Chapter Four

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

[Case]

Gateless Gate #32; Blue Cliff Record #65: A non-Buddhist in all earnestness asked the World-Honored One, "I do not ask about words, I do not ask about no-words." The World-Honored One just sat still. The non-Buddhist praised him, saying, "The world-Honored One in his benevolence and great mercy has opened the clouds of my delusion and enabled me to enter the Way." Then, bowing, he took his leave. Ananda asked Buddha, "What did the non-Buddhist realize that made him praise you so much?"The World-Honored One replied, "He is just like a fine horse that runs even at the shadow of a whip."

[History]

As the abbey went up in Poitiers, the slaughter, pillaging and rape of war continued as it almost always was somewhere in pre-modern Europe. Early in his reign, Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who ruled for nearly 40 years (527 to 565), invaded and conquered North African provinces from the Vandals. His success there encouraged him to reclaim the rest of the former Western Roman Empire, and in 535 he launched the Gothic War against the Ostrogoths in Italy and Dalmatia. After twenty years of protracted fighting, the Ostrogoths were indeed defeated, but Italy was left so weakened and depopulated that it was all but defenseless when, in 568, the Lombards swept in and took over, almost unopposed. Lombard rule in Italy would last more than 200 years.

Meanwhile, among the Franks, Chlothar, the spouse Radegund had fled for monastic life, died in 561 at age 64. He left behind four sons born of the Thuringian sisters Ingund and Aregund (cousins of Radegund, daughters of her uncle Baderic). From Ingund were born Charibert, Guntram, and Sigebert, and from Aregund, Chilperic, the youngest.

Chilperic, seeking to claim the entirety of his father’s realm, seized the treasury, and his troops occupied Paris. His half-brothers were nevertheless able to compel him, per Merovingian law and custom, to divide the Kingdom. For his over-reach, Chilperic’s share was the smallest: a northwest corner of France including Soissons. Charibert took Neustria, covering western France from Rouen and Paris down to the Pyrenees (excepting the peninsula of Brittany, most of which remained independent). To Guntram went Orleans and Burgundy, and to Sigebert, Austrasia, including Rheims, Metz, and the lands that had once been Thuringia.

Among the Franks, a multiplicity of mates was a customary perquisite of kings, and the lines between wife (hence queen) and concubine, and between concubine and mistress, could be fuzzy. Sons of concubines, for instance, sometimes became king. Though pressure from the church against these practices of de facto polygyny was mounting, Charibert, Chlothar’s eldest, retained his father’s connubial inclinations. Charibert had children by four different women. The church regarded this as adultery and incest (since some of the women were sisters of each other). Indicative of the church’s growing moral authority, Charibert was excommunicated – the first Merovingian king of that distinction.

Of the four brothers, Charibert’s reign was the shortest: after six years ruling Neustria, he died in 567, at age 50. Charibert had at least seven children, but, as no sons survived infancy, his realm was divided among the remaining three brothers.

The tale of the wars and tumults which the three surviving sons of Chlothar raised against each other is a long recital of objectless strife and treachery. The uneasiest spirit of the three was the wicked Chilperic, ‘the Nero and Herod of this time,’ as Gregory of Tours very rightly styles him. (Charles Oman)

Chilperic, having failed to appropriate rule over all of Francia and thus receiving the smallest kingdom, soon made war with his brother Sigebert, king of Austrasia. This was a losing proposition from the start: Sigebert’s forces defeated Chilperic, effectively subduing him until the division of Charibert’s realm. Reinvigorated by receiving his share of Neustria, Chilperic again assailed Sigebert, invading Sigebert’s new territory. Again Chilperic lost. Five or six years later, in 573, having crafted an alliance with brother Guntram, Chilperic launched yet another campaign against Sigebert’s lands. Guntram’s interest, however, was primarily in preventing either brother from gaining too much power. Thus, when it seemed Chilperic might triumph, Guntram changed sides, and Chilperic was again defeated.

Meanwhile, Radegund and the Sisters of Sainte-Croix were sealed off in their abbey. Numerous women throughout the period took refuge in – or, having become inconvenient, were exiled to – convents. Two of Charibert’s daughters became nuns: Berteflede joined a convent in Tours, and Clothilde, named for her great-grandmother, Clovis’ queen, joined Radegund in Poitiers as nuns of Sainte-Croix. Chilperic’s first wife, Audovera, was committed unwillingly to a convent when Chilperic tired of her. Later, one of Chilperic’s and Audovera’s daughters – their youngest child, Basina – also joined Radegund’s abbey. She would, a few years after Radegund’s death, lead a revolt there.

At Sainte-Croix, the Sisters lived under the Rule for Virgins created in 512 by Caesarius of Arles -- the first western monastic rule specifically for women. The rule stipulates that the nuns be completely cloistered within the monastery from their entry until death and details a strict regime of specific times for prayers, limits on luxuries, plainness of dress, and emphasis on modesty and piety. The emphasis against fine clothing and the forbidding of servants suggests that most nuns of the time came from upper class families. Indeed, literacy was a requirement. The members of Caesarius’ convents devoted several hours a day to reading scriptures and copying manuscripts. Traditional tasks such as weaving and needlework occupied much of what remained of the day.

Radegund, going beyond Caesurius’ strictures, limited her diet to legumes and green vegetables. The energies she devoted to organizing and providing care for the infirm also went beyond any requirement, and it led to her reputation for having the gift of healing.

Poitiers was often in the middle of the bloody, fratricidal in-fighting among her step-sons. Though separated from the intrigue and carnage, Radegund was often aware of it, and from her cell wrote letters to the kings beseeching them to “not make war among themselves nor take up arms lest the land perish” (Baudonivia) – to no apparent avail.

[Fiction]

Radegund was devoted to her prayers, to the recitation and study of scripture, and to service. When she led the sisters gathered for group study, she mostly spoke the standard expressions of praise and exultation. On occasion, though, she would speak of the paradoxes of the spirit and the limitations of language to express the divine glory. “There is the bit that can be said, and the bit that cannot be said,” she said one day to a small group of Sisters gathered for study. “Psalm 46, teaches, ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ In the silence we may apprehend what words do not.” She continued, “And yet there is a silence, too, amid the word.”

Shortly after that, Sister Gertrude came to see Radegund privately. Finding a secluded alcove with a bench, the two women sat. “What is there other than words and no-words?” asked Gertrude.

Radegund lowered her eyes and otherwise did not move. Minutes passed. Suddenly, Gertrude said, “Oh!” And then, “Thank you, Sister Radegund.” She rose and departed down the hall.

That evening Agnes came to Radegund and said, “Sister Gertrude has been saying that you opened the clouds of confusion and let her see clearly. What did you say to her?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Radegund.

“What happened, then?”

“Some horses must be whipped soundly to get them to run at their fastest. Others require only light use of the whip. Then there are those who break into their top speed at the first slight touch of the whip. Finer than any of these is the horse that bolts forward upon only seeing the shadow of the whip. Sister Gertrude is like that.”

“Ah,” said Agnes, as the two strolled around the courtyard. “I have noticed she has a philosophical mind. Sometimes the philosophical ones get all caught up in the abstractions and ideas, the concepts and arguments.”

“A little space of silence allowed her to see through – to see through the window instead of just looking at the window,” agreed Radegund.

“She said that she asked you what there is other than words and no-words.”

“Yes.”

“And you said . . . ?”

“Nothing.”

“You showed no-words.”

“Did I?”

“Except that in being quiet, you seem to have said a lot for Sister Gertrude,” mused Agnes.

“Both words and no-words have a certain willfulness about them, at first. We speak to project what we want or how we see things. And then we approach not-speaking in the same spirit. We will ourselves to be quiet. And if the will itself is quiet?”

“Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. He says what he wants – ‘let this cup pass from me,’ – and then sets it aside, subordinates his want.”

“Not my will, but thy will be done.”

“Neither words nor no-words,” ventured Agnes. “For either may be willful. But, instead, acceptance of God’s will. That’s what Sister Gertrude saw?”

“A fine horse runs at the shadow of a whip,” Radegund repeated.

Agnes nodded. “Does God have a will? It feels odd to imagine the almighty that way.”

“Any time we attribute to God a quality or activity that pertains to people, it’s a metaphor. The scripture invites us to conceive of God as having will – but ‘will’ is a human word invented to name a human experience. The metaphor is a device for directing our hearts toward God. The scripture can only present us a window. It’s up to us to look through it, not just at it.”

“Do we will to look through it?”

“Perhaps at first. If it happens, though, it happens by grace, not by our will.”

“So what are we doing when we do this thing we call ‘accepting God’s will’?” asked Agnes.

“How would you answer that question?”

Agnes took a moment to see what might come to her. “Loving what is,” she said.

Radegund laughed. “As words go, those are good pointers,” she said. “Indeed, when we say ‘willful,’ as we were just now, we’re indicating something in us that doesn’t love what is – that just wants something to be different. Even if we’re wanting it to stay the same, we’re wanting its essential nature, which is to pass away, to be different.”

“And we want things to be different, don’t we? Do we not want men to stop slaughtering each other and live in peace? Do we not want an end to cruelty for its own sake?”

“All those, dear Agnes, and a great many less noble desires continually jostle for position in the human heart. We’d be lost without them. Loving what is means loving that, too.”

“Loving what is means loving what doesn’t love what is.”

“Doesn’t it? Of course, loving it doesn’t entail indulging it. We practice devotion, prayer, and silence, and, over time, by grace, the voice of desire grows . . . gentler. Less bothered by not getting what it wants. We have more frequent periods of desire not being there at all. But it’s never gone for good, and for that, too, the Lord may be praised -- for desires are among His messengers.”