Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/506

484 Engelbert himself was not unwarned. A letter came to him revealing the matter. Upon reading it, he threw it in the fire. Yet he told its contents to his friend the Bishop of Minden, who was present. Said the latter: "Have a care for thyself, my lord, for God's sake, and not for thyself alone, but for the welfare of your church and the safety of the whole land."

The archbishop answered: "Dangers are all about me, and what I should do the Lord knows and not I. Woe is me, if I keep quiet! Yet if I should accuse them of this matter, they would complain to every one that I was fastening the crime of parricide on them. From this hour I commit my body and soul to the divine care."

"Then taking the bishop alone into his chapel, he began to confess all his sins from his very youth, with a shower of tears that wetted all his breast, and, as we hope, washed the stains from his heart. And when the Lord of Minden said: 'I fear there is still something on thy conscience which thou hast not told me,' he answered: 'The Lord knows that I have concealed nothing consciously.' But thinking over his sins more fully, the next morning he took his confessor again into the same chapel and with meek and contrite soul and floods of tears confessed everything that had recurred to his mind. Then his conscience being clear, he said fearlessly: 'Now let God's will regarding me be done.'

"In the meanwhile some one was knocking at the door of the chapel. The archbishop would not let it be opened because his eyes were wet with tears. But the knocking continued, and it was announced that the bishops of Osnabrück and Münster (brothers of Count Frederic) were there. After he had dried his eyes and wiped his face, he allowed them to be shown in, and said when they had entered: 'You lords both are kin of mine, and I have injured you in nothing, as you know well, but have advanced your interests, as I might, and your brother's also. And look you, from all sides by word and letter I hear that your brother Count Frederic, whom I have loved heartily and never harmed, is devising ill to me and seeks to kill me.' "They protested, trembling in their deceit: 'Lord, may this never, never, be! You need have no fear; such a thought has never entered his heart. We all have been honoured and enriched and lifted up by you.' Which last was true." This was after the festival of All Saints in the first days of November 1225; and Count Frederic, the better to