"'Woe is me! Other cares than feasting oppress my heart.All-father has betrothed me to an unbeloved man.Fierce Hodbroddr will carry me off in a few nights, if you,O hero, shining in the beauty of youth, will not save me and challenge him to mortal combat.'"
"'Woe is me! Other cares than feasting oppress my heart.All-father has betrothed me to an unbeloved man.Fierce Hodbroddr will carry me off in a few nights, if you,O hero, shining in the beauty of youth, will not save me and challenge him to mortal combat.'"
"'Woe is me! Other cares than feasting oppress my heart.
All-father has betrothed me to an unbeloved man.
Fierce Hodbroddr will carry me off in a few nights, if you,
O hero, shining in the beauty of youth, will not save me and challenge him to mortal combat.'"
With these words she entwines caressingly her white arms around the neck of Helgi, whose heart melts and inclines to her. He challenges the hated rival, and on the morning of the combat he stands against the countless host of Hodbroddr, who is aided by Sigrun's father and brothers, who are resentful of the bold Helgi's suit. The earth trembles and shakes under the onslaught, but Helgi's resistless sword mows down his enemies. Beasts and birds of the field hold a rich repast. When the tumult of the battle subsides, Sigrun rides over the field, and her lamentation for her slain father and brothers is heard amid the exultations of victory. Only one brother, Dag, survives, and he weds her to Helgi. But impelled by the sacred duty of blood revenge, he breaks the peace which he has sworn. Odin himself, wrathful against the Volsung, offers Dag his invincible spear. In the ensuing combat Helgi falls. Before his sister, Helgi's loving wife, the slayer pleads the will of Odin and the Norns, goddesses of immutable fate, and offers rich compensation to her. But Sigrun breaks out in bitter woe, cursing her brother: he shall be a wolf out in the forest, all joy shall be far away from him, no horse shall carry him, the ship which may save him from his enemies shall stand still under him.
The tomb is piled up over Helgi's corpse. When Sigrun's maid goes to the grave, the dead master comes riding along and bids her ask his wife to soothe his wounds. Before he can lay aside his bloody armor, Sigrun embraces him, lamenting how cold are his hands, how wet he is with the dew of the night. Helgi replies: "Thine is the blame; for every tear which thou weepest falls as a cold and piercing drop of blood upon my bosom. But let us be of good cheer and drink the sweet mead, let no one complain of the wound on my breast, since, though dead am I, my wife is with me." Sigrun prepares the couch to sleep on the breast of the beloved dead, as she did when he was still alive. Helgi, touched by so much love, exclaims: "It has happened what no one ever deemed possible: the white daughter of Hagen, the living one, sleeps in the arms of the dead." At the morning dawn, before the cock crows, Helgi is obliged to return to Valhalla, and Sigrun returns to her solitary palace. In the evening she awaits him, but waits in vain, and in her sorrow her heart breaks.
The motive of this legend lives in German literature in varied forms. Burger has reawakened it inLenore, the greatest German ballad.
But, to conclude the chapter on the Teutonic women of antiquity, it is necessary to return once more to the prose of history, where, for the first time, the women of the Teutons, in their general aspect, enter into the bright light of historical observation, in this instance so much the more valuable, since it is the observation of the enemy. In conformity with our other sources, the Greek-Roman historians, Plutarch, Dion Cassius, and Strabo, have to report regarding Teutonic womanhood only traits of tremendous strength, power, and love of liberty. Savage virtue and heroism are there, but not a single trait of grace and loveliness appears in their accounts. And if there is exaggeration, it simply proves the terror the furor Teutonicus which was inculcated by the Teutons into the hearts of the Romans at their very first encounter. The years B. C. 113-101 witnessed the first Titanic clash and conflict between the Cimbri and the Teutones, mere splinters of the Teutonic race, and the world power of the Roman Republic at the height and zenith of its greatness. For the first time, Teutons thundered at the gates of the Alpine entrance to Rome, and thus began the incessant struggle which continued for nearly six centuries between the two most powerful races in the history of the world, until the Empire finally succumbed.
When one legionary army after another, led by the foremost commanders of Rome, had been destroyed under the onslaught of the two combined tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, it was only the military genius of Marius which finally succeeded in stemming the tide of the Teutonic flood, and then only after the tribes had divided their forces and, thus weakened, hurled their naked bodies against the phalanx of the overwhelming Roman army. When the legionaries of Rome pursued the defeated Teutones to their camp, Plutarch relates: "the Teuton women met them with swords and axes, and making a terrible outcry, drove the fugitives as well as the pursuers back, the first as traitors, the others as enemies, and mixing among the warriors, with their bare arms pulling away the shields of the Romans and laying hold on their swords, endured the wounds and slashing of their bodies invincible unto death with undaunted resolution."
An account by Valerius Maximus emphasizes not only the bravery, but also the chastity of the Teuton women. When captured, they requested of the victor Marius to consecrate them to the service of Vesta's sacred virgins, promising to keep themselves as pure and immaculate as the goddess and her servants. Upon the refusal of their request they strangled themselves the following night. Thus ended the battle of Aquas Sextise in B. C. 102, with the annihilation of the Teutones root and branch.
In the subsequent year Marius destroyed the Cimbri also, on the Raudian fields near Vercellas. Among their women were prophetesses, hoary with age, barefooted, clothed in white garments with iron girdles, and fine flaxen cloaks. Thus apparelled they went sword in hand to meet the prisoners of war in camp, whom, after wreathing them, they conducted to a large iron kettle. Then one of them mounted a high step and bending over the kettle, cut the throat of the prisoner who had been lifted over the edge, and prophesied from the blood which streamed into the brass vessel.
During the battle they drummed on hides fastened over the wagons, and made a horrible noise. When the largest and most warlike part of the Cimbri had been annihilated, and the Romans pursued the rest within the wall of the camp, they were astounded by a highly tragic spectacle. The Cimbri women standing in black garments of mourning on the wagons, inflicted death upon the fugitives: one upon her husband, another upon her brother, another again upon her father. But their own children they strangled and hurled under the wheels of the wagons and under the hoofs of the horses. Finally they laid hands upon themselves. One, it is said, was hanging from the top of a wagon with her children, tied with ropes, dangling from her ankles.
The later struggles, too, between the Teuton and the Roman offer many examples of the German woman's absolute contempt of a life which could be preserved only in shame and servitude.
When Drusus battled with the Cherusci, Suevi, and Sigambri, it happened that their women, besieged by the Romans in their wagon fortifications (Wageriburg), instead of surrendering, desperately defended themselves with everything that might serve as a weapon. Finally despairing, they struck their children against the ground and hurled their dead bodies in the face of the enemy. The most perfect model of heroic stoicism in connection with those wars, Princess Thusnelda, whose fate we discussed above, was only the first woman among her equals. Teutonic women in those primitive times invariably followed their husbands to war, carrying food and encouragement to the warriors in battle, counting proudly the wounds of their husbands and sons, and nursing the wounded. Through threats or entreaties they restored many a tottering battle array, inciting the men to heroism.
Until the period of the migrations of the Teutons, the precursors of which were the hapless attempts of the Cimbri and the Teutones to invade the Roman Empire, the ancient world, as known to history, was sharply divided into two parts: the Roman world and the world of the Barbarians. The consequences of the invasion and infiltration of the Germanic barbarians into the northern and western provinces of the Roman Empire were the ethnographic combinations from which arose well-nigh all the nations of modern Europe. It is those barbarians who created the mixture of blood, of ideas and ideals, of institutions and customs, from which every State of Europe was born. Their influence for good, as for evil, was lasting and universal.
The combinations of the Teutonic races during the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, until the race movement came to some sort of a standstill under the Carlovingian dynasty, were numberless. When we consider those tribes rushing one upon another, the newcomers ever pressing upon those before them, as waves beating upon a shore, and see the first germs of incipient civilization overwhelmed again and again by swift following surges of barbarity, or even savagery, when we observe newly formed states crushed and swallowed up by opposing states, we have great difficulty in perceiving anything but the play of the blind, brutal forces of nature. The changes are countless, a tremendous revolution endures for centuries, and everything is in a state of flux; and yet, such were the influences evolved from this chaos that there is no modern Caucasian state, however remote, where the Germanic impulses springing from the migration period are not to-day visible.
But, in spite of the existing confusion, there was no epoch of human history when the influence of thought is more plainly manifest than in the time of the Teutonic upheaval that left no stone unturned. There was no German knight who did not endeavor to adopt some shred of the Roman Empire which he helped to tear to pieces.
Christianity, too, which for centuries was but a vague longing in the hearts of most men, began to arise and to assert itself, at first indefinitely, still groping in darkness and strongly intermingled with the ingrained and venerated pagan conceptions, then more and more as a living issue. Christianity so gained in force that at the time of supreme need it saved humanity from sinking back into the degeneracy of the Roman bacchanal. Under the action of Christianity the ephemeral barbarian confederacy crystallizes into a permanent political organization.
At the end of the third century of our era the Teutonic race is already, though indistinctly, consolidated into four large nationalities, or tribe leagues, with two inferior, though independent, branches. Where Tacitus, in the angle between the Rhine and the Main, had seen Sigambri, Bructeri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chatti, there is now one great, though loose, confederation: the Franks. Between the North Sea, the Rhine, and the Elbe are the Saxons with the Angli in the north, and the Thuringians in the south. In the angle between the Rhine and the Danube, the beehive of all tribes (all man), is the confederation of the Alemanni, mixed with Suevi (Schwaben); behind them, pressing toward and beyond the Rhine, are the Burgundians; and following closely are the Langobards, who appear on the middle Danube. Near the Baltic, which derives its name from the Gothic dynasty of the Balti, we have the Turcilingi, the Rugii, the Sciri, and the Heruli who were tattooed blue. Between the upper Elbe and the Oder Rivers, the Quadi (in Moravia) and Marcomanni (Bohemia) seem to disappear gradually, and are probably merged into the Suevi.
The Gothic or Scandinavian race is agitated by the same movements, disputing with Finnish tribes (related to the Turks and the Hungarians) the Danish and Scandinavian peninsulas and the isles of the Baltic: Gothia, Ostrogothia, Westrogothia, and the Isle of Gothland. At the same time they spread over the plains of eastern Europe. The Visigoths under the dynasty of the Balti and the Ostrogoths under the Amali occupy the steppes of Russia; behind them are the Gepidas. The Jutes (from whom is derived the name of Danish Jutland) and the Vandals, perhaps mixed with the Slavic Wends, occupy the Baltic for two centuries. The race of the Slavs, as yet existing in almost complete historical darkness, is known to Tacitus but dimly by the name of Wends.
When brought in contact with the Romans, the purely Germanic individuality ceases, the tribes become Romanized; their gods change, their habits, their religion: a new world, undreamed in its southern radiance and sunny luxury, opens before their eyes, accustomed to the dreary north; victory itself carries with it corruption. In the third century Rome is no longer feared, in the fourth it is already considered a German prey. The infiltration goes on through the engagement of Teutons for Roman military service. The German soldiers, with their barbarous strength of body, soon reappear as Roman comites, duces, patricti, counts, dukes, patricians,i. e., supreme civil and military officers at the court; they enter also in masses as laborers, servants,fcederati, or auxiliaries. From such or from simple legionaries they rise to be dignitaries of a rank but a shade under imperial, like the Vandals Stilicho and Rufmus, who for a time uphold the existence of the Roman Empire.
It is true, then, that in those centuries of upheaval the Teutons lost many of their racial characteristics, of their stock of primeval sagas, but they also gained immensely from the intellectual, spiritual, and cultural influence of the southern nations that furnished them with a stupendous stock of basic material for their future progress. Christianization and amalgamation instilled into their Teutonic spirit the germs of that Romanticism which we are wont to consider as purely Germanic, while in reality it is an elixir of the Christian-Roman fountain assimilated by the Teutonic soul. The Roman Catholic Church working upon the soul through the senses the only possible way to reach and penetrate the soul of primitive man, who is unfit for abstract thought, created the "divine arts" poetry, music, architecture, in the progressive sequence of the centuries of German history.
In religious symbolism lies the root of Romanticism, the blossom of mediæval life: Romanticism, a Romance word in sound, is German in spirit. Its soul is the romantic ideal of love: woman is its centre. It radiates first from a fervent soul with an ecstatic, passionate devotion to the ChristianAllmutter, the mother of God, the Holy Virgin, Saint Mary, who was from the first deeply revered by the Teutons, owing to their inherent veneration for woman. Among the Germans of all times, even the most corrupted and dissolute, this spark of veneration is not entirely extinct. Love is surrounded with a halo in contrast with the severe Oriental treatment of women by the Church Fathers. The harsh words of the Gospels, "Woman, what have I to do with thee!" is transformed into: "Pure woman, and mother mine!"
Thus the picture drawn by the Edda truly called the Norse Bible of the Teutonic race of the doomsday of the world, theGotterdammerung, is nothing if not a representation of the whirl of the immigration. Yet all that is valuable, culturally speaking, rises like a phoenix from the ashes. As, in the ingenious words of the poet, "Conquered Greece conquered, on her part, the fierce Roman conqueror and carried her (intellectual) arms into Latium," so conquered Rome transformed the fierce Germanic conqueror into a new man. The unity of the Roman Empire had furthered Christianity, and the complete German conquest mightily influenced the entire Germanic race in the direction of Romanization and Christianization, though the latter for long remained crude and was affected by the cult of the gods of Olympus as well as of those of Asenheim and Niflheim, and, even where not so affected, Christianity was divided between Arianism and the Orthodox Romanism. With the political conquest, however, a new order was by no means assured. The Empire was destroyed, it is true, but nothing firm, solid, or steady took its place. The wavering new political aggregates put in its stead were no longer purely Teutonic. They succumbed too easily to the treacherous and manifold, if silent, influences that on every side assailed them. The majority of such political groups, whether in Italy, in Gaul, in Spain, or in North Africa, lost their nationality and even the German language: they became Roman mongrels and some even turned against their old mother, Germania.
Even at home, the Roman Christian foreign culture seemed for a time destined to overwhelm Germanism, but the Alemanni in the south and the Saxons in the north and west proved too strong for denationalization and carried Teutonic principles triumphantly through all the phases of the struggle.
Having thus described the tribal existence of the Teutons in Germania proper, in order to give to our study of the cultural history of German womanhood full point, a word must be said about German colonization abroad.
The Burgundians, after a checkered career of adventurous wanderings from North Germany to the Alpine mountains of Savoy, conquered southeast Gaul in the fifth century. In the southwest, or ancient Aquitaine, the Visigoths settled, and, crossing the Pyrenees, conquered a large part of Spain.
When Odoacer, the German king of the wandering hosts, had dethroned the last shadow Emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustulus an ill-starred, diminutive reminiscence of Rome's glorious inception as kingdom and empire the Heruli were the dominant race. Their rule lasted but thirteen ominous years. The Ostrogoths, under the great Theodoric, Dietrich von Bern, the paramount hero of Germanic saga and song, replaced them and founded a more permanent government. In northern Italy, the Langobards succeeded the Ostrogoths and gradually extended their rule southward, and pressing upon the Italian domain of the Bishops of Rome, who, by this time, had asserted their supremacy and headship of the ruling church of the world, brought about that cataclysm which finally submerged the power of Rome under the flood of the Prankish universal empire. The Salian Franks had, in the fifth century, conquered northern Gaul from the Batavian coast to the Somme River; the Ripuarian Franks formed a state along the Rhine, the Maas, and the Moselle, with Cologne as a capital. Chlodwig, the Salian Frank, one of the most cunning and unscrupulous kings in history, began, in A. D. 480, the unification of the Franks and the adjacent German tribes into one nation. After the subjugation of the Alemanni, the principal role, the hegemony within the Teutonic race, belongs to the Franks. Christianity becomes a political lever by which they extend their sway from north and east and finally create that Carlovingian-Prankish Empire which inaugurated the Middle Ages proper and founded therewith a stable Germanic civilization.
Up to this time, in spite of Christianity, the pagan imprint is still very strong. The Latin titlesrex, dux, comes,are applied to the German chiefs, as they were in Italy under Roman rule; sovereignty passed but slowly from the body of the freemen to individual chiefs, a transition finally accomplished by Charlemagne yet the old spirit of German liberty was not rooted out. The ancient Teutonic laws and traditions, though committed to mediæval Latinity, are German in spirit.
The political status remains as of old. There are two great divisions of the people: the free men and the unfree. The former are subdivided into nobles (adalingeoredelinge) and common freemen (Gemeinfreie, liberi); the unfree are either tributary (Horige, liten or lassen, manumitted), or real serfs (Schalke, servi). Exactly the same division holds true for women. The serfs, men and women, are without rights, and are valued as chattels, though manumission or absolute liberation is possible. Bravery in war creates a "nobility of arms" (Waffenadel), based upon the sword; and thus renders this species of nobility accessible to all in the same manner that, among the Carlovingians, "court nobility" (Amtsadel) may be obtained by the ministeriales, or civil servants, as the reward of merit or by the favor of the king. Women serfs, because of beauty or of manifest superiority, often become concubines, mistresses, and even wives of nobles and princes, and sometimes of kings.
Blood relationship, family, and the rulership of the housefather are in this early period the base and centre of social order. So the legal relation between man and woman is command and obedience; protection and responsibility. The wife is subordinate, and has no official voice or vote in the community or the body politic. Woman could not be a witness before a court, and in most states she was excluded from rulership over land and people, though this rule was frequently circumvented, broken, or repealed, for we early meet with women rulers or ruling women, who will be separately treated.
Though the laws in favor of woman's equality with man are still precarious, yet customs and traditions, as well as the ancient and innate veneration of German men for women, frame regulations for their strong protection. It is well known that every crime, including murder, but excluding high treason or assassination of the military chief, is atoned for by the payment to the family of the insulted, injured, or murdered person of an expiatory sum of money (SuhngeldorWergeld) or cattle, according to the valuation by the ancient Teutonic law. This law, among most of the tribes, attributed higher value to woman, because she is defenceless, than to man. The wergeld, according to Alemannic and Bavarian law, is double for a woman, and, according to Saxon law, the double wergeld applies while a woman is able to bear children. The Prankish law prescribes in ordinary cases a treble wergeld, namely, six hundred solidi (shillings) or cows (which are equal in value); and in the case of a pregnant woman the expiatory sum is seven hundred solidi. Johannes Scherr informs us how the Salian law determines accurately the fines for misdemeanors against womanly modesty. It says that a man who immodestly strokes the hand of a woman shall be fined fifteen shillings, and if her upper arm is stroked, thirty-five shillings, while if her bosom be touched he must pay forty-five shillings or cows. Many centuries later, in the highly polished, super-refined period of the Love Song (Minnesang), the wergeld, for an offence against a woman, on the contrary, sank to one-half of that inflicted for an act against a man, and this in spite of the increasing love service to women (Fraitendiensf), which, however, was degenerating to sensualism.
A TEUTONIC ALLIANCEAfter the painting by Ferdinand Leeke
Women serfs, because of beauty or of manifest superiority, often became.... even wives of great leaders.A Teutonic marriage was concluded when the bridal couch was entered and "one cover touched both."Not until the fourteenth century did the legality of marriage become dependent upon the conscent of the Church; on the morning after the marriage, the wife received the bridal gifts from her husband; henceforth she enjoyed all the marital rights, but remained subordinate to her husband, who could chastise her of even sell her into slavery.
A Teutonic marriage was concluded when the bridal couch was entered and "one cover touched both."
Not until the fourteenth century did the legality of marriage become dependent upon the conscent of the Church; on the morning after the marriage, the wife received the bridal gifts from her husband; henceforth she enjoyed all the marital rights, but remained subordinate to her husband, who could chastise her of even sell her into slavery.
In the early times the housefather has the guardianship,mundium(from Old High Germanmunt, hand), over his wife, daughters, sisters, and also the duty of protecting them. The father has the right to sell his sons during their minority and his daughters until their marriage, and this barbarous action is common. At the death of the father, the guardianship passes to the next male relative, (the sword relative,Schwertmagen, as opposed to the spindle relative,Spillmageri). In case of legal marriage, guardianship passes to the husband.
The law of inheritance is greatly in favor of sons, and daughters are frequently entirely excluded from participation in the heritage, or their share is reduced to one-half or one-third of the son's inheritance. This is, however, only in the case of real estate (Odal) probably because it needs the sword of the male protector, for the remaining or movable property is equally divided.
The conception of caste privileges, social birthright (Ebenburtigkeif), is very strongly developed, inasmuch as women lose caste by marriage with inferiors and give up every claim to the inheritance of their blood relations (Sippe); and the caste degradation results at one period in the exclusion from the inheritance of a free father of the children of an unfree woman.
It is but natural that, in the loosening of all the bonds of social order, during the wanderings, the ancient Tacitean purity and monogamy was, to a large extent, lost. Among the high classes, concubinage was the rule, since the lord had absolute power over the unfree maidens, and war and conquest have it in their nature to blot out all natural rights. We meet concubines, calledFrittenorKebse, everywhere in the lives of the great kings and chiefs. The Merovingian Franks are especially famous, or rather infamous, for their sexual sins. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious held concubines. The Church, especially at the synod of Mayence, A.D. 851, began to thunder against licentiousness, but in vain. Nor did the monasteries always remain pure from the taint. Winfrid, or Bonifatius, the apostle of the Germans par excellence, complains of the Prankishdiacons(deacons) who kept four or more concubines. Frequently, however, the Church submitted, on political grounds, to a recognition of two or more lawful wives taken by one man. But the sense of dignity and self-respect on the part of the women themselves, as we have seen in the case of Harald Fairhair, finally forced monogamy upon the full blooded, semi-barbarous Teutonic warriors, as the leading principle of a lawful marriage.
Teutonic marriage is concluded when the bridal couch is entered and "one cover touched both" (eine Decke das Paar besetting). To the very end of the Middle Ages the Church function is quite an indifferent matter, though as early as the Carlovingian time the Church prescribed a "confession of marriage in the Church" and "a priestly blessing." In theNibelungenlied, Siegfried and Kriemhilde, Gunther and Brunhild, marry without mention of a priest, yet on the morning of the bridal night the two couples go to the cathedral where a mass is sung. This latter statement is due to the attempt of the mediæval Christian poet to color, from numberless constituent parts of varied antiquity, the ancient Germanic heroic saga, originating in paganism, to the advantage of the newer religion. TheNibelungenliedarose about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and, with all its grandeur and splendor, is "like unto an ancient grove of the Teutonic gods forced below the roof of a Christian cathedral." The shining Valkyrie-patterned Brunhild, so magnificent in the pagan naturalness of her divinity and her surroundings, appears in theLiedas a gloomy, hermaphroditic being between two different and irreconcilable worlds. She is unfit for the Christian frame and setting that have been given her. Thus it is with Kriemhilde, with Siegfried, with Hagen. Their virtues and qualities and passions are not yet fully infused with the light which emanates from the Crucifixion.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the legality of marriage first becomes dependent upon the consent of the Church. On the morning after the bridal night the wife, whose hair is now put up, no more allowed to wave freely as that of a virgin, receives the morning gift from her husband. She henceforth enjoys all the marital rights, but remains subordinate to the husband. He is the administrator of her fortune and has,ipso facto, its usufruct. But at his death one-half or one-third of the property acquired during his married life belongs to the wife according to the law of the Saxon and Ripuarian Franks. Chastisement of the wife still belongs to the husband; he might even inflict death or slavery for adultery. Divorce is possible if the wife is barren or the husband impotent.
Most interesting, historically speaking, is the circle of women surrounding Theodoric the Great, for the sagas have associated with him all the powerful women of the legendary history of the German tribes. He may be truly called the political forerunner of the Habsburg dynasty of the Middle Ages in the policy of strengthening dynasties by marrying royal women to powerful kings. Such marriages enhanced the strength and extent of Ostrogothic rule and cemented alliances with the other Teutonic tribes. Following, consciously or unconsciously, the rule of Theodoric, the Habsburgers, during the Middle Ages, built up by their judicious political marriages their tremendous dynastic power (Hausmacht), which finally became superior to that of the Holy Roman Empire itself.
These marriages gave rise to the proverb: Let others wage wars; thou, happy Austria, get married, for what realms the God of War gives to others are given to thee by the sweet Goddess of Love (Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube; nam quce Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus). Theodoric married his sister, Amalfreda, to the Vandal king Thrasimund; his daughter Theodicusa to Alaric; his daughter Ostrogotha to the Burgundian prince Sigismund; his niece Amalberga to the Thuringian king Hermanfrid. Political marriages, then, are as old as German history.
Amalasuntha, one of the daughters of Theodoric, shines preeminently in history as the worthy daughter of the greatest German king of the creative epoch. Her contemporaries, the authors Cassiodorus and Procopius, praise her as an ingenuous, high-minded, lofty woman, an excellent ruler, and a noble protector of arts and sciences. Early widowed through the death of Eutharich, also a scion of the race of the Amali, she becomes, upon the demise of her great father, regent and guardian of her minor son, Athalarich. Reared in Græco-Roman culture, Amalasuntha inclined in her life and thoughts toward the Roman element in the state, and was to a certain extent estranged from the semi-barbarous Ostrogoths, who unwillingly submitted to her guardianship over her son, their king, and even more unwillingly to her rule over themselves. Though her rule was mild and wise, yet the discontent of the national party increased. Bitter reproaches were heaped upon the head of the noble queen for keeping young Athalarich removed from the company of the youth of Gothic race, for surrounding him with aged men, "though the mildest and wisest of their people," and for sending him to a Latin school of rhetoricians. For this was the training of a Roman emperor, not of a Gothic king, and their ancestors had taught them to despise such education. The queen was forced to yield to the popular demand, and the consequences of her surrender justified her fears. In the company of young Gothic nobles, Athalarich soon learned all the evil which the young barbarians had drawn from the Roman mire. His new friends had almost roused the youth to open rebellion against the "woman's rule," when, fortunately, he succumbed to the unaccustomed life to which his delicate constitution was not equal. By his opportune death, history is spared the record of the horrible tragedy of matricide which, in all probability, would have been enacted by the misguided prince a tragedy occurring frequently in the history of the Merovingian dynasty.
Amalasuntha's fate is full of tragic pathos. A great ruler and an extraordinary woman, she had indeed the qualities to become the benefactress of her nation, had not the epoch of unrest and agitation, the unsteadiness and the irreconcilable conflict between an overripe Roman civilization and Germanic barbarism, made her a victim of untoward circumstances.
In order to strengthen her tottering throne, she elevated to the position of her husband and king the last prince of the race of the Amali, the unworthy Theodat, a man of whom Procopius says that "the principle of never tolerating a neighbor beside himself had raised him to power and riches." Immediately upon his ascending the throne, he openly sided with the so-called nationalist party against Amalasuntha, and murdered the last friends and partisans of the hapless queen. In her despair she appealed to the eastern Roman, or Byzantine, emperor, Justinian, and implored him for protection and hospitable reception. But she did not escape to Constantinople. Theodat seized her and sent her as a prisoner to a fortress on a small island in the Bolsen lake. Shortly after the arrival of the Byzantine ambassador, who brought her a courteous invitation to the court of Constantinople, she disappeared in a mysterious way, whether by Theodat's orders or through the intrigues of the Byzantine is not known; but the king hated her; and the ambassador, according to Procopius's narrative in hisHistoria arcana, had been bribed by Empress Theodora, the infamous wife of Justinian, to prevent by any means the appearance at the corrupt Byzantine court of the highly cultured, royal Gothic lady.
The history of the Langobards, a Germanic race which plays a great role in the Migration period in shaping the fate of Italy, and, by driving the Popes into the arms of the Franks, in elevating that race and the Carlovingian dynasty, furnishes us a kaleidoscopic sequence of royal women, who exhibit all the vices and passions, crimes and virtues.
Paul Warnefried, a Langobard noble, calling himself, in his clerical capacity, as an author, Paulus Diaconus, is, through his historical work,De Gestis Langobardorum, the principal source of our knowledge concerning his great but barbarous race.
For the first time in the history of the Langobards we meet with a wicked woman in the person of the murderess Rumetruda, daughter of the seventh Langobard king, Tato, who, through her lust of blood, precipitated her people into a terrible war with the Heruli.
Looking from the window of her palace she perceived one day a Herulian embassy, which, under the guidance of the brother of the king, had just concluded an alliance with the Langobards, and was now returning to its own country. The demoniacal woman sent to the prince of the Heruli a cordial invitation to a cup of wine. No hospitable feelings, however, had induced Rumetruda to send the invitation, but curiosity and scorn at the somewhat abnormal, heavy-set shape of the foreign prince. Soon she began to mock and ridicule him concerning his stature and finally enraged him to such a degree that he also began to upbraid her with insulting words. Revenge arose in the soul of the cruel woman, and, having conciliated him politely and forced him back upon his seat, she proceeded to the execution of her murderous plan. Behind the seat of her royal guest there was a large window covered with costly curtains, behind these she placed a number of Langobard warriors, bidding them hurl their spears against the curtain. Pierced by several lances, the prince of the Heruli sank to the ground; the flagitious woman had satisfied her revenge at the expense of the peace and the alliance between the Langobards and the Heruli. A terrible war was kindled by this violation of the sanctity of ambassadorial rights.
The savagery of these times of bloodshed in the constant wars, when every race had to be "hammer or anvil," appears in the stirring history of the death of King Alboin, the Langobard. The latter had, with the aid of the Avars, defeated the old enemies of his tribe, the Gepidae, and with his own hand slain their king, Kunimund. According to a barbarous custom of his time, he had a drinking cup fashioned from the skull of the slain enemy. Rosamunde, the beautiful daughter of the unfortunate king, Alboin took for his wife, his former consort, the Prankish Clodsunda, having just died. Sometime after these events, it happened that Alboin at a great feast held at Verona, was seized by the desire of drinking wine from the skull of his dead enemy. Flushed with wine, and careless of the feelings of his wife, he bade her, following his example, drink from the ghastly cup. Rage and desire for revenge filled Rosamunde's heart, but of necessity she obeyed the cruel order, though at the same moment she resolved upon a terrible retribution for the horrible deed. Through her personal charms she won Helmichis, the royal shield bearer, and while Alboin lay sleeping upon his couch after a heavy repast, he was pierced by the murderer's sword. To make sure of his death, Rosamunde had fastened Alboin's weapon to the bedpost so that he might the more safely be delivered into the hands of her lover. Helmichis's hope to succeed to Alboin's throne was vain. He was compelled to flee with Rosamunde to the eastern Roman prefect, Longinus, at Ravenna. Tired of her now useless tool, Helmichis, the treacherous woman was easily persuaded by Longinus to do away with the murderer and to marry the prefect. She offered to Helmichis, who was arising from his bath, a cup of poisoned wine. While drinking it, either the taste of the wine or a triumphant glance in the eye of his mistress suggested his fate, and, sword in hand, he forced Rosamunde to drink the rest of the poison and thus to die with him.
Turning from this ghastly tragedy, we may read the first story of romanticism. This is the tale of the love and marriage of fair-locked Authari, a successor of Alboin in the kingship of the Langobards, to Theodelinda, daughter of Garibald the Bavarian duke. A brilliant embassy, headed by King Authari himself, who was incognito, arrived at the Bavarian court to sue for the hand of the beautiful princess. At a solemn festival, King Authari besought that Theodelinda herself should give him a draught of wine. The lady gratified his desire, and Authari, charmed by so much loveliness, caressingly stroked the hand of his future bride; she, blushing at his boldness, modestly cast down her eyes. Later on, she complained to her nurse of the boldness, but the wise old woman consolingly assured her: "No simple Langobard nobleman would have dared the deed; this man can be no other but the king himself and your bridegroom." Having obtained the consent of the duke and the princess, the Langobard embassy, accompanied by a host of Bavarian nobles, joyfully rode homeward. Arrived at the frontier, Authari, his heart swelling with love, raised himself aloft in his saddle and hurled his battle-ax with a powerful arm deep into a tree, exclaiming: "This is the throw of Authari, the Langobard." Unfortunately, the romance ended shortly after the marriage. Authari died one year later, as the rumor goes, by poison. Theodelinda became a passionate missionary of Christianity among the German tribes; and it is a general fact that royal women, as we shall see later in the case of the Christianization of the Franks, were the most ardent propagators of the faith. Christianity appealed especially to women because of its spirit of humility, of charity, and of submission to a higher will. The Church showed due gratitude by canonizing many noble and deeply pious women of the time. After the death of Authari, Theodelinda, seeing that the reins of rulership were too heavy for her, looked for the worthiest of the Langobard princes, to whom she might offer her hand and heart. Agilulf, the brave Duke of Turin, was her choice. A prophetess had, on the day of Theodelinda's marriage with Authari, prophesied to Agilulf that he would become the consort of the Bavarian princess. Theodelinda now summoned him and offered a cup of welcome, which the duke accepted with a grateful kiss on her hand. Blushingly she withdrew her hand, with the words: "he should not kiss her hand who was permitted to kiss her lips and cheeks." The overjoyed vassal, who had always suppressed his love for his queen, saw his most secret desire fulfilled, and lovingly embraced her. And the queen never had to regret her choice.
In strange contrast to the attractive and poetic queen Theodelinda stands the detestable Romilda, wife of Duke Gisulf of the Forum Julium. At the time of the invasions of the savage Avars, she was compelled, with her husband and her children, to take refuge in the fortress of the Forum Julium. One day she noticed, from the height of the wall, the handsome form of the young Avar prince Cacon, and the undutiful woman was seized with a violent passion for the fair barbarian. Secretly she sent him a message that she would open the fortress for him, if he vowed to take her for his wife after the conquest. The Avar consented; and having become master of the important stronghold, he married Romilda. But after the bridal night, to shame and disgrace her, he turned her over to twelve Avar warriors; and when they had wrought their will upon her, he caused her to be impaled on a pole in the open field, exclaiming: "This is the husband thou art worthy to have!" Paulus Diaconus, while condemning Romilda, praises the exemplary conduct of her two chaste daughters, Appa and Gaila, who, to protect their virtue, placed pieces of putrid meat between their breasts. This heroic measure drove the assailants back, but unjustly secured to the entire Langobard nation the reputation of a bad odor. Pope Hadrian evidently credited the slander, for, when he seeks the aid of Charlemagne against Desiderius, he writes of the "perjurious and stinking nation of the Langobards." But our two chaste virgins escaped and were richly rewarded for their virtue, as one was married to the Alemannian duke and the other, to the Bavarian.
We find a curious lack of foresight related of another Langobard queen, Hermilinda, wife of Cunipert. The queen once surprised Theodata, a wondrously beautiful Roman slave, of patrician family, in the bath. Her form was exquisite, her golden hair flowed down to her very feet, and the queen could not help praising her charms to the king. The consequence was that in due course of time Theodata gave constant pleasure to Cunipert, and Hermilinda became an inmate of a fine monastery named after her, where she died in the odor of sanctity.
The migration of the Teutonic peoples had been in great measure spontaneous, it is true, but the impetus of the avalanche had undoubtedly been tremendously increased by the irruption of a mysterious nomad people, the Huns, who broke forth from the steppes of middle Asia like a hurricane, hurled the Alans to the ground, overpowered the Ostrogoths, pushed the Visigoths over the Danube into the eastern Roman Empire, and, occupying the Roman province of Pannonia (Hungary), made it the centre of an empire which, though loosely connected, extended, more or less, over the length and breadth of Europe. About the middle of the fifth century the Huns arose anew from their Pannonian seat, and again threw Europe in a turmoil. The moving spirit of that commotion of savagery and barbarity which seemed to shake the three continents known to antiquity was Attila, called Etzel in the German lays and sagas, the "scourge of God" (Godegisel). His hordes were estimated at more than half a million warriors. His death was an event of immense political significance, and appears in the German saga in many romantic forms. The historian Jordanes relates, after Priscus, that Attila died suddenly of violence during his bridal night, while lying intoxicated beside his young wife Ildico (HildikS). In the morning his servants found him in his blood, but without wounds, beside him was the young wife with downcast eyes, weeping under her veil. The circumstances of his death were such as to throw suspicion upon the young woman. Ammianus Marcellinus reported as a fact that "Attila came to his death at night by the hands of a woman." But the legendists have tried to establish motives for the deed of violence, and nothing was more natural than the story that Ildico committed the deed out of revenge for Attila's murder of her relatives. According to the poet Saxo and theQuedlinburg Chronicleshe avenged the murder of her father.
The famousNibelungenlied, however, in its fundamental Norse form shapes the story as follows: Attila, the Terror of Europe, is the consort of the Burgundian princess Hild. He conquers and treacherously kills her brothers, the Burgundian kings Gundaheri, Godomar, and Gislahari, sons of Gibica, and afterward meets his death by the hand of their sister, his wife.
Felix Dahn has immortalized Ildico by his genius, and made her the most ideal, heroic woman of the Migration period. Reared in the palace of her father, King Visigast, in the land of the Rugii, she gives her tender love to Daghar, the son of Dagomuth, King of the Sciri; but a dark cloud hovers over her young life. Attila has heard of her incomparable beauty, and is still further aroused by the descriptions of her charms given by Ellak, his son by a Gothic princess. The Hun resolves upon the possession of Ildico.
Accompanied by her father and her betrothed, Ildico appears, by order of Attila, at the Hunnish court in Pannonia, where she is received with barbarous splendor and conducted into the reception hall. Here she sees the terrible Hun for the first time, but she was not frightened by the hideousness of the man; proudly erect she looked in his face firmly, defiantly, menacingly. He recognized in this glance such a cold, fathomless hate that he involuntarily closed his eyes before her: a slight shiver of a mysterious fear moved his frame; he dared not meet again her eye which pierced him, but he drank her overwhelming charms with the unbridled passion of the barbarian. Then the feast began, accompanied by the wild, discordant song of a Hunnish bard, in which he hurled scorn against the Germans. The bitter stanzas aroused Daghar to warlike poesy, which nearly cost his life at the hands of the wrathful Hunnish princes. Attila personally interfered so that hospitality should not be violated even toward hated Germans. But only for a moment is the protection extended, for by accident Attila obtained information of a mighty conspiracy of Visigast, Daghar, and Ardarich, king of the Gepidae, and then the full cup of his wrath is poured over the German princes, whom he reproaches with perjury and murderous intentions against himself. Foaming, he announces their punishment. The old king shall be put on the cross, the youth shall be impaled "behind my sleeping hall! Thou shalt hear his screams of agony, fair bride, while thou becomest mine."
The night arrives; the king of the Huns orders the sleeping hall to be prepared. For the first time in forty-six years he has the high pitcher of gold filled with unmixed Gazzatine wine and placed in his bridal chamber. He desires to gain courage to face the glances of the beautiful, but terrible bride. She is locked in the bridal chamber; no weapon, no means of escape can be found by her despairing search. To her enters the "scourge of God." He tries to win her by the promise that her son to be born shall become the lord over the world, the successor of Attila. She rejects the very thought of becoming the mother of a son whose father should be Attila, she would rather crush the head of the monster at birth. To give himself courage for the struggle with the proud, chaste German princess, the king drinks the heavy wine in eager draughts, and, unaccustomed to the potion, sinks into a heavy sleep. Ildico strangles him with her own golden hair, as he lies in drunken stupor.
When on the next day, after the long bridal night, the vassals of Attila break the heavy oaken entrance, they find their master dead on the floor, in a pool of blood. A loud, boisterous, barbaric mourning and lamentation arises in the Hunnish camp over the death of the greatest hero and ruler of their race. The fate of Ildico and her relatives seems sealed. But at the most critical moment help appears in the person of Ardarich, King of the Gepidae, and his retinue, who at the last moment save the Germans from the revenge of the exasperated Huns. The German tribes rise in masses and, after a few months, the liberation from the Hunnish yoke is accomplished.
The fame and glory of fair Ildico as the liberator of her people from the yoke of Attila rings from tribe to tribe in epic sagas and lyric lays. The song of Daghar, her bridegroom, in honor of the heroine, immortalizes her thus: