came early next morning, accompanied by her three young sons, her chief nobles, and a great host of people. Kissing the dead saint's face and stroking his hands, she burst into tears, and tradition told how, despite the December frost, the blood gushed from the nostrils of the corpse at the queen's touch. For three days Bathilda enjoined and kept a strict fast, hoping to remove the body to her monastery at Chelles. But for no efforts, so ran the legend at the time, could the bier be moved, not even when the queen herself put her hands to the task. She then reluctantly consented that the saint should be buried outside the walls of his own city. Bathilda followed the funeral cortege on foot, and could not be persuaded to use her horse-chariot, although the winter had made the country a huge morass. Later, at the saint's bidding, she stripped herself of all her ornaments except the golden bracelets on her arm, making of them a gold and silver vault (‘crepa’) to enshrine the body of the dead artificer, which she carefully wrapped in garments of unmixed silk (‘holo-serica’) prepared by her own hands.

In other pages of her own or the next century she appears as the persecutor and the murderess. Eddius tells us how St. Wilfrid on his journey to and from Rome was kindly received by Dalphinus, the archbishop of Lyons, who offered to make the young Englishman his heir and to give him his daughter in marriage. ‘But at that time,’ Eddius continues, ‘an evilly-disposed queen, Baldhild by name, persecuted the church of God. As the most wicked Jezebel of old, who slew God's prophets, so she bade slay ten bishops, of whom this Dalphinus was one.’ Bathilda seems to have given orders for him to be brought to the court, and to have had him slain on the way. Wilfrid, we read, was desirous of sharing his patron's fate, but the murderers, on hearing that he was an Englishman, appear to have been afraid to take away the life of one who was of their queen's race. The whole question, however, is full of obscurity. No Dalphinus is to be found in the list of the archbishops of Lyons, though certain old breviaries belonging to that diocese have preserved the name of a Count Dalphinus and his brother, Bishop Annemund, who, having been unable to attend a gathering of the Frankish chiefs at Orleans, was slandered to the king as a traitor, and privily put to death at Chalons by his enemies. It seems probable either that Annemund and Dalphinus were one and the same, or that Annemund the archbishop had a brother Dalphinus, and that Eddius has confused the two. The French hagiographers are much concerned to explain away Bathilda's action in slaying a bishop, and are glad to refer the whole occurrence to the machinations of Ebroin, who had succeeded to Erchinwald about the year 658. Many manuscripts read Brunechilde for Baldchild—a palpable error, as Brunechilde was dead before Wilfrid's birth (see original passages,, iv.–vi.; , v. 19; iii. 100; and the whole