on of many faults to be silenced by his gratitude for the
piety of the queen in erecting "the Church of Saint Martin in the
suburbs of Augustodunum (Autun), and a monastery for handmaidens of God,
and also a hospital in the same city." There is also a letter to
Thalassia, the first abbess of this convent, ordaining that the property
donated shall never be alienated from her and her successors; also, that
"on the death of an abbess of the aforementioned monastery, no other
shall be ordained by means of any kind of craftiness or secret scheming,
but that such a one as the king of the same province, with the consent
of the nuns, shall have chosen in the fear of God, and provided for the
ordination of." This also is evidence regarding the interior politics of
the nunneries of that time.

Brunehaut lived a stormy life. Gentleness and modesty, the qualities
most esteemed in feminine character, were the least noticeable in her
nature; they would not have been consonant with either her ambitions or
her methods. She was ever striving with the chieftains of her realm,
endeavoring, with no little success, to force their independence into
submission to regal authority. With the clerics, also, she had her
quarrels. Saint Didier, Bishop of Vienne, was at her instigation
brutally murdered. Saint Columba, even, was visited with her displeasure
because he refused to connive at her faults with the award of his
blessing. In 614, after thirty-nine years of the most strenuous
political life and the most extreme vicissitudes of personal fortune
that ever fell to the lot of any queen, she perished most miserably at
the hands of Clotaire II., the son of her old enemy, Fredegonde. He
caused the venerable queen, now eighty years of age, to be paraded
before the army on the back of a camel; and then, by his order, she was
bound by the hair, one hand, and one foot, to the tail of an unbroken
steed by which she was kicked and dashed to pieces. Thus lived, and thus
died a "Christian" queen who had received high encomiums from one of the
greatest bishops of history.

It must not be supposed, however, that feminine modesty, faithful love,
and the gentleness which is ever venerated in womankind, were entirely
unknown to that rough and licentious age. What could be more pleasing
than the romantic story of Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards? In the
year 584, Authari succeeded to that kingdom. He asked in marriage the
beautiful and pious daughter of Gari