medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Jan 30, 2009, at 3:59 PM, John Dillon wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> Today (30. January) is the feast day of:
>
> 3) Bathild (d. ca. 680). According to her late seventh-century
> Vita (BHL 905), the highly born Englishwoman B. (also Balthild,
> Bathildis, Balthildis, etc.) was as a girl sold into slavery at the
> Neustrian court, where, probably in 648 or 649, she married Clovis
> II. Humble and charitable as queen, she founded the monasteries of
> Chelles (where her Vita is thought to have been written) and
> Corbie. At Clovis' death she became regent for her eldest son, the
> future Clothar III. Perhaps when in about 669 he reached adulthood
> but possibly a few years later, B. retired to her convent at Chelles.
>
> There, according to her Vita, she lived as a simple nun until her
> death. Dado of Rouen's contemporary Vita of St. Eligius (BHL
> 2474), which associates B. with a miracle having to do with his
> burial, has B. at Chelles still wearing royal insignia of gold.
> Stephen of Ripon's early eighth-century Vita of St. Wilfrid (BHL
> 8889) depicts B. as haughty and scheming during her regency.
> According to Stephen, she was involved in the assassination of
> several churchmen. B. was buried at Chelles, where in 833 she was
> accorded a formal elevatio. Her relics are said to have survived
> the Revolution and, less bits that have gone elsewhere, to repose
> now in the originally twelfth- to fifteenth-century église Saint-
> André at Chelles (Seine-et-Marne), exterior views of which are here:
I note that the French guide to the church says that a distribution
of blessed bread is made today in honor of St. Bathilde.
Among her surviving relics are locks of her reddish-blonde hair (in
several places) and, in the Museum of Chelles, a long silk band with
a lock of hair attached, a brooch, and a very interesting embroidered
front of a tunic (erroneously called a "chasuble") There's a pretty
good image of the tunic front here:
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/Fotos/Bathilde-Kleid.jpg
The embroidery is interesting because it is worked to depict, in silk
thread, a set of elaborate jewels, including bands of "emeralds",
"rubies," "sapphires" and "pearls" around the neckline, a very large
hanging cross which looks remarkably like several surviving crosses,
and a looser "chain" with various "medallions" on it, all
recognizable as plausible jewels for her to have worn as queen.
(What's particularly clever is that the "pearls" are represented as
neat round "holes" in the embroidery, with the white linen background
showing through.)
The story goes that, as a nun, she had of course renounced worldly
jewelry, but there were still occasions where she had to appear as a
dowager queen. Hence the "fake" jewels. (How plausible this actually
is I don't know.)
____________________________________________________________
O Chris Laning <[log in to unmask]> - Davis, California
+ http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
____________________________________________________________
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