the church of St. Martin, at Pontoise, between the high altar and the matutinal altar, which stood behind it, where his mother was washing the feet of the poor, and he was holding the basins and towels for her. She turned, and, looking at him angrily, said, "Impious thief, why didst thou steal the alms which I had given to the servants of God?" Then she seemed as if she would strike him with a white-handled dagger that she had in her hand, saying, "Unless you restore my inheritance you shall die the death." When Guellus awoke ho told his dream to his wife, and they sent for the good Abbot Theobald, and told it all to him, and gave the estate at Jouy to him and his abbey for ever.
The charter in which this estate is granted to the monastery, with consent of King Louis VI. and Adelaide his queen, was preserved in the monastery in the time of Father Papebroch.
Hildeburg once appeared to her son with an empty purse, and asked him to lend her four pounds of the coinage of Dreux. (Dreux had peculiar money of its own, as appears from Ordericus Vitalis.) He accordingly sent that sum by his chaplain to St. Martin's, for the mass on the anniversary of his mother's death, and he did so every year as long as he lived. He also gave that church a tenth of the "sterlings" which he drew from his English estates.
AA.SS., from her Life in an old Chartulary of the monastery of Pontoise.
St. Hildegard (1), April 30. + 783. Queen of the Franks. Founder of Kempten, and patron of that abbey and against pestilence. Represented giving bread to the poor, or giving a silver chalice to a poor priest (Guénebault). She was born about 704, of a noble and powerful family in Suabia,and became the second wife of Charlemagne, 771. She was the best of wives, kind to every one, and beloved by the court and people.
Charlemagne frequently moved from one residence to another, and wherever he went he liked to be accompanied by his mother, the famous Queen Bertha, by his wife and children, and by learned men, who instructed him and all his family, so that the court became the nucleus of a great school.
Hildegard built a magnificent abbey on her own beautiful property at Kempten, on the slope of the Tyrolese Alps. Stengel, in his Description of the most Famous Benedictine Cloisters in Germany, gives twenty-two pictures of Kempten, which he says is almost the grandest house of God in Germany. The Abbot was one of the four prince-abbots of the Roman Empire.
Hildegard died at Thionville, April 30, 783, and was buried in St. Arnold's Church at Metz, where her husband built a magnificent tomb over her.
Besides other children, she was the mother of Louis, who succeeded his father, and Rotrude, who died while affianced to Constantine, emperor of the East, son of St. Irene, empress. Charlemagne survived his wife thirty-one years. He was crowned emperor in 800, and died 814.
Both Charlemagne and Hildegard were honoured as saints from the time of their death. Nearly a hundred years after Hildegard's death, some of her relics were sent to Kempten as those of a saint; and near the great abbey she had built, a new monastery was founded under her invocation, and called by her name. Some opposition was made by the Church to the recognition of Charlemagne as a saint, for, despite his many great virtues, there were points in his private life that fell below the highest standard, but the people adored him so fervently and so persistently that eventually the worship had to be sanctioned.
The Lives of St Charlemagne and St. Hildegard are in the AA.SS., Jan. 28 and April 30. Charlemagne's Capitularies are in Migne, Cursus Completus. He is the outstanding figure in all histories of Western Europe, in the second half of the 8th and early part of the 9th century, and the hero of many pretty fictions. Eginhard, his secretary, wrote his Life, which is in sundry collections of Monumenta; it was published in English a few years ago, and is eminently readable and interesting. Capefigue's Charlemagne is a delightful
