Chapter Two

A THOUSAND YEARS LATER
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
by Hotetsu

[Case]

Blue Cliff Record #92; Book of Serenity #1: One day, the World-Honored One ascended to the rostrum. Manjusri struck the table with the gavel and said, "Contemplate clearly the Dharma of the Dharma-King! The Dharma of the Dharma-King is like this." Thereupon, the World-Honored One descended from the rostrum.

[History]

In 510, Thoring King Bisinus had died at age 66, leaving his kingdom divided among his three sons, Bertachar, Hermanafrid, and Baderic. A year later, in Gaul, Clovis, who had united the Frankish tribes under his rule, died. His kingdom was also divided among his sons, the four brothers Theuderic, Chlodomer, Childebert, and Chlothar.

King Bisinus’ only other child, a daughter, had left Thuringia to marry King Wacho of the Lombards to the east and southeast of Thuringia. Wacho had made himself a prime marrying interest by murdering his uncle, King Tato, and usurping the Lombard throne.

Ten years after Bisinus’ death, Bertachar’s first child, Radegund, was born. She would turn out to be his only child.

Brothers Bertachar, Hermanafrid, and Baderic shared Thuringia uneasily for almost 20 years until, in 529, Hermanafrid’s army advanced against Bertachar and killed him in battle. Radegund’s mother was forthwith murdered, and Uncle Hermanafrid took Radegund, then age 8 or 9, into his household.

His plot then turned to the other brother. Uncle Baderic would be more difficult. Anticipating attack, Baderic fortified his defenses. Moreover, Hermanafrid’s forces were depleted. He would need help.

Hermanafrid turned to the eldest of Clovis’ sons, Theuderic, ruling Austrasia from his capital at Metz. In return for Theuderic’s help, Hermanafrid promised him half of Thuringia.

Later in 529, the combined forces of Hermanafrid and Theuderic succeeded: Baderic was defeated, captured, and beheaded. Unsurprisingly, Hermanafrid reneged on his promise to Theuderic. Unwilling to share Thuringia with his brothers, he was not inclined to share it with a Frank.

Two years later, in 531, Theuderic, and his brother Chlothar, returned to Thuringia to claim what had been promised -- and the rest of Thuringia as well. The Frankish armies had been trained by Roman methods. The Thorings had no such training. Though excellent horsemen, with the best battle steeds anywhere, the Thorings fought as individuals rather than a coordinated unit. They were routed.

Chlothar won the 11-year-old Radegund in a gambling bet with Theuderic. He carried her to his capital at Soissons and sent her thence north 85 km to his villa in Athies until she was of age. As for her Uncle Hermanafrid, who had fled the final, decisive battle, Theuderic promised him safe conduct to Zulpich and ordered Hermanafrid to meet him there. Apparently aiming to restore their alliance, Theuderic showered Hermanafrid with gifts. As the two strolled, talking, along the town walls, someone pushed Hermanafrid off the wall, and he fell to his death. It is unknown whether the push had been arranged by Theuderic, was carried out by an angry Frank acting alone, or was an accident.

Though tall of her age, Radegund was still a child. The horrors she had already passed through had stamped on her beautiful face an expression of wild and of bitter sorrow, rarely seen in one so young. (Author identified only as “A Secular Priest,” The Lives of St. Radegund and Bathildis, Queens of the Franks, St. Pius X Press.)

In Athies, Radegund continued her education and was introduced to and instructed in Roman learning and Christianity. Traumatized by violence and stripped of home, Radegund found succor and hope in the Christian message and encouragement in the models of Christian life among the priests, monks, and nuns she met. Christianity’s written source materials and developed systems of theology offered a comforting authority that the Norse religion of her birth lacked. She had longed for death. Once she was a Christian, this took the form of wanting to be a martyr. Slowly, with the steady kindness of her caretakers and teachers, she began to want to be a nun.

Over objections of the Church, Chlothar continued Frankish pagan mores that allowed polygamy among the nobility. In 540, when Radegund was age 20 and Chlothar age 43, he made her the second of what would eventually total six wives/concubines -- though four was the most he had at any one time.

Radegund’s demonstrative piety made Chlothar mutter that he had married a nun rather than a queen. The distance she kept irritated Chlothar, whose anger at her was often loud, yet Radegund persisted in her devotions. She bore Chlothar no children – and would later be canonized as a “virgin saint.”

In time, Chlothar added a third and a fourth wife: the sisters Ingund and Aregund -- Radegund’s cousins, daughters of her Uncle Baderic. Ingund alone bore five sons and two daughters. Horrified as Radegund was by polygamy, she was relieved to have her bed to herself.

[Fiction]

The power of writing can seem magical or miraculous. The word on the page remains fixed, immune to the vicissitudes of time and memory, unchanging through centuries. Scripture, just by being written, conveyed intimations of timeless, permanent truth. Radegund recognized, though, that even scripture could only say what was sayable – and that there was more to God than what was sayable. She’d seen how words could be read aloud by rote, without meaning. She’d perceived the gap – or vast gulf – between a string of words that states a truth and the experience of abiding in what is real. Writing down the words did not close that gap. Words were important and valuable – invaluable, in fact -- for what they could point us toward – but the finger that points at the moon is not the moon.

Sentences – those in the Bible, for instance – teach and preserve essential truth, but Radegund also wanted to know inexpressible truth. When Adam knew Eve, he knew a great deal more than the truth of a sentence. Radegund yearned to know reality, life, the world, herself, God – in this deeply intimate way.

She took to silence. Her long periods of daily prayer began with whispered words, and soon subsided into silence. This is the practice that had preceded the transformative moment when she saw the morning star, and this practice she continued afterwards: for an hour at a time, at least once a day, her thoughts stilled and she listened for the divine and nonlinguistic truth.

No words could say what the lark’s song sounded like. The ache in her stomach could only be vaguely described to her doctor. Hearing the lark herself, or feeling her stomach’s cramp, these realities were directly known. Yet even direct knowledge isn’t much when it isn’t noticed. In the silence, Radegund focused on noticing details and subtleties of sensations and sounds. God presented Himself through creation, and the more intimate she became with God’s creation – attending carefully to its myriad details – the more she felt herself growing intimate with God.

One spring night, Radegund had a dream that began as a Gospel scene. She saw Jesus at the beginning of Matthew 5:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak . . .

Only, in her dream, Jesus didn’t speak. Peter even stood up, clapped his hands together and announced to the crowd: “Attend carefully to the Word. The Word of the Son of Man is thus.” Then Peter sat down, and all eyes were fixed on Jesus. But rather than deliver the Sermon on the Mount, or a sequel to it, Jesus simply rose and went back down the mountain.

When Radegund awoke, she sat up in bed, pondering this dream. The sky outside was just beginning to lighten. Somehow, Peter’s clap stood out. “The Word is thus,” Peter had said, clapping his hands.

Radegund knew that “the Word” – as in the Gospel of John’s opening phrase, “In the beginning was the Word…” – was a translation of the Greek logos, from which “logic” derives. For Greek philosopher Heraclitus, logos was a principle of order and knowledge; and for the Greek Stoics, logos was the divine animating principle that pervaded the universe – the “logic” of reality. In her dream, Peter’s clap fully expressed the logic of reality. In that nonlinguistic “Word,” there was nothing more to say. That’s why Jesus had not spoken. He had stood and walked – for did not the Gospel say he was the Word become flesh? Fitting, then, he should let his flesh, standing and walking, do the speaking. Peter’s clap: thus! Jesus standing: thus! Jesus walking down the mountain: thus! thus!

Radegund’s lady-in-waiting knocked softly and peeked into the chamber. Seeing Radegund awake, she slipped in, eyes averted.

“Good morning, Agnes.”

“Good morning, Milady,” Agnes replied, approaching. “Are you ready to dress?”

“In a minute. Agnes?”

“Yes, Milady?”

“Are you not the Word made flesh?”

“No, Milady,” said Agnes, startled. “I hope I have not given milady any cause to think I have such an opinion of myself…” Agnes swallowed and blushed.

“Agnes, no. You’ve done nothing wrong. You are, in truth, most excellent in every way I know of you. I just mean, isn’t everything the Word – the Word beyond words? You, me, birds, trees, stones.” Then she remembered Luke’s description of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem:

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice. . . . Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

She recounted the passage to Agnes. “I used to think the stones would cry out from jubilation at our savior’s entrance into Jerusalem. But I think Jesus is saying if we’re silent, we can hear them. The stones are always shouting out. We don’t often hear them over our own chatter – the chatter that goes on in our minds even when our tongues are still.”

“What are they shouting, Milady?”

“They’re shouting the Word. They’re shouting their existence. They’re shouting continuously the glory of creation of which they partake. We have to be silent to hear it.”

“I’ve never heard stones say anything, let alone shout.”

“But you hear this,” said Radegund, and she clapped her hands.

“I heard you clap.”

“What did it sound like?”

“It sounded like hands clapping.”

“No, no. Don’t use words. What did it sound like?”

Agnes appeared stymied for a moment, then she clapped her hands.

Radegund smiled.