'Now therefore cease from your persecution of us, and let there be peace and concord between us, so that wherever it is needful we may furnish aid against your enemies; that is, that both your nation and ours being preserved, and recognizing us as men of peace, our adversaries who clamour round about may rather be terrified than rejoice over our discord.' King Guntram received these words peaceably, and sent the envoys to his nephew King Childebert. But while, after this had been related, they tarried in that place, others arrived, announcing that King Authari was dead and that Paul had been set up in his stead, and bringing the same words which we have set down above.
But King Childebert, appointing a conference with these same envoys, so that they might announce to him what would in future be agreeable to him, ordered them to depart. IV. Now Maurice sent to Childebert's presence those Carthaginians who in the previous year (see chapter 2) had slain the envoys of King Childebert, their hands bound and laden with chains, twelve men in number, under this condition, namely: that if he wished to put them to death, he should have leave to do so; but if he should release them to be ransomed, he should rest content with three hundred gold pieces received for each one, and thus he might choose what he willed; so that, the scandal being thereby more easily laid to rest, no occasion of enmity might arise between them. But King Childebert, deferring to receive the bound men, said:
'It is held uncertain among us whether these whom you bring be those murderers or others, or perchance are reckoned as slaves of some man or other, whereas those of ours who were slain among you were men of right noble birth.' Especially also there stood by Grippo, who at that time had been sent as envoy together with those who were slain, and he said: 'For the prefect of that city, with two or three thousand men gathered together, fell upon us and slew my companions; in which slaughter I too should have perished, had I not been able to defend myself manfully. But coming to the place, I shall be able to recognize the men; concerning whom, if your emperor, as you say, is resolved to keep peace with our lord, he ought to exact vengeance.'
And so the king, having appointed a conference, that he might afterwards send them to the emperor, bade them depart. V. Now in these days Cuppa, who had once been count of the stable of King Chilperic, broke into the territory of the city of Tours and, plundering as it were like an army, sought to carry off cattle and other goods. But when the inhabitants had perceived this, gathering a multitude they began to pursue him. The plunder being recovered and two of his servants slain, he fled away naked, while two other servants were captured, whom they sent bound to King Childebert; and he, ordering them to be cast into prison, commanded that they be questioned by whose aid Cuppa had been so swiftly snatched away, so that he was not seized by those who pursued him.
They answered that this had been done by the trickery of Animodus the vicar, who governed that district with judicial authority. And immediately the king, sending letters to the count of the city, ordered him to bring that man bound into the king's presence; but if he should attempt to resist, to put him to death, overpowered by force, if he desired to gain the prince's favour. But that man, not resisting, gave sureties and went whither he was bidden; and Flavianus the domesticus being found, he pleaded his cause with his associate, and being found not guilty, having made peace with the same man, he was bidden to return to his own home, gifts however having first been given to that domesticus. Cuppa himself too, again stirring up certain
...followers, wished to carry off for himself in marriage the daughter of Badegisel, formerly bishop of Le Mans. But rushing in by night with a band of his companions into the villa of Marolium to fulfil his desire, the matron Magnatrudis, that is, the girl's mother, perceived him and his treachery; and going out with her servants against him, she repulsed him by force, many of his men being slain, whence the retreat was not made without shame. VI. But among the Arverni, prisoners of the jail, at night by the will of God, their chains being broken and the doors of the prison unbarred, went out and entered a church. And when Count Eulalius had ordered the weight of chains to be added upon them, placed over them, they were forthwith shattered like brittle glass.
And so, through the intervention of Bishop Avitus, they were delivered and restored to their own liberty. VII. Now in the aforesaid city King Childebert, with bountiful piety, granted all tribute, whether to churches or monasteries, or to the rest of the clergy who were seen to belong to the Church, or to whosoever performed the office of the Church. For the collectors of this tribute had now been greatly impoverished, because over a long time, and through the generations of those succeeding, and the estates themselves being divided into many parts, this tribute could scarcely be collected. This therefore he ordered, by God's inspiration, to be so amended, that whatever beyond this was owed to the treasury should neither smite the collector with loss, nor should any delay recall the cultivator of the Church from his office. VIII.
Now on the border of the territory of the Arverni, the Gabalitani, and the Ruteni, a synod of bishops was held against Tetradia, the former widow of Desiderius, because Count Eulalius sought to recover from her the goods which, fleeing from him, she had carried away with her. But I have thought it worth recording more deeply this cause, both how she left Eulalius and how she fled to Desiderius. Now Eulalius, as the time of youth is wont, was doing certain irrational things; whence it came about that, being often rebuked by his mother, he held her in hatred whom he ought to have loved.
At last, when in the oratory of his house she frequently devoted herself to this prayer, and very often, while the servants slept, completed her nocturnal vigils in prayer with tears, she was found smothered in the hairshirt in which she prayed. But while it was unknown to all who had done this, nevertheless the crime of parricide is referred to the son. When Cautinus, bishop of the city of the Arverni, had learned of this, he removed him from communion. But when the citizens with the bishop assembled for the festival of the blessed martyr Julian, that Eulalius prostrated himself at the bishop's feet, complaining that he had been removed from communion without a hearing. Then the bishop permitted him to watch the solemnities of the Mass with the rest.
But when it came to communicating, and Eulalius had approached the altar, the bishop said: 'The rumour of the people proclaims you to be a parricide. But I know not whether you have committed this crime or not; therefore I set this in the judgment of God and of the blessed martyr Julian. But you, if you are worthy, as you assert, draw nearer, and take for yourself a particle of the Eucharist, and place it in your mouth. For God will be the regarder of your conscience.' And he, having received the Eucharist, communicated and departed. For he had to wife Tetradia, noble on her mother's side, of lower birth on her father's. But when in his house the man mingled in the embrace of his servant-women, he began to neglect his wife, and when he returned from the harlot, he often afflicted her with most grievous blows.
But also for many of his crimes he had contracted not a few debts, in which he very often squandered his wife's ornaments and gold. At last, the woman being placed amid these straits, when she had lost all the honour she had held in her husband's house, and he had gone off to the king, she was desired by Virus (or Verus, for such was the man's name), her husband's nephew, namely so that, since he had lost his own wife, she might be joined in marriage to this man. But Virus, fearing the enmities of his uncle, sent the woman to Duke Desiderius, namely so that in the course of time she might be united to him.
She carried off with her all her husband's substance, both in gold and in silver, and in garments, and whatever could be moved, together with her elder son, leaving in the house the other, younger one. But Eulalius, returning from his journey, learned what had happened. But when, his grief being assuaged, he had rested a little, he fell upon Virus his nephew and slew him amid the narrow passes of the Arvernian valleys. But Desiderius, hearing—he too having lately lost his own wife—that Virus had been slain, joined Tetradia to himself in marriage. But Eulalius carried off a girl from a monastery at Lyons and took her to wife. But his concubines, at the instigation, as some assert, of envy, by their sorceries stopped up his senses.
But a long time afterward, Eulalius secretly attacked and killed Emerius, this girl's cousin. Likewise he slew Socratius, his own sister's brother, whom his father had begotten of a concubine. And he did many other evils, which it would be very long to recount. John, his son, who had departed with his mother, having slipped away from the house of Desiderius, came to the Arverni. And when Innocentius had already aspired to the bishopric of the city of the Ruteni, Eulalius sent him a request that he might be able, through this man's aid, to recover the goods which were owed to him in the territory of this city. But Innocentius said: 'If I receive one of your sons, whom, made a cleric, I may retain in my service, I will do what you ask.'
And he sent the boy, John by name, and recovered his goods. And Bishop Innocentius, having received the boy, shaved off the hair of his head and gave him to the archdeacon of his church; who subjected himself to such abstinence that instead of wheat he took barley, instead of wine he drank water, and instead of a horse he used an ass, having the meanest garments. Therefore, the priests and the magnificent men being assembled, as we have said, on the border of the aforesaid cities, Tetradia was presented by Aginus, and Eulalius came forward to plead his case against her.
And when he sought to recover the goods which she had carried off from his house when going away to Desiderius, it was judged that Tetradia should restore the things taken away with fourfold satisfaction, and that the sons whom she had conceived of Desiderius should be held illegitimate; ordaining this also, that if she should pay what had been adjudged to Eulalius, leave should be granted her to go into the Arverni, and that she should without slander enjoy her goods which had come to her by her father's inheritance; and so it was done. IX. While these things were being done, and the Bretons were raging fiercely round the cities, namely Nantes and Rennes, King Guntram ordered an army to be set in motion against them; at the head of whom he appointed Beppolen and Ebrachar as commanders.
But Ebrachar, suspecting that if victory were achieved with Beppolen, the latter would acquire his command, knit enmities with the same man, so that all along the way they provoked one another with blasphemies, insults, and curses. Indeed, along the way by which they went, they wrought burnings, murders, plunderings, and many crimes. Meanwhile they came to the river Vilaine, and crossing it, they reached the river Oust; and there, the dwellings of the neighbourhood being scattered, they set up bridges over it, and so the whole army crossed. For at that time a certain priest had joined Beppolen, saying: 'If you will follow me, I will lead you as far as Waroch, and will show you the Bretons gathered together in one place for you.'
For when Fredegund had heard that Beppolen was going forth on this campaign—a man already hateful to her from an earlier time—she ordered the Bayeux Saxons, shorn after the manner of the Bretons and arrayed in the fashion of their garments, to go to the aid of Waroch. But when Beppolen arrived with those who were willing to follow him, he joined battle and over two days slew many of the Bretons and of the above-mentioned Saxons. For Ebrachar had withdrawn from him with the greater force and would not come to him until he should hear that he had been slain. But on the third day, when those who were with him were now being killed, and he himself, wounded by a lance, fought back, with Waroch rushing upon him together with the aforesaid men, they slew him.
For he had shut them in amid the narrows of the roads and the marshes, in which more were entangled by the mire than were slain by the sword. But Ebrachar went as far as the city of Vannes; for the royalist bishop had sent his clergy to meet him with crosses and chanting, who conducted them as far as the city. Some too at that time reported that Waroch, desiring to flee to the islands with ships laden with gold, silver, and the rest of his goods, when he had reached the high sea, the wind being stirred up and the ships sunk, lost the goods which he had put aboard; nevertheless, coming to Ebrachar, he sought peace, and handed over hostages with many gifts, promising that he would never come against the interest of King Guntram.
When he had withdrawn, the royalist bishop too, with the clergy and the countrymen of his city, gave similar oaths, saying: 'For in nothing are we culpable toward our lords the kings, nor have we ever risen up haughtily against their interest; but, placed in the captivity of the Bretons, we are subjected to a heavy yoke.' Therefore peace having been celebrated between Waroch and Ebrachar, Waroch said: 'Depart now and report that I will of my own accord take care to fulfil all that the king shall command; and that you may believe this more fully, I will give my nephew as a hostage.' And so he did, and the war was brought to an end. Nevertheless a great multitude, both of the royal army and of the Bretons, was slain.
But as the army was departing from the Bretons, and the stronger were crossing the river, the lower and poorer who were with these could not cross at the same time. And when they had halted on that bank of the river Vilaine, Waroch, forgetful of his oath and of the hostages he had given, sent Canao his son with an army, and, having seized the men whom he found on that bank, he bound them with chains, slew those who resisted, and some who wished to cross the torrent with horses were cast into the sea by the force of the torrent itself. Many were afterward released by Waroch's wife, with candles and tablets, as if free men, and returned to their own homes.
But that part of his army which had crossed over first, fearing to return by that road by which it had come, lest perchance it should suffer the evils which it had done, directed its course to the city of Angers, seeking the bridge of the torrent Mayenne; but the small band which had crossed over first was, at that very bridge of which we have spoken, despoiled, slain, and reduced to every disgrace. But passing through the territory of Tours, exercising plunder, they despoiled many; for they had found the inhabitants of the place unsuspecting. Many however of this army came to King Guntram, saying that Duke Ebrachar and Count Wiliachar, having received money from Waroch, had caused the army to perish.
For which cause Ebrachar, being brought forward and much assailed with reproaches by the king, was ordered to depart from his presence, while Count Wiliachar lurked in flight. X. Therefore in the fifteenth year of King Childebert, which is the twenty-ninth of Guntram, while Guntram himself was carrying on a hunt through the forest of the Vosges, he came upon the tracks of a slain wild ox. And when he pressed the keeper of the forest more sharply as to who had presumed to do this in the royal forest, he betrayed Chundo, the king's chamberlain. When he spoke this, the king ordered him to be seized and led, fastened in chains, to Chalon.
And when both maintained their cases in the king's presence, and Chundo said that he had never presumed those things which were charged against him, the king adjudged a trial by combat. Then that chamberlain, having given his nephew in his stead to enter this contest, both stood in the field; and that boy, having hurled a lance over the keeper of the forest, pierced his foot, and at once he fell backward. But the boy, having drawn the knife which hung from his belt, while he tried to cut the throat of the falling man, was pierced through the belly by the wounded man's knife: and both fell, and died. Seeing this, Chundo took to flight to the basilica of Saint Marcellus.
But the king crying out that he should be seized, before he reached the holy threshold, he was caught, and bound to a stake, was overwhelmed with stones. Thereafter the king greatly repented of this, that he had thus in anger rendered himself precipitate, so that for the guilt of a trifling cause he had so swiftly slain a man faithful and necessary to himself. XI. But Chlothar, son of the late King Chilperic, fell gravely ill, and was held in such despair that his death was announced to King Guntram; whence it came about that, going out from Chalon, as though desiring to come to Paris, he came as far as the borders of the city of Sens. But when he had heard that the boy had recovered, he returned from his journey.
But when Fredegund his mother had seen him given up for lost, she vowed much money to the basilica of Saint Martin, and so the boy was seen to fare better. Moreover she sent messengers to Waroch, that those who were still being held in the Bretons' lands out of King Guntram's army might be released for the boy's life; which Waroch thus fulfilled; whence it was made manifest that, by this woman's collusion, both Beppolen had been slain and the army had been crushed. XII. But Ingeltrudis the religious woman, who, as we set forth in the earlier books, established a monastery of maidens in the court of Saint Martin, when she had begun to fall ill, appointed her granddaughter abbess;
whereat the rest of the congregation greatly murmured, but at our rebuke they ceased from quarrelling. But she, holding discord with her daughter because the latter had carried off her goods from her, besought that her daughter be permitted to pray neither in the monastery which she had founded nor over her tomb. She died, as I think, in the eightieth year of her life, and was buried on the seventh of the Ides of the first month (March). But her daughter Berthegund, coming to Tours and not being received, went off to King Childebert, asking that it might be permitted her to govern the monastery in her mother's place.
But the king, forgetful of the judgment which he had made for her mother, bestowed on her another mandate, strengthened by the subscription of his own hand, containing this: that she should subject to her own dominion all the goods which her mother or father had possessed, and that whatever had been left to Ingeltrudis's monastery should be taken away. Coming with this mandate, she so carried off all the furnishings of the monastery that she left nothing within except the empty walls, gathering to herself men guilty of various crimes and prepared for seditions; who, if there was anything of the remaining estates which devotion had given, would carry off the produce. And she wrought such great evils there as could scarcely be narrated in order.
But she, having received these goods which we have mentioned, returned to Poitiers, spewing forth against the abbess many false accusations—the abbess who was reckoned her nearest kinswoman. XIII. But in these days there arose a certain one of our priests, infected with the poison of Sadducean malignity, saying that there was to be no future resurrection. And when we affirmed that it was foretold by the sacred Scriptures and shown by the authority of apostolic tradition, he answered: 'It is manifest that this is commonly reported, but we are not certain whether it is so or not; especially since the Lord, angered at the first man whom He had formed with His sacred hand, said: In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken:'
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Gen. 3:19). What will you answer to this, you who proclaim a future resurrection, when the Godhead promises no further that man, reduced to dust, shall rise again?' To whom I said: 'What the words of our Lord and Redeemer Himself, or of the fathers our predecessors, say concerning this matter, I think no catholic is ignorant. For in Genesis, when the fathers were dying, the Lord said: But you shall be gathered to your people. He was buried in a good old age (Gen. 25:8). And to Cain it is said: For the voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth (Gen. 4:10). Whence it clearly appears that souls live after their departure from the body, and with eager faces await the future resurrection.'
'Moreover it is written of Job that he is to rise again in the resurrection of the dead. And the prophet David, although speaking in the person of the Lord, yet foreseeing the resurrection, said: Shall not he who sleeps add that he may rise again (Ps. 41:9)? that is, He who is overwhelmed by the sleep of death, shall he not come to the resurrection? And Isaiah (Isa. 66) teaches that the dead shall rise again from their tombs. Moreover the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 37), when he related that the dry bones, covered with skin, knit together with sinews, infused with veins, and animated by the breathing of the spirit, were reformed into a man, most manifestly taught the future resurrection. Moreover there was that manifest sign of the resurrection, that the bones of Elisha (4 Kings...
13:21) by touching them revived a dead corpse extinguished by death, by the effect of his power: which the resurrection of the Lord Himself, who is the firstborn of the dead, made manifest; who brought death upon death, and from the tomb reformed life to the dead (Rev. 1:5).' At this the priest said: 'That the Lord died and rose again in the man He had assumed, I do not doubt; that nevertheless, the other dead should rise, I do not admit.' And I: 'And what was the necessity for the Son of God to descend from heaven, to assume flesh, to undergo death, to penetrate the lower regions, save that He might not suffer the man whom He had formed to be left in perpetual death?'
'But also the souls of the just, which until His passion were held shut in the infernal prison-house, were loosed at His coming. For descending to the lower regions, when He flooded the darkness with new light, He led out their souls with Himself, lest by this departure they should be tormented any longer, according to that saying: And in His tomb the dead shall rise. ' And the priest said: 'Can bones reduced to ashes be animated again, and bring forth a living man?' And I answered: 'We believe that, however much a man is reduced to dust and is scattered by the violent rush of waters, or of earth, or of wind, it is not difficult for God to raise these to life.' The priest answered:
'Herein chiefly I think you err, that you attempt to assert with smooth words a most bitter seduction, in saying that one seized by beasts, plunged into waters, devoured by the jaws of fishes, reduced to dung and cast out through the secret of digestion, or cast down into flowing waters, or destroyed by the rotting earth, shall come to the resurrection.' To this I answered: 'It has been handed over to oblivion with you, I think, what John the evangelist, reclining upon the Lord's breast and searching out the secrets of the divine mystery, says in the Apocalypse: Then, he says, the sea shall give back its dead (Rev. 20:13).'
'Whence it is manifest that whatever of the human body a fish has absorbed, a bird has snatched, a beast has swallowed down, shall by the Lord be conjoined and restored unto the resurrection; for it will not be difficult for Him to restore what is lost, who created from nothing things not yet born; but He will so restore these whole in their integrity, as they were before, that the body which was in the world may bear either punishment according to its merit, or glory. For so the Lord Himself says in the Gospel: For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, that He may render to each one according to his works (Matt. 16:27). Moreover Martha, when she doubted of her brother Lazarus's present resurrection, said: I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day (John...
11:24). To whom the Lord said: I am the resurrection, the way, the truth, and the life (ibid. 11:25).' At this the priest said: 'But how is it said in the psalm, that the ungodly shall not rise in judgment (Ps. 1:5)?' And I answered: 'They do not rise to judge, but they rise to be judged. For the judge cannot sit with the ungodly, who is to render account of his own deeds.' And he: 'The Lord,' he said, 'in the Gospel said, He who has not believed is already judged (John 3:18): assuredly because he shall perish from the resurrection.' And I answered: 'He is judged that he may come to eternal punishment, because he did not believe the Only-begotten Son of God; yet he is to rise in the body, that he may suffer that very punishment in which he sinned in the body.'
'For there can be no judgment unless first the dead rise; because, just as heaven, we believe, retains those saints who have died, from whose tombs that power often goes forth, so that by them the blind are enlightened, the lame receive their gait, the lepers are cleansed, and other benefits of healings are bestowed on the sick who ask, so we believe also that sinners are retained in that infernal prison until the judgment.' And the priest said: 'But in the psalm we read: The spirit shall pass from the man, and he shall not be; and he shall know his place no more (Ps. 103:16).' I said: 'This is what the Lord Himself said through a parable to the rich man who was tormented in the fires of Tartarus:'
You received your good things in your life, and likewise Lazarus evil things (Luke 16:25). But that rich man did not recognize his purple and fine linen, nor the delights of his banquet, which either the air, or the earth, or the sea had furnished him; just as neither did Lazarus recognize the wounds or the putrefactions which he had borne lying before his gates, since the one rested here in Abraham's bosom, while the other was tormented in the flames.' The priest said: 'In another psalm we read: For their spirit shall go forth, and shall return to its earth; in that day all their thoughts shall perish (Ps. 145:4).' To this I said: 'You say well. For when the spirit has gone forth from the man, and the body lies dead, it does not think of those things which it left in the world; as if, for the sake of argument, you should say:'