History of the FranksGregory, Bishop of Tours, Saint
History
History of the Franks
Gregory, Bishop of Tours, Saint
France -- Church history -- To 987; France -- History -- To 987; Franks -- History -- To 768
When we had discussed these charges in order and had found no
wrong-doing for which to degrade the abbess, we gave her a fatherly
admonition for the pardonable faults she had committed, and urged
her not to incur any reproof later. Then we inquired into the case
of the opposing party who had committed greater crimes, that is to
say, who, when within the monastery, had despised the warning of
their bishop not to go forth in despite of their bishop and had left
him in the monastery under the greatest contempt and had broken the
bars and doors and foolishly departed, involving other nuns in their
sin. Moreover when the archbishop Gundigisil with his provincials
had received notice of this case and come to Poitiers by order of
the king and had summoned them to a hearing at the monastery, they
disregarded his summons, and when the bishops went to them at the
church of St. Hilary the Confessor where they were staying, going
to them as is seemly for anxious pastors to do; while they were
receiving the admonition of the bishops a disturbance arose, and
they attacked the bishops and their attendants with clubs, and even
shed the blood of deacons within the church. Then when the venerable
priest Teuthar by command of the princes came to judge this case, and
the time for rendering the judgment had been fixed, they did not wait
for it but attacked the monastery like rebels, setting fire to casks
in the court-yard and breaking the doors with crow-bars and axes, and
setting fire, and beating and wounding nuns in the very oratories
within the walls, and plundering the monastery, and stripping
the clothes off the abbess and tearing her hair and dragging her
violently through the streets in derision and thrusting her into a
place where, although not in fetters, she was not free. And when the
festival of Easter came, which is always honored, the bishop offered
a ransom for the prisoner so that she could aid in baptism, but his
entreaty could not secure this for any consideration,--Chrodield
answered that she had neither known of such a crime nor ordered it,
adding further that it was at a sign from her that the abbess was not
killed by her people, from which we may be confident in inferring
that they were becoming more cruel--and they had killed a slave of
their own monastery who was fleeing to the blessed Radegunda’s tomb,
and instead of improving had gone deeper into crime; and later they
entered the monastery and took possession of it; and at the order
of the kings to produce the rebels in public they refused to obey,
and rather took up arms against the king’s command and wickedly rose
with arrows and lances against the count and the people. Then lately
when they appeared for a public hearing they took the holy and most
sacred cross secretly and wrongfully, which they were later forced
to restore to the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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