Chapter Six

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

[Case]

Gateless Gate #6: Once in ancient times, when the World-Honored One was at Mount Grdhrakûta [a.k.a. Vulture Peak, where Shakyamuni Buddha preached, located near the capital of Magada in ancient India], he held up a flower, twirled it, and showed it to the assemblage. At this, they all remained silent. Only the venerable Kashyapa broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said: "I have the eye treasury of the true Dharma, the marvelous mind of nirvana, the true form of no-form, the subtle gate of the Dharma. It does not depend on letters, being specially transmitted outside all teachings. Now I entrust Kashyapa with this."

[History]

The first appearance of the bubonic plague -- not known by that name until the mid-19th century, when medical researchers named it for the swollen, painful lymph nodes (buboes) it caused -- swept through Europe during Radegund's time. There had been other plagues. The “Plague of Athens” in 430 BCE was, medical historians now think, probably typhoid fever. The “Plague of Antonine,” named for the dynasty of Roman emperors, struck in the 2nd century CE, and was likely either smallpox or measles. The “Plague of Cyprian,” named for the Christian bishop who wrote detailed descriptions of the plague while living through it in the 3rd century, may also have been smallpox, or else a viral hemorrhagic fever.

The “Justinianic Plague” in the 6th century, however, was what we now call the bubonic plague. Gregory of Tours (538-594) described symptoms of the Justinianic Plague that were consistent with bubonic plague: buboes in the groin or armpits, sudden high fevers, and rapid death — often within days. Genetic studies from 21st-century excavations in Germany, France, and England have identified the DNA of the bacterium that causes bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) in burials datable to the 540s and 580s, confirming that the Justinianic strain was an early ancestor of the one that would later devastate Europe in "the Black Death" of the 14th century.

The plague first reached Gaul around 543-544, arriving via Mediterranean ports and spreading along trade routes up the Rhône and Rhine river valleys into the interior. After this initial devastating wave, the disease became endemic in the region with major recurrences approximately every 8-12 years throughout the second half of the century. Significant outbreaks cresting for a year or two began in 558, 571, 580, and 588.

Major cities and trading centers were hit hardest, though rural areas were not spared. Whole households were wiped out. Some cities had to dig mass graves for the dead. The 580-582 outbreak, beginning the year Radegund turned 60, was particularly severe. Modern estimates of the toll vary — ranging from localized mortality of 20–30% to regional collapses approaching one-half. In some places, barely enough people survived to bury the dead. Villages and estates were destabilized for generations. Some estates were abandoned, and unworked fields reverted to forest.

The reduced supply of agricultural workers disrupted food supply, as did a similar decline in people distributing the food along trade networks. Grain prices soared and the poor, unable to meet the price, starved. As plague led to famine, so famine worsened the plague, for populations weakened by hunger were more vulnerable to disease.

Weakened armies diminished military capacity and limited campaigning in the worst plague years – though this can hardly be counted as a “positive” of the plague since the soldiers spared the sword tended to be fewer than those laid low by the pestilence.

Climate disasters further worsened the catastrophe. The period saw an outbreak of floods along major rivers: the Loire, Seine, and Rhône. Floods destroyed bridges, swept away houses, drowned livestock and people, ruined crops, and contaminated water supplies, still further exacerbating food shortages, increasing hunger and decreasing resistance to the pestilence.

Ice-core and tree-ring data from this period show abrupt global cooling — possibly linked to massive volcanic eruptions from 536 to 547 CE — that triggered decades of unstable weather. The resulting “Late Antique Little Ice Age” saw unusually severe winters with prolonged frosts that killed vines and fruit trees, droughts that wiped out harvests, hailstorms that destroyed what crops there were just before harvest, and unseasonable temperatures of both hot and cold that disrupted normal agricultural cycles.

Moreover, other diseases -- most notably dysentery and smallpox -- also reached epidemic levels in 6th-century Gaul: it was an epidemic of one of those that killed Fredegund's sons. Finally, the occasional swarm of locusts compounded all the other agricultural problems.

The clergy's role in providing comfort and explanation for the suffering, and their presumed authority on “acts of God” brought them greater influence and power. While most clergy read the plague as divine punishment for sins, others saw it as a test of faith or a spur to charity. A few, such as Gregory of Tours, also emphasized the redemptive potential of suffering, urging repentance not only for moral lapses but for social discord and neglect of the poor.

There were penitential processions and prayers and attempts to appease God through better behavior – though, like New Year’s Resolutions today, these tended to be short-lived. Donations to monasteries and churches surged, as acts of piety and as desperate bids for salvation. Ecclesiastical control of wealth and land grew. For Radegund and other women religious in the convents of the time, this religious intensification brought both increased veneration and tighter episcopal oversight.

Meanwhile, the deaths of key nobles and officials created power vacuums and succession crises. Sudden vacancies among the aristocracy amplified rivalries among the Merovingian kings and their factions. As heirs died and territories fell into dispute, intrigue and revolt intensified.

At the Abbey of Sainte-Croix, the roughly 200 nuns shared close living quarters: ideal conditions for disease transmission. While we don't have specific records of mortality at Sainte-Croix during the outbreaks, medieval monasteries and convents often suffered heavily during epidemics due not only to the enclosed communal living with limited ability to quarantine or isolate, but also the duty of nuns to care for sick members rather than flee.

Yet Sainte-Croix endured. Many monastic communities in Gaul suffered severe attrition from plague, famine, and economic collapse in the later 6th century, and several disappeared entirely. Sainte-Croix’s uninterrupted existence through the calamities of the 6th century places it among a relatively small cohort of enduring Merovingian houses. The abbey would last, in fact, more than a thousand years until destroyed in 1792 during the French Revolution.

[Fiction]

When the plague came to Poitiers, as it did in 558, 571, and 580, lasting about two years each time, each wave afflicted some fifty or sixty nuns before subsiding, with as many as twenty stricken at once. Roughly half those who contracted the plague died of it, usually within a week. For the sisters, well and sick, the epidemic was a test of faith and a call to greater devotion, intensifying the already austere and spiritually focused atmosphere of the abbey. Piety and fear were equally pervasive.

The normal tasks of maintaining the abbey were more difficult with fewer hands to share the work. Those who were well enough carried wood from the back gate, tended the hearth fire for cooking and warmth, drew water from the well and poured it into basins, prepared food and washed all the vessels and dishes. The floors were to be swept and scrubbed, every nook and cranny scoured, and the privies cleaned. There was a garden and a small pear orchard to tend, a single cow to feed and milk, and always something that needed fixing. Spinning, weaving, and sewing repairs to their garments were carried on as best as could be done.

Through the plague times, Radegund led prayers and penitential observances, cared for afflicted nuns personally, despite the risk, and used the abbey's resources to help the wider Poitiers community. Agnes and Madeleine, as elders most knowledgeable of medicine, joined Radegund in tending to the sick: preparing warm water, washing the sick, changing the bedding and bandages, applying poultices, administering medicinal plants to relieve symptoms. Tonics such as wine infused with rosemary and rue were thought to strengthen the heart and purify the blood. They burned aromatic herbs of juniper, rosemary, and lavender, thought to cleanse the air, and boiled vinegar with mint or thyme as fumigation. Meanwhile, the younger nuns and postulants took on additional assignments of the more manual labor the abbey needed.

In her cell, plague or no plague, Radegund continued the practice she had maintained since her time as Clothar’s queen: sitting upright, very still and quiet, with eyes almost-but-not-quite closed, listening, just listening – for an hour or more every morning and an hour in the evening. From the abbey’s founding, Agnes almost always joined her. As the years went by, other sisters would request – and eventually receive from Radegund – an invitation to join in the group sharing silence in Radugund’s cell. The sitting group slowly grew until it numbered seven, including Sisters Madeleine, Gertrude, Marcia, Berthilda – and the newest member to find her way into the group, the novice, Sister Casyapina: she whose unrelenting prayerfulness as a postulant had vexed Madeleine’s theology class.

When all seven were there, which was often, Radegund’s small cell was packed. Before the collective silence began, Radegund whispered a few guiding sentences. After the silence, before the sisters dispersed, she offered a brief homily. Radegund chose her words carefully, lest any leaked word run afoul of the tightening episcopal oversight of convents. Gradually, as her trust in the group grew, she spoke more openly. She never flatly contradicted church dogma, but she sometimes transcended it in ways the bishops might find heterodox.

Between the shared silence, Radegund’s words framing the silence, and the spiritual force of Radegund ’s personality, built on the intensity of her devotion and her commitment to caring for the sick and other charitable works, the small group of nuns began to absorb Radegund’s teachings.

Separation is delusion, she would say. Glory is ineradicable. The word is thus—our everyday standing and walking. The world is complete yet requiring our continual construction. The brokenness is the wholeness. Love what is — including the part that doesn't love what is.

At one of these sessions toward the end of Radegund’s life, she rang the small bell as usual to signal the end of the period of silence. The six gathered nuns raised their eyes to Radegund and waited. She always spoke for 15 or 20 minutes before ringing the bell again to dismiss them. But this time, she didn’t speak. The bell’s sound faded and silence again descended on the room as the Sisters continued to look expectantly at Radegund. Radegund lowered her gaze to the small vase of violets beside her. Slowly, she reached toward it. Pulling out one of the blossoms, she held it up and studied it.

Then Sister Casyapina broke into a smile.

It was a gentle smile, not a grin, but it was warm and sincere, her eyes crinkling at the corners. Such expressions were rare in the abbey, where the prevailing piety and fear kept faces dour and smiles tight-lipped. And it proved contagious. Radegund was the first to contract from Casyapina this fresh contagion, which soon spread also to Agnes, Gertrude, Marcia, and Berthilda. For a moment, Madeleine appeared bewildered – then bemused – but soon the hand she had brought to her mouth ill concealed the happy smile that widened behind it. An unaccountable joy filled the room.

“Daughters,” Radegund began, as a tear started down one cheek. “Sisters. You have been my light and life, my rest and happiness, my new plantation. I have taught you how to practice, to hear the truths that transcend our doctrines. I now entrust this to you, Casyapina.” Radegund leaned forward and placed her violet to Casyapina’s hands. Then she reached for her vase and pulled out another violet.

“And to you, Agnes,” she said, as she handed the flower to her long-time friend.

Plucking a third flower, she handed it to Gertrude: “And to you, Gertrude.”

Handing a flower to each to the other sisters in turn, she said, “And to you, Marcia. And to you, Berthilda. And to you, Madeleine.”

Radegund slowly surveyed the room, looking each nun in the eye for several seconds.

Then she rang the bell, and sisters, sniffling, went to the tasks that awaited them.

A month later, Radegund was dead. The violets were long wilted, but to the six entrusted nuns, their fragrance seemed to linger around Radegund’s cell.