Chapter Five

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

[Case]

Gateless Gate #42: Once in the ancient days of the World-Honored One, Manjusri went to the place where Buddhas were assembled and found that all the Buddhas were departing for their original dwelling places. Only a young woman remained, sitting in samadhi close to Shakyamuni Buddha's throne. Manjusri asked the Buddha, "Why can that woman be near the Buddha's throne while I cannot?" The Buddha said, "Just awaken her and raise her up out of samadhi and ask her yourself." Manjusri walked around the woman three times, snapped his fingers once, took her up to the Brahman heaven, and exerted all his supernatural powers, but he could not bring her out of samadhi. The World-Honored One said, "Even a hundred or a thousand Manjusris would not be able to bring her out of samadhi. Down below, past twelve hundred million lands as innumerable as the sand of the Ganges, is the Bodhisattva Mômyô [Ensnared Light]. He will be able to arouse her from her samadhi." Instantly the Bodhisattva Mômyô emerged out of the earth and made a bow to the World-Honored One, who then gave his command. The Bodhisattva went before the woman and snapped his fingers once. At this, the woman came out of samadhi.

[History]

In 567, the year that Charibert, Chlothar’s eldest son, died leaving substantial additional lands to his brothers, one of those brothers, Sigebert, sent an embassy loaded with gifts to the Visigoth king of Iberia, Athanagild (c. 517-567). Sigebert asked Athanagild for the hand of his younger daughter, Brunhilda, then age 24. She was forthwith sent north to Metz where she married Sigebert and converted from the Arian Christianity of the Visigoths to the Chalcedonian faith of the Merovingians.

Chlothar’s sons, up to that point, seem not to have been attuned to the uses of marriage as a political tool. Charibert’s four wives or concubines, for instance, had all been low-born locals. Chilperic had taken a first wife of some wealth but no title, and then repudiated her at the instigation of her own serving-woman – one Fredegund, for whom Chilperic had fallen.

Realizing the advantage of the alliance Sigebert gained through marriage to Brunhilda, Chilperic immediately sent gifts to Toledo asking King Athanagild for his elder daughter, Galswintha, then age 27. Chilperic promised to dismiss all other wives, concubines, and mistresses. Emotional attachments, however, do not always follow political interest, and Chilperic was still in love with Fredegund. Before long, Galswintha became aware of Fredegund’s continuing visits to the king’s bedchamber. Galswintha complained bitterly, but Fredegund had Chilperic’s heart. Within a year of the marriage, Galswintha was dead – strangled by Fredegund or by Chilperic at Fredegund’s urging. Chilperic then made Fredegund his official wife and queen.

Brunhilda fiercely despised Fredegund, whom she rightly blamed for her sister Galswintha’s death -- and Fredegund, with equal vehemence, returned the animosity. The women had soon convinced their respective husbands to resume war with each other. This war, as had all previous conflicts between the two brothers, went badly for Chilperic, and this time Sigebert was out not merely to contain his brother but to utterly conquer and depose him. In 573, Sigebert took control of Poitiers, Touraine and most of Chilperic’s kingdom. Chilperic retreated to Paris. Routed from there, Chilperic fled north 225 km to Tournai, in what is now Belgium. Sigebert soon laid siege to Chilperic’s position there, which would not have held out long. In 575, however, Sigebert was in Vitry-en-Artois, some 50 km outside Tournai, when two assassins hired by Fredegund killed him with poisoned daggers.

Sigebert’s only son (Childebert II, named for his great-uncle, the brother of his grandfather Chlothar), was five-years-old at his father’s death. Brunhilda ruled as Queen Regent until the boy was of age.

In 580, seeking to ensure succession of one of her own sons, Fredegund had Chilperic’s last surviving son from his first marriage assassinated. Later that year, however, an epidemic broke out in Paris; historians think it was either dysentery or smallpox, not the Justinianic (bubonic) plague outbreaks of which were striking other areas of Gaul that year. Both Fredegund’s sons fell ill. She took the epidemic to be punishment for her sins and, seeking to atone, abandoned tax collections she thought might be unjust. Even after the disease claimed the lives of both sons, she made some large donations to churches and the poor. Her repentance did not last long before she was ordering further assassinations of bishops or officials she disliked. She may even have been behind her husband’s assassination: nine years after Sigebert’s death, Chilperic was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant while returning from a hunting expedition.

By then, Fredegund had given birth to another son. He was named Chlothar, after his grandfather. Thus, Fredegund now was also a Queen Regent. The Chilperic-Sigebert wars were then resumed by their respective surviving queens, though to no conclusive effect beyond the deaths of hundreds more soldiers.

Fredegund died in 597 of natural causes; she would have been about age 50. Brunhilda lived on, surviving various intrigues and plots against her. After her son, Childebert II, died in 596 at age 26, she was Queen Regent again, this time for her grandsons. Later, she even finagled a short-lived third regency on behalf of a great-grandson, but by this time her own plottings and assassinations had made her so widely despised that her dukes turned against her and supported Chilperic’s son, Chlothar II. In 613, Chlothar captured Brunhilda, now aged 70. He had her stretched in agony upon the rack for three days, then drawn and quartered.

At Sainte-Croix, Radegund, until her death in 587, received scattered tidings of the sad events outside. She corresponded with bishops and emperors, encouraging peace and piety. As she was not a nun, but a deacon and the abbey’s founder, patron, and protector vis-à-vis the Merovingian court, and since she desired isolation for the austerities she practiced, she was afforded a small private cell. Meanwhile, the nuns shared dormitory rooms which slept 20 to 40 nuns each.

From her cloister within a cloister, while the nuns were sleeping, Radegund would emerge to clean and oil their shoes. During lent, she enclosed herself in her cell, eating only roots of herbs and greens. Radegund sometimes had sick nuns brought to her cell where she would privately work as a doctor for a couple hours.

Some of the nuns of Sainte-Croix were also scholars and one of these, Baudonivia, composed a memoir of Radegund some 13-15 years after Radegund’s death. Of Radegund, Baudonivia said:

She believed that anything that the poor received from her was their own in reality. After entering the monastery: soon her holy ways began to flower in humble demeanor, abundant charity, luminous chastity and heavy fasts. For while she was merciful to others, she judged herself. Even the most exhausting fast would not suffice until she had triumphed over her body. She had no covering for her arms but two fingerless gloves which she made from her boots. But her behavior as a pauper was so discreet that even the abbess suspected nothing.
She would often say when she preached to us, “Daughters, I chose you. You are my light and my life. You are my rest and all my happiness, my new plantation.”

[Fiction]

In 584, as Queens Regent Brunhilda and Fredegund were gearing up to continue the wars of Sigebert and Chilperic, their murdered husbands, and as the Abbey of Sainte-Croix passed its thirtieth anniversary, Radegund was increasingly gravitating to solitude when she wasn’t directly serving the poor.

Into this solitude intruded one day a new arrival, a young woman who had entered the abbey only the day before, declaring an intent to become a nun. She came upon Radegund in an obscure alcove at prayer. Drawn by the force of the elder’s still and silent presence, the newcomer knelt beside Radegund, clasped her hands, and likewise began praying. Her lips moved silently at first, and her face intent and earnest. After some minutes, her lips fell still and her face became simply serene.

Radegund was just rising from her prayer when Sister Madeleine came down the hall. Agnes had sent Madeleine to see where the new arrival had got to, and bring her to the chapterhouse for orientation instructions. Madeleine, with a reputation for wisdom and piety second only to Radegund’s, was the abbey’s Director of Theological Studies. Under her tutelage, the sisters of Sainte-Croix wrestled with the intricate reasonings of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustine, and others. Novices underwent a three-year curriculum of in-depth theological study, poring over texts and attending Madeleine’s lectures. The fully professed sisters were also under Madeleine’s oversight for individualized study of the human intellect’s attempts to articulate the divine.

Madeleine was startled to see the newcomer, so soon after arrival, at prayer with the former queen and abbey’s founder.

“How comes she to be at prayer with you?” whispered Madeleine, suddenly aware that she herself had never shared that kind of wordless nearness with Radegund.

“Bring her out of prayer and ask her yourself,” replied Radegund.

“Hmph,” said Madeleine.

A month later, Radegund was summoned to the convent church, where she found Agnes and Madeleine in the back in conversation about the prayerful newcomer.

“As a new postulant, she’s been added to the beginning theology course that meets after Terce on Wednesdays. But she’s not paying attention. She seems to be in prayer the whole time – her eyes lowered, and sometimes I see her lips moving silently. I’ll call on her and snap my fingers, and she’ll ignore me until I raise my voice, then she’ll serenely look up. I’ll ask her a question about what I’ve just been talking about, and she’ll look at me blankly and then go back to praying.”

“We can’t fault a postulant for praying,” noted Agnes.

“No, we cannot,” Madeleine agreed. “But don’t they also need to know their scripture? That requires thought -- thinking through, for example, the reasons Jerome argued for looking to Hebrew sources for understanding the Old Testament, and why Augustine argued that the Greek Septuagint was itself divinely inspired, its Latin translation sufficient.”

“The intellect’s understanding is secondary to the will’s submission to God,” murmured Radegund.

“Of course, reverend Sister,” said Madeleine. “And Jerome’s own caustic wit is a lesson in how reason may grow arrogant if not tempered by prayerful humility. Still, God gave us reason, and it must be properly trained to become an instrument of God’s will rather than our own. Without that training, the intellect is apt to weave delusions that point the will away from submission to God.”

“God asks of us devotion of heart, soul, spirit, and mind,” said Agnes.

“Indeed,” said Madeleine. “And the mind not trained aright goes astray – imagines itself devoted to the most high when it is merely obscuring the heart’s, soul’s, and spirit’s devotion. I’m afraid the efficacy of our new postulant’s prayers will be limited, her spirit unable to reach its fullest union with the divine. Sooner or later, the mind always returns with its serpentine insinuations and self-serving rationalizations.”

“It is precisely that snake of reason that prayer turns us away from,” said Agnes.

“Yes, Abbess,” answered Madeleine, “I quite agree that prayer is necessary. But it is not sufficient. Eventually, we think. Some say this our flaw; others say it is our glory – to employ reason in the Lord’s service. Either way, it happens. We are bound to think -- to employ our concepts and reason for good or for ill. And if we do so properly, reasoning itself becomes a kind of prayer – and that sort of prayer is both necessary and sufficient for the fullness of devotion to which we are called.”

The room fell silent. Then Radegund spoke: “That is very logical, Sister Madeleine. But logic, as you report, is not getting through to this postulant. A hundred or a thousand theologians would not dissuade her from spending every waking hour in silent prayer. I have an idea. Leave her to me.”

Agnes nodded, and the meeting ended. Radegund went to find the postulant and brought her downstairs to the kitchen where Sister Ophelia was scrubbing pots.

“Sister Ophelia,” said Radegund. Ophelia turned, apron wet, hands raw from lye. She bowed to the abbey’s founder and spiritual light.

“I have brought you an assistant,” said Radegund. “I know you don’t need one, but I believe she requires the ministrations you afford.”

Ophelia understood. She took the postulant by the sleeve, guided her to the sink, and placed in her hands a pot wet with cold water, its bottom black-encrusted with burnt porridge. The scent of char and lye enveloped them.

Ophelia snapped her fingers once — fingers calloused from years of scrubbing pots and floors.

“Scrub,” Ophelia commanded.

The postulant looked up, smiled, and began scrubbing.

Radegund turned to see Madeleine standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Ah, Sister Madeleine,” said Radegund. “Theology may, as you said, turn reason itself into prayer. Sometimes, though, we need to practice the body’s prayer of labor in service to others. With that opening to love, we are then ready for the ways reason further opens to love.”