When this was discovered, Tiberius returned at swift pace to the city of Constantinople, and seizing the empress, he stripped her of all her treasures, leaving her only the provision of daily food. And separating her servants from her, he set in their place others of his own faithful men, commanding outright that none of her former attendants should have access to her. Justinian, however, after rebuking him he afterward loved with so great a love that he promised his own daughter to Justinian's son, and in turn asked for Justinian's daughter for his own son; but the matter did not attain its effect. His army defeated the Persians, and returning victorious, brought back so great a mass of plunder that it was thought it could satisfy human greed. Twenty elephants that had been captured were led to the emperor.
The Bretons that year were exceedingly hostile around the cities of Nantes and Rennes; carrying off an immense plunder, they overran the fields, emptied the vines of their fruit, and led away captives. When Bishop Felix had sent an embassy to them, they promised to make amends, but were unwilling to fulfill anything of their promises. At Paris, moreover, a certain woman fell into accusation, many asserting that she had abandoned her husband and consorted with another. Therefore her relatives went to her father, saying: 'Either prove your daughter chaste, or else let her die, lest this disgrace brand our family with infamy.' 'I know,' said the father, 'that my daughter is quite chaste, and this word which evil men spread abroad is not true.
Nevertheless, lest the accusation grow further, I will make her innocent by oath.' And they said: 'If she is guiltless, affirm it by an oath upon the tomb of the blessed martyr Dionysius.' 'I will do so,' said the father. Then, an agreement having been made, they came together to the basilica of the holy martyr, and the father, raising his hands over the altar, swore that his daughter was not guilty. On the contrary, others from the husband's side declared that he had perjured himself. While these were thus disputing, they drew their swords and rushed upon one another, and slaughtered each other before that very altar. Now they were men of high birth and foremost in the court of King Chilperic.
Many were wounded with swords, the holy basilica was sprinkled with human blood, the doors were pierced with javelins and swords, and even up to the very tomb the wicked weapons raged. While this was scarcely calmed, the place lost its sacred office, until all these things came to the king's knowledge. But when these men hastened to the prince's presence, they were not received into favor; rather it was ordered that they be sent back to the bishop of that place, so that if they were found guilty of this crime, they should not fittingly be admitted to communion. Then, before Bishop Ragnemod, who presided over the church of Paris, those who had done the evil deeds made satisfaction, and were received into ecclesiastical communion.
The woman, however, when after not many days she was summoned to another judgment, ended her life by a noose. In the fifth year of King Childebert great floods oppressed the region of the Arverni, so that for twelve days it did not cease to rain; and the Limagne was so inundated that it kept many from casting their seed. The rivers also, the Loire and the Allier, which they call the Elaver, and the other torrents running into it, swelled so greatly that they overflowed the boundaries which they had never before exceeded. These caused a great destruction of livestock, damage to crops, and ruin of buildings.
In like manner the Rhone, joined with the Saone, overflowing its banks, brought grievous loss upon the peoples, and overthrew part of the walls of the city of Lyons. But when the rains had ceased, the trees blossomed anew; for it was the month of September. In the region of Tours that year, in the morning before the day grew light, a brightness was seen to run across the sky toward the eastern quarter. And also a sound, as of a tree being torn apart, was heard throughout all that land; which is not to be reckoned as coming from a tree, because it was heard over fifty miles or more. That same year the city of Bordeaux was grievously shaken by an earthquake, and the walls of the city stood in danger of collapse;
and so all the people were terrified with the fear of death, that, if one did not flee, he thought he would sink down together with the city. Whence many also crossed over to other cities. This tremor extended to the neighboring cities and reached as far as Spain, but not so violently. Yet from the Pyrenees mountains huge stones were dislodged, which crushed cattle and men. For also a fire arisen by divine power burned up the villages of Bordeaux, so that, seized suddenly by flame, both houses and threshing-floors with their grain were consumed by the burning; the fire having absolutely no kindling from any external source, unless perhaps by divine command. For also the city of Orleans was consumed by a grievous fire, to such a degree that nothing at all remained to the richer men;
and if anyone snatched anything from the fire, it was seized by the thieves who pressed in. At the boundary of Chartres true blood flowed from broken bread. The city of Bourges too was then grievously battered by hail. But these most grave portents were followed by a pestilence. For while the kings were at variance and again preparing civil war, dysentery seized almost all of Gaul. For those who suffered it had a violent fever with vomiting, an excessive pain of the kidneys, a heavy head and neck. And the things that were cast up from the mouth were of a saffron color, or certainly green; and by many it was asserted that there was a hidden poison.
The more rustic country folk called these 'pustules'; which is not incredible, since when cupping-glasses were applied to the shoulders or legs, with blisters forming and bursting and the discharge running off, many were cured; and also herbs which are remedies for poisons, taken as a drink, brought relief to very many. And indeed this sickness, first begun in the month of August, seized the little children and the young, and brought them to death. We lost our sweet and dear little ones, whom we had either cherished in our laps, or carried in our arms, or with our own hand had fed with prepared foods and nurtured with most attentive care; but, wiping away our tears, we said with the blessed Job: 'The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done.
Blessed be his name forever' (Job 1:21). So in those days King Chilperic fell grievously ill; and as he was recovering, his younger son, not yet reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, began to sicken. Seeing him at the point of death, they cleansed him with baptism. When he was doing a little better, his elder brother, named Chlodobert, was seized by this disease; and when his mother Fredegund saw him too in the peril of death, repenting too late, she said to the king: 'Long has the divine mercy borne with us as we did evil; for often it has stricken us with fevers and other ills, and amendment has not followed. Behold, now we are losing our sons; behold, now the tears of the poor, the laments of widows, the sighs of orphans destroy them;
and there remains no hope of anyone for whom we may gather aught. We heap up treasure, not knowing for whom we gather it. Behold, the treasuries remain empty of their possessor, full of plunders and curses. Did not the storehouses overflow with wine? Were not the barns filled with grain? Were not the treasuries crammed with gold, silver, precious stones, necklaces, and the rest of the imperial ornaments? Behold, the fairest thing we possessed, we are losing. Now, if it please you, come, and let us burn all the wicked assessments; and let it suffice for our treasury what sufficed for our father and for King Chlothar.' Having uttered these words, the queen, beating her breast with her fists, ordered the books to be brought forth, which had come from her cities through Mark;
and when they had been cast into the fire, turning again to the king she said: 'Why do you delay? Do what you see me doing, so that, even if we lose our sweet children, we may at least escape eternal punishment.' Then the king, pricked in heart, delivered all the assessment-books to the fire, and when they had been burned, he sent men to forbid future assessments. After this the younger little one, wasting away with too great a struggle, expired; and bringing him with the greatest grief from the estate of Berny to Paris, they ordered him to be buried at the basilica of Saint Dionysius. Chlodobert, however, laying him on a bier, they carried to Soissons to the basilica of Saint Medard, and casting him before the holy tomb, they made vows for him;
but in the middle of the night, now gasping and faint, he breathed out his spirit; and they buried him in the basilica of the holy martyrs Crispin and Crispinian. Great too was the mourning of all the people here; for men lamenting, and women clothed in mourning garments, as is wont to be done at the funerals of spouses, so attended this funeral. Afterward King Chilperic bestowed many things upon churches and basilicas and the poor. In these days Austrechild, queen of Prince Guntram, was consumed by this disease; but before she breathed out her wicked spirit, seeing that she could not escape, drawing deep sighs, she wished to have sharers of her death, contriving that at her funeral the deaths of others should be mourned.
For it is reported that, after the manner of Herodias, she petitioned the king, saying: 'There would still be hope of living, had I not perished amid the hands of wicked physicians; for the potions received from them have taken my life by force, and made me quickly lose this light: and therefore, lest my death pass unavenged, I beseech you, and with the interposition of an oath I conjure you, that, when I have departed from this light, those very men be at once slain by the sword, so that, just as I can no longer live, neither may they boast after my death, but let there be one grief alike for our friends and for theirs.' Having uttered these things, she gave up her unhappy soul. The king, however, when the funeral had been performed according to custom, oppressed by the oath of his wicked wife, fulfilled the command of iniquity;
for he ordered the two physicians, who had given their care to her, to be struck with the sword: which the prudence of many judges to have been done not without sin. By this same sickness too Nantinus, count of Angouleme, was emptied of strength and died; but the things which he did against the priests and the churches of God must be traced from further back. Now Marachar, his uncle, long held the countship in that very city. When that office was completed, he was joined to the Church, and being made a cleric, was ordained bishop. He, with much vigilance both restoring and arranging the churches and the houses of the church, in the seventh year of his priesthood, by poison cast by his enemies into the head of a fish, taking it unsuspectingly, was cruelly slain.
But divine clemency did not long suffer his death to go unavenged; for Frontonius, by whose counsel this crime was perpetrated, having immediately taken up the bishopric, spending only one year in it, by the foregoing judgment of God, perished. After his death Heraclius, a priest of Bordeaux, who had once been the legate of the elder Childebert, was ordained bishop. But Nantinus, in order to avenge the death of his uncle, sought the countship in that city. Having received it, he inflicted many injuries upon the bishop. For he said to the bishop: 'You keep with you those murderers who slew my uncle; and you receive at your banquet the priests then mingled in the guilt.' Then, as the enmity grew, little by little he began to seize by violence the estates of the church which Mara-
char had left by written testament, asserting that the church ought not to obtain the property of one by whose clerics the testator had been slain. After this, when some of the laymen had already been killed, he went so far as to bind a priest he had seized, and to pierce him through with a pole. To him, still living, with his hands twisted back behind him, hung upon a stake, they sought to draw out a confession whether he had been mixed up in this affair. And when he denied it, with the blood streaming from the wound, he gave up his spirit. For which cause the bishop, moved, ordered him to be barred from the doors of the church.
Now when the priests came together at the city of Saintes, Nantinus begged that he might obtain the bishop's peace, promising that he would restore all the property of the Church which he had unreasonably taken away, and that he would show himself humble to the priest. And the bishop, taking care to obey the command of his brethren, granted all that was asked; yet committing the cause of the priest to almighty God, he received the count in charity. But after this, returning to the city, he despoils, demolishes, and scatters those houses which he had wickedly invaded, saying: 'And if this is recovered by the church, or found deserted'; for which cause the bishop, again moved, suspended him from communion. While these things were being done, the blessed pontiff, having completed the course of his life, departed to the Lord.
Nantinus too, by means of certain bishops, through bribes and flatteries intervening, was admitted to communion. But after a few months he was seized by the aforesaid disease, and burning with excessive heat, he cried out, saying: 'Alas, alas! I am burned up by the bishop Heraclius, I am tormented by him, I am summoned by him to judgment. I acknowledge my crime, I remember that I unjustly inflicted injuries upon the pontiff; I beg for death, lest I be tormented longer by this torment.' Then, as he cried out in the greatest fever, with the strength of his body failing, he poured out his unhappy soul, leaving sure traces that this had befallen him for the avenging of the blessed pontiff. For his lifeless body took on such blackness that you would think he had been burned up, laid upon coals.
Therefore let all be astounded at these things, marvel, and fear to inflict injuries upon priests: for the Lord is the avenger of his servants who hope in him. At this time also the blessed Martin, bishop of Galicia, died, with that people making great lamentation. For he was born in Pannonia, and thence, hastening to the East to visit the holy places, so steeped himself in letters that he was held second to none in his times. From there he came to Galicia, where, while the relics of the blessed Martin were being carried, he was ordained bishop; and having completed in this priesthood more or less thirty years, full of virtues, he departed to the Lord.
He himself composed the verses which are above the door on the southern side in the basilica of Saint Martin. Great that year was the persecution against the Christians in the Spains, and many were given over to exile, deprived of their goods, wasted by hunger, consigned to prison, beaten with stripes, and slain by various tortures. The head also of this wickedness was Goisuintha, whom King Leuvigild had received after the marriage of King Athanagild; but she who had branded the servants of God with the mark of humiliation, by divine vengeance pursuing, was herself also made marked before all the peoples. For a white film, covering one eye, drove from her eyelids the light which her mind did not have.
Now King Leuvigild had two sons by another wife, of whom the elder had betrothed the daughter of King Sigibert, the younger the daughter of King Chilperic. But Ingund, daughter of King Sigibert, sent into the Spains with great pomp, was received by her grandmother Goisuintha with great joy; yet she did not suffer her to abide long in the catholic religion, but with flattering words began to entice her to be rebaptized in the Arian heresy. But she, manfully resisting, began to say: 'It is quite enough for me to have been once washed in the saving baptism from original sin, and to have confessed the holy Trinity in one equality. This I confess that I believe with my whole heart, nor will I ever go backward from this faith.'
Hearing these things, she, inflamed with the fury of wrath, seized the girl by the hair of her head and dashed her to the ground, and having long beaten her with kicks and made her bloody with blood, she ordered her to be stripped and plunged into a fish-pond; but, as many assert, she never turned her mind away from our faith. Leuvigild, moreover, gave them one of the cities, in which, dwelling there, they might reign. When they had gone there, Ingund began to preach to her husband, that, abandoning the deceit of heresy, he might acknowledge the truth of the catholic law. And he, long refusing it, at length, moved by her preaching, was converted to the catholic law; and when he was anointed with chrism, he was named John.
When Leuvigild had heard this, he began to seek occasions how he might destroy him. But he, understanding this, joined himself to the emperor's party, binding friendships with his prefect, who was then assailing Spain. Leuvigild, however, sent messengers to him, saying: 'Come to me, for there are matters which we may settle together.' And he replied: 'I will not come, for you are hostile to me, because I am a catholic.' But Leuvigild, having given the emperor's prefect thirty thousand solidi to recall him from his aid, came against him with an army set in motion. Hermenegild, however, having summoned the Greeks, went out against his father, leaving his wife behind in the city.
And when Leuvigild came from the opposite side, abandoned by his aid, seeing that he could prevail nothing, he sought out a church which was near, saying: 'Let not my father come upon me; for it is impious either for a father to be killed by a son, or a son by a father.' Hearing this, Leuvigild sent to him his brother, who, an oath having been given that he should not be humiliated, said: 'Approach in person, and prostrate yourself at the feet of our father, and he will pardon you everything.' But he asked that his father be summoned; and when he entered, he cast himself down at his feet. The father, embracing the one he had seized, kissed him, and soothing him with flattering words, led him to the camp;
and, forgetful of his oath, he nodded to his men, and seizing him, stripped him of his garments, and clothed him in a vile robe; and returning to the city of Toledo, having taken away his servants, he sent him into exile with only one little servant. So after the death of Chilperic's sons, the king in the month of October was sitting full of grief with his wife in the forest of Cuise. Then, at the queen's contriving, he sent his son Clovis to Berny, that is, so that he too might perish of this destruction. Grievously in those days that disease, which had killed the brothers, was raging there; but he suffered no harm there at all. For the king himself came to Chelles, an estate of the city of Paris. But after a few days he ordered Clovis to come to him;
and what kind of death was his, it will not be irksome to tell. Now while he was dwelling in the aforesaid estate with his father, he began rashly to boast and say: 'Behold, my brothers being dead, the whole realm has been left to me: all Gaul shall be subjected to me, and the fates have bestowed upon me universal dominion. Behold, my enemies being placed in my hand, I will inflict upon them whatever shall please me.' And he was also disparaging unbecoming things about his stepmother Queen Fredegund. When she heard this, she was terrified with exceeding dread. But after some days, a certain man came and said to the queen: 'That you sit bereaved of your sons, the guile of Clovis has wrought this. For he himself, lusting after the daughter of one of your maidservants, by sorceries through her mother killed your sons:
and I warn you to hope nothing better for yourself, since the hope by which you ought to have reigned has been taken from you.' Then the queen, terrified with fear and inflamed with fury, stricken with fresh bereavement, having seized the girl on whom Clovis had cast his eyes, and grievously beaten, ordered the hair of her head to be cut off, and ordered it, set on a split stake, to be fastened before the lodging of Clovis. The girl's mother too she had bound and long tortured, and drew from her a declaration which should confirm these words to be true. Henceforth, insinuating these and other things of this sort to the king, she demanded vengeance upon Clovis. Then the king, sent off to the hunt, ordered him to be summoned more secretly.
When he had come, by the king's command he was seized in manacles by the dukes Desiderius and Bobo, stripped of his arms and garments, and covered with a vile robe, and led bound to the queen. But she ordered him to be kept in custody, desiring to draw from him whether these things were as she had heard, or by whose counsel he had acted, or at whose instigation he had done this, or with whom most of all he had bound friendships. But he, denying the rest, disclosed the friendships of many. Then after three days the queen ordered him, bound, to be taken across the river Marne and to be kept in a villa whose name is Noisy. In that custody, struck with a knife, he died, and was buried in that very place.
Meanwhile messengers came to the king to say that he had stabbed himself with his own blow; and they affirmed that the very knife with which he had struck himself was still standing in the place of the wound. By these Chilperic was deceived, and did not weep for him whom he himself, so to speak, had delivered to death, at the queen's instigation. His attendants too were scattered through various places. His mother, moreover, was put to death by a cruel death; his sister, deceived by the queen's servants, was sent into a monastery, in which she now lives with changed habit; and all their wealth was brought to the queen. The woman who had spoken concerning Clovis was condemned to be burned with fire. And when she was being led off, the wretched woman began to cry out that she had uttered lies;
but her words availing nothing, bound to a stake, she was burned alive in the flames. Clovis's treasurer, dragged back from Bourges by Cuppa, count of the stable, was sent bound to the queen, to be exposed to various tortures; but the queen ordered him to be released both from the punishments and from the bonds, and, at our intercession obtaining it, permitted him to depart free. After these things Elaphius, bishop of Chalons, sent into the Spains on an embassy on behalf of the affairs of Queen Brunhild, seized by a violent fever, breathed out his spirit, and thence, brought back dead, was buried at his own city.
Bishop Eonius too, whom we mentioned above as the legate of the Bretons, not being permitted to return to his own city, was commanded by the king to be maintained at Angers from the public funds. When he came to Paris, while on the Lord's day he was celebrating the most holy solemnities, with a neighing cry uttered, he fell to the ground. As blood burst from his mouth and nostrils, he was carried off in men's hands, but recovered. For he was exceedingly given to wine, and very often was so disgracefully drunk that he could not make his step. King Miro of Galicia sent legates to King Guntram. And when they were passing through the territory of Poitiers, which King Chilperic then held, it was reported to him.
But he ordered them to be presented to him under guard, and to be kept at Paris. At that time, at the city of Poitiers, a wolf coming from the woods entered through a gate, and when the gates were shut, hemmed in within the walls of that city, it was overpowered and killed. For certain men asserted that they had also seen the sky burning. The river Loire was greater than in the previous year, after the Cher torrent had joined it. The south wind ran too violently, so that it laid low the woods, tore up houses, carried off hedges, and rolled even the men themselves to utter destruction. For its breadth was about seven acres; but the length could not be estimated. For the cocks too often gave the clap of their crow at the beginning of the night.
The moon was darkened, and a comet-star appeared. A grievous pestilence then followed among the people. The envoys of the Suevi, dismissed after a year, returned to their own country. XLIII. Maurilio, bishop of the city of Cahors, was gravely ill from a gouty humour; but to the pains which the humour itself stirred up he added great torments of his own, for he would often drive red-hot iron into his shins and feet, so as the more easily to heap up still greater suffering for himself. And when many were seeking his bishopric, he himself chose Ursicinus, who had once been referendary of Queen Ultrogotha. Praying that this man might be blessed while he yet lived, he departed from the world.
He was moreover most generous in almsgiving, and very well instructed in the ecclesiastical Scriptures, so that the series of the various genealogies which is set down in the books of the Old Testament—a thing which many find hard to retain—he for the most part could recite from memory. He was also just in his judgements, defending the poor of his church from the hand of wicked judges, according to that saying of Job: 'I delivered the poor from the hand of the mighty; and him who had no helper, I aided. The mouth of the widow blessed me, since I was the eye of the blind, the foot of the lame, and the father of the helpless' (Job 29:12-16). XLIV.
King Leuvigild sent Agila as envoy to Chilperic, a man skilled in no talent or method of reasoning, but only perverse in will against the Catholic faith. When his road had brought him to Tours, he began to provoke us about the faith and to assail the doctrines of the Church. 'Unjust,' he said, 'was the verdict pronounced by the ancient bishops, which asserted the Son equal to the Father. For how,' said he, 'can He be equal to the Father in power, who says: The Father is greater than I (John 14:28)? It is therefore not just that He be reckoned like to Him whom He calls greater than Himself, before whom He laments the sorrow of death, to whom at last, as He dies, He commends His spirit, as one endowed with no power.'
'From this it is clear that He is lesser both in age and in fatherly power.' To this I replied by asking whether he believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and whether he confessed that the same was the Wisdom of God, whether the Light, whether the Truth, whether the Life, whether the Justice. He said: 'I believe all these to be the Son of God.' And I: 'Tell me then, when was the Father without wisdom? When without light? When without life? When without truth? When without justice? For just as the Father could not be without these, so neither could He be without the Son—which things are most fittingly applied to the mystery of the Lord's name. Indeed, the Father would not even be the Father at all if He did not have the Son. As for what you say that He spoke, The Father is greater than I (John,