Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 6

From the union of Hettel and fair Hilde sprang two children: Ortwin and Gudrun, who even surpa.s.ses her mother in beauty. The Hegeling daughter is sought by the most powerful princes, but Hettel deems none worthy of his daughter. Hartmut, King of the Normans, when rejected, appears disguised at Hettel's court and reveals himself to Gudrun, who, feeling pity for the beautiful youth, advises him to flee from her father's wrath: "His life would be done for, were Hettel to recognize him."

Hartmut retires but to prepare for war, for once having seen charming Gudrun, he can no longer live without her. Meanwhile, Herwig of Seeland, a Frisian king, who had also been rejected, appears with three thousand heroes before Hettel's castle: he strikes the flaming wind from many a helmet. Fair Gudrun has never known such delight as that which the deeds of the brave heroes give; the sight of him is to her both love and sorrow. Herwig and Hettel meet in deadly combat, "fiery glow flamed from their s.h.i.+elds, red wounds are struck," until Gudrun intercedes in person; peace is concluded, and Herwig is betrothed to Gudrun.

The news of this engagement exasperates King Siegfried of Morland, who had sought vainly for Gudrun's hand. He invades Herwig's country, and Herwig in his extremity appeals to Gudrun, his betrothed. Her father, Hettel, with his men, goes to Herwig's aid. While he is thus engaged, Ludwig and Hartmut of Normandy, having learned through spies that the land of the Hegelings is denuded of men, sail with a powerful host to Hettel's land and soon advance upon the sunny castle of Hilde. Hartmut, unwilling to wrong his beloved Gudrun if she will accept his suit, announces his love to her, and threatens to carry her away by force if she resists. Gudrun replies that she belongs, body and soul, to Herwig and that she will never break faith with him. Ludwig and Hartmut storm the castle and carry away Gudrun and her sixty-two attendants, among them her best beloved companion, Hildeburg. Queen Hilde looks on with powerless tears and broken heart. She sends messengers to Hettel and Herwig, who conclude an honorable peace with King Siegfried, and with their new ally set out in pursuit of the Normans. At the mouth of the river Sheldt, on the island of Wulpensand, the Normans with their beautiful captive rest. Here they are overtaken by the Seelanders. The terrible battle that ensues has been sung in many lays throughout Germany. "You'd see the heroes' bodies with glowing blood color the sea.

The waves flowed to the strand reddened everywhere."

More and more Hegelings sink to the ground. Ludwig slays King Hettel: "This was sorrowful tidings to many hearts." When fierce Wate perceives his master's death, he begins to rage like a wild boar. Ortwin and Horant are beside themselves with rage and strive to avenge their fallen king, but night stops the carnage. The Normans succeed in reaching their s.h.i.+ps under the cover of darkness and in escaping with their hard-won booty. The Hegelings are so reduced in numbers that no further pursuit can be made. Wate brings the sad tidings to Queen Hilde in the desolate tower: "No use to keep the calamity from you; I will not deceive you, they are all dead, our heroes." Revenge must be postponed, "until all those who now stand before us as children, have grown ripe for the sword; many a n.o.ble orphan will then be mindful of his father and will be a helper on the new journey." But poor Hilde expresses her despair of the distant hope.

Meanwhile, the triumphant Normans approach the coast of their fatherland. King Ludwig, in sight of the towers of his castle, kindly reminds tearful Gudrun that all this beautiful land shall belong to her if she will marry Hartmut. This only increases her sorrow: "Ere I'll take Sir Hartmut, I shall rather be dead. His is not of a house that I could love him. I'll lose life rather than win him as my friend."

Incensed at her bitter words, Ludwig seizes the princess by the hair and hurls her into the foaming sea. But loving Hartmut springs after her, rescues her and places her with tender care in his boat. At the landing Queen Gerlinde and her daughter Ortrun with their attendants hasten to welcome the Norman heroes and fair Gudrun, who accepts Ortrun's kiss, but refuses that of the old queen, knowing well that the latter is the source of all her misfortunes, and having a presentiment of the greater evils that threatened her. As she continues to cling to her betrothed, Herwig, and defies the advances of Hartmut, whose father had slain hers, Gerlinde undertakes to break her pride while Hartmut is absent upon a new expedition. But the young king entreats his mother before his departure "to instruct the poor, homeless princess in all kindness."

This the queen attempts, but as Gudrun persists in her refusal, Gerlinde is enraged and exclaims: "If thou wilt not have joy, sorrow shall be thy share." Thereafter, she subjects Gudrun to a series of humiliations.

First, she is separated from her n.o.ble playmates, who are condemned to spin and do other womanly handiwork. The royal virgin herself is forced to perform the most servile work, she is obliged to heat the stoves, to wash the linen, and to sweep the floor, this last with her silken hair; she is chastised by Gerlinde, she is fed on black bread and water, and her couch is a hard bench. Ortrun's sisterly affection for Gudrun is the only bright spot in her gloomy existence. Hartmut's love and the protection which he vowed to her at first, finally turn to impatience, and he abandons her to the unmitigated ill treatment of her tormentor, Queen Gerlinde, by whom Gudrun is condemned to perpetual servitude and shame. Gudrun's n.o.ble attendant, Hildeburg, by piteous entreaty obtains permission to partic.i.p.ate in the grievous work of her royal mistress.

For nearly six years they wash Gerlinde's garments in the sea, in wind and storm, in snow and ice. But Gudrun's pure and faithful heart remains unshaken.

Thirteen years have now pa.s.sed since the terrible events on the Wulpensand. The boys of the land of the Hegelings have grown to be men.

Queen Hilde, unforgetful of the captivity of her daughter Gudrun, and of her duty to avenge King Mattel's death, summons her heroes and friends and allies, foremost among whom is Herwig, to an expedition against the Normans. A strong fleet is armed; some sixty thousand men follow Hilde's summons. Horant of Denmark is the leader of the fleet. After a stormy pa.s.sage the coast of Normandy is reached. The allies land unnoticed under the cover of mountain and forest, safe from the observation of the spies. Ortwin, Gudrun's brother, and Herwig, her betrothed, go forward as scouts.

Following the natural order of events, we now pa.s.s in the grand epic to the romantic element, the lyrical _intermettfp_ of longing and love, of truth and faith, to the realm of hope and consolation. All the virtues and charms of the Teutonic woman's nature are revealed in Gudrun: superhuman agencies intervene for her deliverance. One day Gudrun and Hildeburg stand on the strand of the sea, occupied with their customary menial work of was.h.i.+ng, in strange contrast to the same womanly occupation of the Grecian princess Nausicaa and her n.o.ble attendants in the Odyssey, where everything is brightness and delight, when they suddenly perceive a beautiful bird swimming toward them. It is a divine messenger, who brings them glad tidings, p.r.o.nounced with a human voice:

"Be ready, homeless maid, a lofty happiness awaits thee; G.o.d sends me for thy comfort to this strand." He satisfies her longing questions, tells her that Hilde lives, and of the hosts and the fleet she has sent out for Gudrun's rescue, of Ortwin and Herwig and all the rest of her liberators. Then the mysterious bird disappears, and the two princesses are left in suspense. They forget their work, and must therefore at their return endure the bitter chidings of Gerlinde, who sends them forth the next morning to the same work, to which they go barefooted and clothed only in their s.h.i.+rts, though heavy snow covers the fields, and ice dams the waterways. Well might they then send out their longing glances over the sea whence are to come the messengers whom the queen Hilde has sent for their rescue. Suddenly they perceive two men approaching in a boat. Ashamed of their servile work, and still more of their nakedness, they flee, but Herwig and Ortwin call them back and offer their mantles to the unknown and beautiful servants, who tremble from cold, in their wet s.h.i.+rts, their locks flying in the sharp wind.

Modestly they refuse to accept the mantles of the men. Ortwin inquires the name of the person who has subjected them to such cruel work. Herwig looks in silent amazement at the beautiful, the glorious, the royal woman in her degradation; "the hero compared her to one whom he cherished in true memory."

When Ortwin further inquires after the n.o.ble women, especially Gudrun, who many years ago had been dragged into Normandy, she replies: "Gudrun died in sorrow," a characteristic reply which proves that in the ancient Germanic world, as well as in that of Greece, a cunning little lie was not amiss even in the mouth of a charming princess. When the tears well forth from the eyes of the heroes, another trait of the ancient Germanic past as well as of the Greek, and Herwig draws forth the betrothal ring of yore, Gudrun says, smiling:

"'Well do I know this ringlet, betimes it came from me; Behold now this one, warriors, by Herwig sent to me, When I, abandoned orphan, lived in my father's land.'"

Overwhelmed by joy, Herwig clasps his beloved Gudrun in his arms to carry her away at once, but proud Ortwin wil! not s.n.a.t.c.h her away stealthily from the enemy; and Herwig promises to stand, before the sun rises in the morning, before the gates of the Norman city with sixty thousand chosen warriors. The maidens follow with their eyes the departing heroes till their boat vanishes in the mist.

Gudrun exults over the thought of their approaching liberation. Her entire nature seems to change. From the patient, enduring, humble, martyr-like, though constant and faithful, maiden, she changes to a proud, self-a.s.serting queen. Angrily she hurls the linen, the symbol of her humiliation, into the flood; she is too highly placed; she declares to the warning, anxious friend Hildeburg that she will never wash again for Gerlinde, for two kings have kissed her and held her in their arms.

When, at their late arrival at the castle, Gerlinde receives them with harsh words, asks for the linen, and learns that Gudrun has thrown it into the sea, the she-wolf as she is called here in the epic orders thorn rods to be tied together to chastise Gudrun. But the cunning maiden, who, as we have seen, does not shrink from a needful little lie, escapes by a clever ruse:

"'Release me from chastis.e.m.e.nt, you'll gladly do it sure; For whom I have rejected, I choose now for my lord; As queen will I reside in the Normanish fields; In power I shall perform deeds: you'll scarcely trust your eyes."

Gerlinde immediately informs her son Hartmut of Gudrun's decision; but when he hastens to the spot to embrace her, she declines, saying:

"'O King Hartmut, leave this yet undone!

If people saw this action, it would be your dishonor; I am a lowly servant, how would it be befitting, Were a mighty king to embrace me or to touch me?'"

Overjoyed, Hartmut orders Gudrun and her maidens to be clothed in costly garments and to be regaled royally; and for the first time in fourteen years Queen Gudrun laughs merrily among her Hegeling sisters, who are overcome by the sudden change of events. The report of Gudrun's merriment causes Gerlinde a presentiment of evil; she warns her son, but he has no eyes or ears but for Gudrun's charms. When the maidens retire for the first time in fourteen years to a soft couch, Gudrun reveals to them the fact that help and salvation are near, and promises "buroughs and acres" to her who will first announce to her the morning which shall bring to them the day of freedom and of revenge.

Meanwhile, Herwig and Ortwin return to their host and relate to the companions Gudrun's and Hildeburg's fate. Old Wate proposes to attack the Normans without delay, and "to wash red the white garments which their white hands had washed in the sea." "Before dawn they shall stand as guests before King Ludwig's fortress." And, indeed, at the rising of the morning star, one of Gudrun's maidens sees from the window the fields s.h.i.+ning with arms and the sea filled with sails. Quickly she awakes Gudrun, while at the same time the king's warders cry from the battlements:

"'Get up, ye proud heroes, get up, hosts, to your arms: Brave Normans, all too long, methinks, have you slept.'"

The masterly description of the terrific battle, which is worthy of the best traditions of the German epic, does not belong to this work. Yet the gathering of the Hegelings around Queen Hilde's banner, King Herwig's bride standing high on the battlement of the tower, while King Hartmut and the Norman heroes march under the arch of the gate are objective pictures showing that the womanly element is the pivot upon which the story turns.

When old King Ludwig is slain by Herwig, the she-wolf, Gerlinde, sends out a murderer to kill Gudrun, but Hartmut generously saves her mindful of the beloved one even in the stress of battle. When Hartmut himself is on the point of succ.u.mbing under the blows of Wate, Gudrun, softened by Ortrun's prayer, sends out Herwig to intercede in Hartmut's behalf. Wate scornfully refuses, but Herwig, from his love for Gudrun, covers the enemy with his own body, and Hartmut is s.n.a.t.c.hed away and carried into captivity with eighty of his knights. The contrast of this battle with its many traits of love and compa.s.sion, even for the enemy, of self-restraint and humanity, to similar scenes in the _Nibelungenlied_ with its ruthless, merciless, savage l.u.s.t of blood and revenge, is strikingly apparent.

Gerlinde, in miserable fear of death, seeks at last a refuge with Gudrun. The latter is willing to save her old tormenter, but Gerlinde is betrayed to Wate by one of her servants. Wate, who has many of the traits of Hagen in the _Nibelungenlied_, seizes her, wildly exclaiming in fearful wrath, yet using her royal t.i.tle:

"Lady Queen Gerlinde, you'll never more condemn to menial servitude my queen's sweet daughter." With these words he cuts off her head. The same fate befalls also young d.u.c.h.ess Hergart, one of Gudrun's attendants, who for gifts had bestowed her love upon Hartmut and had been faithless and overbearing to Gudrun. Poor Ortrun, who had befriended Gudrun, and her other women were spared upon Gudrun's intercession. Thus punishment and reward are evenly balanced; the ethical element of equal justice prevails everywhere, leaving no bitter aftertaste to the reader of the glorious epic. When King Herwig enters the lofty hall of the Norman king with his companions, Gudrun lovingly hastens toward him, and puts her arms around her hero.

The dead are removed, the blood-stained walls are cleaned so that Gudrun may dwell in the castle, and the Hegelings begin "to inspect Hartmut's inheritance." After the hostile fortresses are broken and justice is satisfied, the conquerors depart with Gudrun and rich treasures: Hartmut is carried away with the other prisoners. Queen Hilde receives her heroes on the sh.o.r.e, but, at first, does not recognize her daughter Gudrun when she is led up to her. Mother and daughter hold one another in a tender embrace: sorrow and pain quickly turn to joy and delight.

Ortrun, too, is received graciously for the n.o.ble friends.h.i.+p bestowed by her upon Gudrun during the long years of captivity. Hartmut and his men, having pledged themselves not to escape, are freed from their fetters.

Now the preparations for the festivities of love and marriage are begun.

The epic rings out in a sweet chant of love and reconciliation. Gudrun's faithfulness is blessed by Herwig's marital love. But Gudrun is unwilling to be blessed alone. The hate between the Normans and the Hegelings must be wiped out: the Norman princess Ortrun is married to King Ortwin. Hartmut, who for so long had cherished a hopeless love for Gudrun, transfers his affections to n.o.ble Hildeburg, who had shared Gudrun's sorrowful captivity.

The bridals are celebrated on one day, mourning and woe are changed to joy, the hostile races are reconciled and reunited by the ties of blood and love in an alliance for defence and offence. The end of the _Gudrun saga_ stands thus, in direct contrast to the end of the _Nibelungenlied_. The type of Kriemhilde has revealed to us one-half of the possibilities of the German woman's soul; the type of Gudrun, its other half, in its sweetness, its endurance, its martyrdom for all that is great and good and n.o.ble; its patriotism, love, and virtue. Within the range of those two natures we can differentiate all the souls of the millions of German women that lived and loved, hated and struggled, suffered and died in the dim ages of the foundation of Germanic social order and inst.i.tutions.

CHAPTER IV

THE CENTURIES OF SUBMERGENCE AND OF NATIONALIZATION

Charlemagne, the man typical of Teutonic force and power, a consummator of ancient forces and an initiator of a new progress, stands between the German and the Roman worlds as a gigantic form on the boundary line of two nations and two civilizations. Charlemagne was the first to realize the political unity of western Christendom as spiritually personified in the Papacy. This is the significance of that mighty event, pregnant with tremendous possibilities for good and for evil, when on the Christmas day of A. D. 800, the Pope bestowed upon Charlemagne the political crown of the Christian world with the obligation to support the church in its spiritual and secular supremacy. Only by the imperial crown, as a continuation of the majesty of the Roman Caesars, could Germany maintain even its ascendancy among the other nations of Europe.

When the German races were organized as a nation and imbued with the Christian faith by Charlemagne, this new political formation became the bearer of a new civilization amalgamated from its various const.i.tuents and as complex as was the state itself. Though preeminently papal and clerical, yet it was, also, eminently intellectual and cla.s.sical. The treasures of a new thought, of culture, of Greco-Roman refinement, and even of material wealth, were opened to the people of Germany. Fruitful as these Roman germs were, they were only a ferment for German strength and characteristics; for the Germans alone made Christianity a living issue. It was impossible for the putrid soil of the decaying Roman Empire to become a fruitful abode for Christianity.

Men and women fled to the desert to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in solitary contemplation and far from the temptation of the world. The monks in spite of the faults and the degeneration which will ever cling to things human are, after all, the purveyors of intellectual and moral culture.

The cloisters, too, were at first fortresses of civilization, labor, agriculture, artisans.h.i.+p, and, though with monachal limitations, they were yet transmitters of literary and cla.s.sical antiquity.

We need only recall the life of the disciples of Saint Benedict in the cloister of Saint Gall, so dramatically described by Scheffel in his _Ekkehard_, their activity in letters and missionary work and gardening, in the copying of the cla.s.sics and in teaching, as _Ekkehard_ taught the d.u.c.h.ess Hadwig the intellectual charms of the great pagan poet Virgil, to realize the debt owed by civilization to these monks. Though they and their cla.s.sics, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, etc., sunk into the foundations of our civilization, yet, in their fanatic zeal, they destroyed many priceless old German treasures, relics of antiquity, which are, unfortunately, irretrievably lost. Charlemagne, with his deep intuition, recognized the value of these relics, and, a.s.sisted by the staff of free-hearted and free-minded scholars with whom he had surrounded himself, tried to save what could yet be saved.

With the advent of the monk came the nun. The great Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, with inflexible will and diplomatic shrewdness, availed himself of the especial gifts of woman to aid in subjecting Germany to the Holy See. Not finding sufficient aid in Germany, he fetched women from England. The Anglo-Saxon abbesses, Lioba of Bischofsheim, Thekla of Kitzingen, and Walpurgis of Heidenheim, were of immense utility in his missionary work, and left a saintly memory in Germany. They raised the female priesthood of the nuns to a lofty height, their cloisters were nurseries of culture. Princesses and royal daughters sought the veil as an honor or as a refuge from the trials of their high station. It is true, however, that the monasteries of the nuns did not always maintain their original purity. Not seldom a nun broke her vow and preferred excommunication to a loveless existence.

Sometimes the nuns tried to console themselves in the cloister itself for the dreariness of their existence. The Capitularies of Charlemagne inform us of the manner in which vagrant nuns, amorous dwellers in cloisters, offended against religious laws. Sometimes, indeed, the nuns even carried on amours for money, and the natural consequences of the breach of the vows of chast.i.ty were removed by crime, while, on the other hand, the chastis.e.m.e.nts meted out for such crimes were truly barbarous. There are Capitularies that prescribe that nuns' cloisters be not too conveniently near to the monasteries of monks, and others that accurately define the intercourse between clerics and laymen, that set forth the rule that "no abbess should presume to go outside of the monastery without episcopal permission nor permit her subordinate nuns to do so, that they shall not dare to write or send love-songs (_winileodes_);" but it is not less true that _winileodes_ continued to be realistically played in the nunneries and played in earnest. That luxury and high living must have developed in cloisters appears from a capitulary which forbids abbesses to have packs of hounds, and falcons, and hawks, and jugglers; that they shall live "regularly," and that their cloisters should be "rationally" established.

We prefer, however, to write of the many holy women, the nuns, especially the Anglo-Saxon nuns, who obtained martyrdom by cooperating with Winfrid, the apostle of the Germans and other holy missionaries of the time. The monk Rudolf of Fulda wrote a biography of Saint Lioba after the report of her female disciples. Lioba was educated in an English nunnery which had been founded at Winbrunne (to-day Wimborne Minster, Dorsets.h.i.+re), together with a monastery. Very naively Rudolf a.s.serts that in spite of the proximity of the inst.i.tutions no undue intercourse between their inhabitants ever occurred; nay, the abbess was so strict that she forbade entrance to the a.s.semblies of the nuns, not only to clerics and laymen, but also to the bishops. At this holy place did the virgin grow up, soon becoming the star of piety and wisdom in the cloister, and the favorite of the abbess. Thence she was sent by the will of Boniface to Germany and placed at the head of the cloister of Bischofsheim. From all parts of Germany young women went to her cloister to learn virtue and wisdom from the holy woman. When Boniface prepared himself for his last missionary expedition to the pagan Frisians, he commended his pious sister to his successor, exhorted her not to weary in her holy work, and directed that her body after death should be placed with his own in one grave, that they should both await the day of resurrection after they had served Christ in the same endeavor and aspiration during their lives. When Boniface had found the martyr's death in Frisia, Lioba worked on for many years with beneficent activity in the Christianization of Germany. Venerated by all she was an especial favorite of Charlemagne and his consort Hildegard, yet she preferred at all times the atmosphere of her cloister to the luxurious life at the court. She died A. D. 780, sanctified by the Church, and many miracles are related by Rudolf as having happened at her grave.

There are scores of similar legends in the Latin literature of the time, for, from the eighth century on, Germany is filled with holy women and maidens, promoters of the Church, founders of cloisters. The nun's garment is revered everywhere; the veiled, consecrated maids of G.o.d owe their high appreciation to their virgin state for which as already especially mentioned the Germans felt a deeply ingrained veneration. The "Maria-cult" had constantly grown in importance since the fifth century.

Goethe's "eternal feminine" celebrated its apotheosis in the new faith as it had in the old belief in Freya and the Valkyries. Mary's motherhood was sacred, but sacred only because it was motherhood with virginity, eternal virginity. Yet the ideal of womanly beauty and fascination is not at all lacking. Scherr translates a description given by the Church Father Epiphanius as early as the fourth century of the Holy Virgin as the ideal of pure womanhood. And, though the memory of Olympus is apparent everywhere in the description, Epiphanius from Palestine pictures Mary, the Mother of Christ, as a truly German ideal of beauty: a golden-haired, blue-eyed Madonna. "The most beautiful of women, gloriously formed, neither too short nor too long. Her form was white, finely colored and immaculate; her hair was long, soft, gold-colored. Under a well-shaped forehead and bright brown eyebrows shone her moderately large eyes with the l.u.s.tre of a sapphire. The white in her eye was milk-colored and brilliant as crystal. The straight and normal nose as well as the mouth were comparable to snow in whiteness.

Each of her cheeks was like a lily upon which lies a rose-leaf. Her well-rounded chin bore a dimple, her throat was white and ivory, her neck slender and well-proportioned. Fine was her gait, graceful the play of her features, chaste her entire att.i.tude. Briefly, excepting the Son of G.o.d, none ever possessed such a beautiful and pure body as the Holy Virgin Mary." Indeed, the humanizing of the Mother of G.o.d was as complete as that of foam-born Aphrodite in Homer. Mary is the leader, the ch.o.r.egetes of saintly womanhood; solemnly enthroned in the heavens, she moves everything, including Christ, her Son. She is the alpha and omega of Christian poetry and art.

No wonder that women of all states of society found high incentives toward dedicating their lives to the service of Christ and the Holy Virgin. The disappointments and trials of womanhood, too, prompted many to seek seclusion from the world. Scheffel, in his _Ekhehard_, describes such a type of holy recluse under the t.i.tle of _Wiborada Reclusa_. She had once been a proud, unapproachable maiden, he says, well versed in many arts; she had learned from her priestly brother Hitto to repeat all the Psalms in Latin, and had not once been inclined to sweeten the life of a husband; the bloom of her land (_Suabia_) had found no grace before her eyes, and she had made a pilgrimage to Rome. There her soul must have been shaken to its foundation; for three days she was lost sight of, for three days her brother Hitto was running up and down the Forum, and through the halls of the Coliseum and under Constantine's triumphal arch, down to the four-headed Ja.n.u.s on the Tiber, seeking his sister and finding her not. On the morning of the fourth day, she came in through the Salarian gate and carried her head aloft, and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning, and she spoke, saying that everything was vain in the world as long as the honor due to Saint Martin was not rendered to him.

When she returned home, she bequeathed her property to the Episcopal church at Constance, on condition that the priests on the eleventh day of every October should celebrate in honor of Saint Martin. She herself entered into a narrow hut, where the recluse Citia had established herself, and led a cloister life. And when this place no longer suited her, she removed to a cell in the valley of Saint Gall. The bishop himself conducted her thither and put the black veil around her, and led her by the hand to the Irish hill (Saint Gall had been an Irish missionary in Germany) and spoke the blessing over her; with the trowel he made the first stroke on the stones with which the entrance was walled up, and pressed four times his seal upon the lead wherewith they closed the cracks, and thus separated her from the world, and the monks sang at that, mournfully and with m.u.f.fled tones, as if someone were buried. But the people of the neighborhood held the recluse in high honor; they said that she was a "hard-forged mistress of holyness," and on Sunday they stood head to head on the meadow plain, and Wiborada stood at her little window and preached to them, and other women settled in the neighborhood and sought instruction from her in virtue.

The influence of the Church was especially beneficial to the position of woman in married life. The Church insisted upon, and frequently enforced, monogamy and the sanct.i.ty of marital vows, and sanctified marriage by making it a sacrament. Dissolution of marriage, according to the law of the Church, was permitted only in case of adultery, of danger to the life of the one or the other party from hate or crime, the exile of one of the couple, impotence on the part of the man, or sterility on the part of the woman, and by common agreement between husband and wife for sacred purposes, e. g., entrance into a monastery or cloister. Yet while the influence of the Church, in theory, was, on the whole, extremely helpful in fas.h.i.+oning the standard of morals, there prevailed, nevertheless, even during the Carlovingian epoch, a terrible demoralization and s.e.xual laxity a legacy from the preceding Merovingian period.

It is historically doubtful whether at Charlemagne's birth his mother was married to his father, Pepin. It was no uncommon practice for the actual consummation of marriage to follow close upon the betrothal, and for the actual marriage, with the consecration of the Church, to follow much later, if at all. The private life of the greatest German emperor, who was canonized by the Church and who thus is a saint, at least in his imperial city, Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, is by no means edifying.

Gustav Freytag characterizes Charlemagne from the moral point of view with the greatest psychological truth. He describes him as greatly in need of woman's love. Indeed, even here his tenderness was that of a lion, and was felt by wife and daughters with secret awe, though answered by flattering caresses. When not on warlike expeditions he lived always with his family. He ate with them, and took them with him on all his journeys. This was tedious enough for his successive wives and daughters, since he was almost always on journeys, especially during the first half of his long reign. While his children were small, he had hardly a permanent home. His family life appeared reprehensible, even to his contemporaries, who were accustomed to great digressions from moral law.

The chroniclers of the time, mostly court historians and court poets of the great emperor, naturally express themselves rather cautiously concerning his private life; and yet we can deduce strange facts from their reports, especially from the _Life of Charlemagne_, written by Eginhard, the friend and counsellor of the emperor. The latter's mother, Berthvada, induced him to marry Desiderata, daughter of King Desiderius of the Langobards; but he divorced her at the end of one year, whether for political reasons not to be entangled in the complications between the Langobard dynasty and the Papacy or for private considerations is not known. His next wife was Hildegard, an Alemannian d.u.c.h.ess, who bore him three sons, Charles, Pepin, and Louis, and three daughters, Hruodrud, Bertha, and Gisela. By his third wife, Fastrada, a German princess of Eastern-Prankish birth, he had two daughters, Theodorada and Hiltrud, and by a concubine, Ruodhaid. His next wife, Liutgard, bore him no children. After her death he had three concubines, Gerswinda, a Saxon lady, the mother of Adaltrud; Regina, the mother of Drogo and Hugh; and Ethelind (_Adalinde_). It is characteristic, however, that this authentic account does not designate the mothers of all his children.

Charlemagne desired that all the children of his mistresses as well as of his legitimate wives should live together at his court and be of equal royal rank. Without distinction of s.e.x, he gave to all of them a liberal education in the sciences; and as soon as their age permitted, his sons were trained in arms, and his daughters instructed in the use of the loom and the spindle. He had so great an affection for his children that he prevented his daughters from marriage, in order not to lose their company. They are reputed to have been very beautiful, and, in spite of their occupation with the spinning-wheel, they found time for love adventures; so that, as Eginhard tells us, "though otherwise happy, the Emperor experienced the malignity of fortune so far as they were concerned; yet he concealed his knowledge of the rumors current in regard to them, and of the suspicions entertained with regard to their honor."

Eginhard himself did not escape suspicion, though his amour with fair Emma, and the romantic story of their nightly meetings and Emma's carrying her learned lover through the freshly fallen snow to conceal his footprint must be a.s.signed to the domain of unauthenticated legend.

But it is a historical fact that several of Charlemagne's daughters had illegitimate children. Being debarred from marriage they sought unlawful love adventures. The oldest, Hruodrud, who had been several years betrothed to the Greek emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitos, until her father dissolved the betrothal, left a son by Count Rorich. Bertha's two sons, Hartnid and Nidhard, the latter a brave warrior and a famous chronicler, owed their existence to Angilbert, the court poet and historian who was afterward Abbot of Centulum. Especially after the death of Charlemagne were the lives of his daughters so shameful that King Ludwig, the German, saw himself forced to remove some of the most scandalously behaving lords from the suite of the princely sinners.