Baring-Gould’s sources: Asser, and William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle, lib. ii., c. a. For the latter part of the story, a life of Salome and Judith, by a monk of Altaich, in Bavaria, almost a contemporary. It is published in the Acta Sanctorum, June, Tom. v. p. 493, 498; and in Pez Thesaur. Anecdot., T. ii., p. lvii.J Offa, king of Mercia, had a daughter named Eadburg, who was married to Bertric, king of the West Saxons. She was a proud and cruel woman, who loved to hold the power in her own hands. The king, who was passionately attached to her, fell completely under her control, and she surrounded him with creatures of her own. Those nobles whom she dreaded she put to death by poison, or obtained their condemnation on false charges.
There was a youth named Worr, of whom the king was fond, and whose influence Eadburg dreaded. The story goes that the queen mixed a cup of poison and gave it to Worr to drink. He did so, but instead of finishing the cup, gave it to the king, who also drank of lit * June 99* it, not knowing that there was death in the cup, and both died.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the deaths of Bertric and Worr in the same year, a.d. 800, as if some connection subsisted between them, and this so far confirms the story told by Asser and Malmesbury. Then the West Saxons rose against the queen, and drove her out of Wessex [the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southern England], and passed a law that thenceforth the wife of the king should not assume the title of queen, but should be called simply Lady. “The nation of the West Saxons,” says Asser, “do not suffer the queen to sit beside the king, nor to be entitled queen but only the king’s wife, which stigma the elders of that land say arose from a certain obstinate and malevolent queen of the same nation, who did all things so contrary to her lord, and to all the people, that she not only earned for herself exclusion from the royal seat, but also entailed the same stigma upon those who came after her; for, in consequence of the wickedness of that queen, all the nobles of the land swore together that they would never let any king reign over them, who should attempt to place a queen on the throne by his side.” Then Asser goes on to tell the story of Eadburg as he had heard it from the lips of King Alfred, “ as he also had heard it from many men of truth, who have also in great part recorded the fact.” Eadburg crossed the sea, and went to Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800], who was crowned that same year. She found him standing with one of his sons, and after she had offered him gifts, she asked him to succour her. Charlemagne said, “ Lo, Eadburg, here am I, and here is my son; choose which of us twain you will have as husband.”
Then Eadburg answered, “ O Lord king, thou art old, SS. Salome and Judith. and thy son is young. Give me thy son, that he may be my husband.”
Charlemagne laughed and said, “ If thou hadst chosen me who am old, I would have given thee my son; but since thou hast chosen my son, thou shalt have neither of us.”
However, he made that provision for her which was not unfrequent in those days; he gave her a convent of virgins, and constituted her abbess over them,1 but she ruled so ill, and behaved so dissolutely, that he drove her away with only one slave as a companion, and so she went wandering through the land in search of a home.
At last she came to Patavium (Pavia), and there begging her bread, Asser the historian saw her. Such is the story as told by Asser and Malmesbury. Curiously enough there is a biography written, not long after, by a monk of Altaich in Bavaria, of two recluses who ended their days there in the 9th century, one of whom was an exiled queen from England. It is possible, perhaps probable, that this queen was Eadburg. The story of the Bavarian historian is as follows: — A maiden, the daughter of the sister of a 11 king of England ” was adopted by her uncle as his heiress. But her heart was set on heaven, and she left her native island, accompanied by two hand-maidens, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Having accomplished her object, she returned homewards without her servants, who had died. On her way back she halted at, or near, Regensburg. Her beauty attracted the attention of a young knight, and she had some difficulty in avoiding his advances. Her sight, had been gradually failing, and as 1 11 But the king, on account of her wickedness and exceeding beauty, gave her a noble nunnery of women," quaintly says Matthew of Westminster. she was escaping from the pursuit of the enamoured youth, she fell into the Danube, and would have been drowned, but for the timely assistance of a couple of fishermen. In the fishermen’s boat she descended to Passau, where she found shelter in the house of a noble lady. There she met with an accident. Owing to her increasing blindness, she stumbled against the dogkennel,1 and fell into the trough where their food was placed.8 The hounds, though she lay between them and their meat, did not tear her, but barked at a respectful distance; and this the biographer thinks was miraculous, judging from his own experience of hungry dogs. She remained with the family three years, setting all an example of great virtue and piety. She attended matins before dawn every day, even in winter, though her feet were sadly afflicted with chilblains.8 The good, kind, lady of the house was wont on such occasions to put the feet and legs of the maiden into cold water, and “ so by cold expel cold.” The fame of her virtue, and compassion for her growing infirmities, moved the abbot of Altaich, Walter by name, to offer to provide a habitation for the damsel Salome, as she called herself. The biographer asserts that the abbot claimed some kinship to the wandering princess. She was given a cell near the quire of the church opening into it through a window, so that the recluse might join in the offices without entering the quire.
In the meantime the li king of England,” her uncle, began to wonder what had become of his beloved niece, • “Offendens pedibns canale m canum.” * “Cantabra mandentlnm.** • ** Plerumque accidit ut sub hyemis tempore immergentlbus medullle, carnique et sangulni ejua tantum frlgorls retulerit, Acc.M I and on discovering that she had left her costly robes and jewels behind her, conjectured that she had fled the world. He consulted his sister Judith, a widow, and urged her to go in quest of Salome.
After long wanderings Judith came to Passau, heard of Salome, and was so struck with her manner of life, that she resolved to finish her days there also. Accordingly the widow was given another cell similar to that of Salome. Shortly after, Salome died, and was buried under the pavement of her cell, but Judith remained there subsisting on the alms of the Benedictine [monks following the Rule of St. Benedict] community. There she led a strange life. In the night she was scared with horrible sights and sounds. Demons flouted her, and red-hot eyes glared at her out of the dark comers of her chamber. Her shrieks in the night frightened the monks, and they rushed to know what was happening. They found the old woman beating the air, quivering, and grey with fear, and could scarcely calm her with prayer and exorcism.
There was a lad named Adalbert who visited the recluse in her cell, and to whom she became attached. She even adopted him as her son, and he was allowed to run in and out of her chamber many times a day. One day the boy caught a great grey owl, and bent on a frolic, he set the bird, solemnly blinking, on his head, and perhaps wrapping himself in a long cloak, stalked into the old woman’s cell. Judith screamed, declared she saw the devil, and when the boy burst out laughing, she made a rush at the owl, seized it and flung it into the fire. The poor owl fluttered, and dashed the embers over the floor; its wings were singed, and its hootings were horrible. It flew round and round the cell, and at last dashed out of the door.
u My son, do you smell ?” asked the recluse. “ There can be no mistake, the odour is certainly that of the devil.” It is clear, in the narrative of the monk of Altaich that all the part relating to the previous life of these two women is untrustworthy, but that he gives a truthful account of their life in Bavaria. What is true of their condition is, probably, that one was a widow and princess from England, and the other a maiden of royal lineage akin to her. The only Judith we hear of in England about that time is the wife of Ethelwulf, king of Wessex, in 855; and after his death, of his son Ethelbald, who reigned till 860.1 She was the daughter of Charles the Bald. But the Judith of the Bavarian historian is more likely to have been Eadburg, who changed her name on entering religion. Asser says that he saw Eadburg living on alms at Patavium. The Latin name of Passau, in which district Altaich is, is Patavia. And it is quite possible that a copyist may have altered Patavia (Passau) into Patavium (Pavia), knowing nothing of the former place. If Judith were Eadburg, it is not difficult to account for her dreadful nights of terror, when she had so many murders on her soul.
Who Salome may have been we do not know. Salome and Judith are both of local canonization, and are numbered among the saints in Benedictine and German Martyrologies.
1 He divorced her In 859 and did penance for having taken to wife his stepmother, says Matthew of VVcsminster. S. Emma.
