Radegund: Captive, Queen, Saint
“Thus, did a woman
willingly suffer such bitterness for the sweetness of Christ,” concludes
Venantius Fortunatus, having just delineated the many sacrifices of his saintly
subject, Queen Radegund. But is piety the only thing for which we should
remember this Frankish queen?[1]
Based on Fortunatus’s Life of St. Radegund (from which the excerpt above is drawn) one would certainly think so. Fortunatus, a sixth-century author and cleric of some renown, was both Radegund’s hagiographer and also her friend. In his account of her life and deeds, he relates how she fell from princess to “part of the plunder,”[2] following the conquest of her homeland. She rose to royalty once more after catching the eye of her captor, the Frankish king, only to reject her newly-restored status for a life of pious self-abnegation. This image of humility and zeal would follow Radegund through the centuries. But was devotion alone truly all that motivated her to spurn what any other woman might have sought: a life of unqualified comfort, power, and prestige?
While there is no reason to doubt Radegund’s piety, our heroine has been deprived of further dimension for too long. De Excidio Thuringiae, an elegy attributed variously to Fortunatus or Radegund herself, uncovers the woman behind the saint. In this text, Radegund (the narrator) addresses her long-lost cousin Amalafred. She vividly recalls the decimation of her homeland, the deaths of her loved-ones, and the uncertainty into which she was subsequently thrown. We see a woman grappling with nostalgia, anxiety, and guilt—a woman who has witnessed the fragilities of courtly culture firsthand. In light of her early acquaintance with “malevolent destiny,”[3] Radegund’s reluctance to embrace her royal trappings seems more like an act of self-preservation than an act of zeal.
Though the interpretations these texts offer are not mutually exclusive, they require reconciliation. On their own, they generate oversimplified images of either a captive maid or a celestial queen. Together, they compellingly highlight the perils of social mobility and the respite from such uncertainty that religious life could provide. After reading De Excidio Thuringiae, Radegund suddenly appears less like a religious radical and more like a savvy woman attempting to untie herself from fortune’s fickle wheel.
One of the most salient points of tension between the texts is in their treatment of trauma. In Fortunatus’s vita, Radegund’s traumas are re-framed as catalysts. For example, to prove its claim that “misfortune often leads to salvation,” the vita contends that Radegund’s “innocent brother was killed so that she might come to live in religion.”[4] The loss of a loved one is valued here only as a precondition for sainthood. Fortunatus overlooks the toll this event undoubtedly took on an impressionable young girl, focusing only on its role in bringing her closer to God. On the other hand, Fortunatus’s De Excidio Thuringiae (if we take this text to also be his) treats Radegund’s ordeals as personal and independently-meaningful. Here Radegund is far less accepting of her brother’s fate, as she heart-wrenchingly laments how she “lost him and could not even close his pious eyes.”[5] This is not a saint resigning herself to God’s will, but a sister desperate for one last moment with a brother gone too soon. Indeed, this is just one of several instances in which the same events receive radically different treatments across texts.
However, this insight into Radegund’s more personal priorities and insecurities, allows us to re-frame her religious fervor as, at least to some degree, a coping mechanism. In the vita, it is implicit that “she avoided the trappings of royalty” out of reverence to God.[6] So humble and devoted was she that if an ornament she owned received compliments she would immediately give it away; if she received money from her husband, she would donate it all in alms or other charity.[7] But after reading in De Excidio Thuringiae about how her childhood palaces were reduced to “sad, glowing ashes” and all her courtiers were left “dead in a day,”[8] it seems possible that Radegund’s skepticism of the secular was motivated by more than piety. Having experienced the transience of man-made institutions and material things, perhaps Radegund simply, pragmatically did not want her prospects tied again to such unreliable things.
A similar re-framing happens to the scene in Fortunatus’s vita in which Radegund is “weeping unchecked tears, prostrating herself at each threshold” during a visit to the basilica of St. Martin. At first it reads as a clear display of religiosity[9]. This scene bears a striking resemblance to one in De Excidio Thuringiae in which Radegund complains that the invasion caused such a frenzy that she hadn’t the time to “press a kiss on the threshold // nor cast one backward glance toward what was lost.”[10] Through this parallel, there is again a sense that Radegund turned to God not simply out of a predisposition for saintliness, but because she sought to remove herself from the unpredictability of the secular world – that, having once lost everything, she was desperate for something guaranteed to last.
Though Radegund fell “from the heights of glory to the lowest depths”[11] only to rise even higher than before, she returned to power almost unwillingly. Piety initially seems a reasonable enough explanation for such anomalous humility. Ultimately, however, it may have been her experience with rises and falls – a search for stability as much as sainthood – that led her to religious life.
Notes:
Based on Fortunatus’s Life of St. Radegund (from which the excerpt above is drawn) one would certainly think so. Fortunatus, a sixth-century author and cleric of some renown, was both Radegund’s hagiographer and also her friend. In his account of her life and deeds, he relates how she fell from princess to “part of the plunder,”[2] following the conquest of her homeland. She rose to royalty once more after catching the eye of her captor, the Frankish king, only to reject her newly-restored status for a life of pious self-abnegation. This image of humility and zeal would follow Radegund through the centuries. But was devotion alone truly all that motivated her to spurn what any other woman might have sought: a life of unqualified comfort, power, and prestige?
While there is no reason to doubt Radegund’s piety, our heroine has been deprived of further dimension for too long. De Excidio Thuringiae, an elegy attributed variously to Fortunatus or Radegund herself, uncovers the woman behind the saint. In this text, Radegund (the narrator) addresses her long-lost cousin Amalafred. She vividly recalls the decimation of her homeland, the deaths of her loved-ones, and the uncertainty into which she was subsequently thrown. We see a woman grappling with nostalgia, anxiety, and guilt—a woman who has witnessed the fragilities of courtly culture firsthand. In light of her early acquaintance with “malevolent destiny,”[3] Radegund’s reluctance to embrace her royal trappings seems more like an act of self-preservation than an act of zeal.
Though the interpretations these texts offer are not mutually exclusive, they require reconciliation. On their own, they generate oversimplified images of either a captive maid or a celestial queen. Together, they compellingly highlight the perils of social mobility and the respite from such uncertainty that religious life could provide. After reading De Excidio Thuringiae, Radegund suddenly appears less like a religious radical and more like a savvy woman attempting to untie herself from fortune’s fickle wheel.
One of the most salient points of tension between the texts is in their treatment of trauma. In Fortunatus’s vita, Radegund’s traumas are re-framed as catalysts. For example, to prove its claim that “misfortune often leads to salvation,” the vita contends that Radegund’s “innocent brother was killed so that she might come to live in religion.”[4] The loss of a loved one is valued here only as a precondition for sainthood. Fortunatus overlooks the toll this event undoubtedly took on an impressionable young girl, focusing only on its role in bringing her closer to God. On the other hand, Fortunatus’s De Excidio Thuringiae (if we take this text to also be his) treats Radegund’s ordeals as personal and independently-meaningful. Here Radegund is far less accepting of her brother’s fate, as she heart-wrenchingly laments how she “lost him and could not even close his pious eyes.”[5] This is not a saint resigning herself to God’s will, but a sister desperate for one last moment with a brother gone too soon. Indeed, this is just one of several instances in which the same events receive radically different treatments across texts.
However, this insight into Radegund’s more personal priorities and insecurities, allows us to re-frame her religious fervor as, at least to some degree, a coping mechanism. In the vita, it is implicit that “she avoided the trappings of royalty” out of reverence to God.[6] So humble and devoted was she that if an ornament she owned received compliments she would immediately give it away; if she received money from her husband, she would donate it all in alms or other charity.[7] But after reading in De Excidio Thuringiae about how her childhood palaces were reduced to “sad, glowing ashes” and all her courtiers were left “dead in a day,”[8] it seems possible that Radegund’s skepticism of the secular was motivated by more than piety. Having experienced the transience of man-made institutions and material things, perhaps Radegund simply, pragmatically did not want her prospects tied again to such unreliable things.
A similar re-framing happens to the scene in Fortunatus’s vita in which Radegund is “weeping unchecked tears, prostrating herself at each threshold” during a visit to the basilica of St. Martin. At first it reads as a clear display of religiosity[9]. This scene bears a striking resemblance to one in De Excidio Thuringiae in which Radegund complains that the invasion caused such a frenzy that she hadn’t the time to “press a kiss on the threshold // nor cast one backward glance toward what was lost.”[10] Through this parallel, there is again a sense that Radegund turned to God not simply out of a predisposition for saintliness, but because she sought to remove herself from the unpredictability of the secular world – that, having once lost everything, she was desperate for something guaranteed to last.
Though Radegund fell “from the heights of glory to the lowest depths”[11] only to rise even higher than before, she returned to power almost unwillingly. Piety initially seems a reasonable enough explanation for such anomalous humility. Ultimately, however, it may have been her experience with rises and falls – a search for stability as much as sainthood – that led her to religious life.
Notes:
[1] Fortunatus,
Venantius. "The Life of St. Radegund." In Sainted Women of the
Dark
Ages, edited by Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon
Whatley. N.p.: Duke University Press, 1992, p. 81
Ages, edited by Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon
Whatley. N.p.: Duke University Press, 1992, p. 81
[2] Fortunatus, p. 71
[3] Columbia
University. "De Excidio Thuringiae" [A Letter from Radegund of
Thuringia]. Epistolae. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
Thuringia]. Epistolae. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
[4] Fortunatus, p. 75
[5] Columbia
University. "De Excidio Thuringiae" [A Letter from Radegund of
Thuringia]. Epistolae. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
Thuringia]. Epistolae. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
[6] Fortunatus, p. 72
[7] Fortunatus, p. 74
[8] Columbia
University. "De Excidio Thuringiae" [A Letter from Radegund of
Thuringia]. Epistolae.
https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
[9] Fortunatus, p. 76
[10] Columbia
University. "De Excidio Thuringiae" [A Letter from Radegund of
Thuringia]. Epistolae. https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/letter/947.html.
[11] Ibid.
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