Baring-Gould’s sources: Utrecht Breviary, Modem Belgian and Gallican Martyrologies. Roman Martyrology. Authorities: — A Life attributed to Oetbert, who lived in the nth cent., also mention by William of Malmesbury.] S. Frederick, a Frieslander, was brought up at the feet of S. Ricfried, bishop of Utrecht, who also gave him the minor orders, and finally, after he had proved his virtue, advanced him to the priesthood. On the death of Ricfried, the emperor Louis conferred on him the see of Utrecht. Frederick in vain pleaded to be spared this burden, but as the delegates of Utrecht told the king that they would willingly accept him as their bishop, Louis insisted on his acceptance of the proffered honour. When Frederick had with reluctance submitted, he repaired to his metropolitan, the archbishop of Mainz, and was consecrated by him at Aix-la-Chapelle in 820. On the death of the Empress Hermingard, Louis the Pious had married Judith, daughter of the Bavarian Count Wippo, four months after the decease of his first wife. Judith was not only the most beautiful, she was also, according to the flattering testimony of bishops and abbots, the most highly educated woman of the time, eloquent as well as learned, and a proficient on the organ. In 823 she bore Louis a son, afterwards Charles the Bald; and at once the jealousy of the sons of Louis by his former wife broke out. It became irreconcilable as that son advanced towards adolescence. This jealousy arose from apprehension, that in the partition of the empire, according to Frankish usage, confirmed by Charlemagne, on the death of Louis, the largest, and perhaps an unjust share, of the empire would be given to the son of the favourite wife. Rumours, of which it is 43 ^ Lives of ihe Samis. u^y *s.
…impossible to doubt the falsehood, were industriously circulated derogatory to the fair fame of the empress Judith. It was the object of the enemies of Charles to dissolve, by fair means or by foul, it mattered not which, the influence exerted over the uxorious monarch by his accomplished and beautiful wife.
The sons of Hermingard insinuated at first, then openly asserted, that Charles was the son, not of Louis, but of Duke Bernard of Septimania. But no such suspicion had entered the head of the king • he had the utmost confidence in the integrity of his wife, and to Duke Bernard he entrusted the education of the young Charles. It was made a party matter, neither side scrupled as to the epithets they lavished on those of the opposite faction. Those who favoured the discontented elder sons of Louis broke into revolt, under Pepin, whom he had made king of Aquitaine.
Around Pepin assembled all the discontented nobles and prelates, Jesse, bishop of Amiens, Frederick, bishop of Utrecht. Their demands were stern and peremptory; the dismissal and degradation of Judith. The emperoi was deserted by his troops, for the pope had sanctioned the revolt of the sons against their father; and Judith was obliged to take refuge in the convent of S. Mary at Laon. There she was seized by the adherents of her step-sons, and compelled to promise that she would use her influence to urge the emperor to retire into a cloister. Before herself was set the alternative of death or of taking the veil. She chose the latter, and edified by her piety the sisters of S. Radegund at Poitiers. But the faithful Germans rallied to the standard of their emperor. Judith left her place of imprisonment, and at a diet at Aix-la-Chapelle her innocence of the charges made against her was proclaimed. Posterity will acquit Judith of the guilt of adulteiy, which, S % Frederick.
perhaps, it was never seriously believed that she had committed. Louis, who knew his wife better than anyone else, never for a moment mistrusted her, and when passionate invective died away, Charles the Bald ascended the throne without any doubt of his legitimacy being entertained. 1 It is sad to see the gentle and pious Frederick drawn into these miserable contests; he was doubtless led away by others. In his zeal against licentiousness, he believed in the guilt of the unfortunate woman so loudly proclaimed by those who sought her downfall, without having, in his simplicity, any doubt in the singleness of the object of her accusers. In his own diocese he laboured with zeal. The island of Walcheren was in bad repute; the inhabitants contracted marriages within the prohibited degrees, without caring to ask for dispensations. S. Frederick visited Walcheren, and preached to the people, and strove to force them to dissolve the unions they had made. His efforts were effectual; and he left a profound irritation rankling in the hearts of the Zealanders, when he departed.
Odulf, a pious hermit of Aershot, joined himself to the bishop, and was sent by him to Alkmar to instruct the Frisians in the right belief in the Trinity, as they had uncertain, if not heretical views, on this great mystery. In 831 the three elder sons of Louis were again in arms against their father. The whole empire was divided into two hostile camps; on each side were dukes, counts, bishops and abbots. The Northern Germans espoused the cause of the emperor; the Gaulish Franks [the Germanic people who ruled Gaul and gave France its name] and the Southern Germans sided with the rebellious sons. The armies met 1 The biographer of Frederick shifts the charge against tihe unhappy queen. He pretends that she was the niece of Louis. But had the marriage been contracted within prohibited degrees, the bitter enemies of Judith would have proclaimed it during her life. But this is only one more instance of the recklessness of these accusations, which goes far to disprove them all. The contemporary Thegan says of them that “they were all lies.”
on the plains of Rothfeld in Alsace, in 833, Pope Gregory IV. was in the camp of the revolted sons; let us hope with the purpose of putting an end to this unnatural conflict by his mediation. But if so, no tokens of such a disposition were manifested; his presence in the hostile camp was taken as a sign that he blessed the rebellion, and the nobles and clergy who had adhered to the emperor deserted him for the camp of his sons and the sovereign Pontiff. The emperor and his queen, and their young son Charles, were now the prisoners of Lothair the eldest son of Louis. Judith was sent into Italy, and imprisoned in the fortress of Tortona. The sons divided the empire, and the pope in great sorrow, and, perhaps, regret at the part he had played, returned to Rome. Louis was degraded to perform a humiliating penance before his son Lothair, and to resign to him all pretence to the empire. But the degradation of the emperor excited general indignation. A revulsion of feeling took place throughout the empire, Pepin and Louis, the two sons of the emperor next to Lothair, found it necessary to reprobate the cruelty and insult that had been heaped upon him by Lothair, and the prelates who sided with him. The people threatened, and Lothair fled from their abhorrence, and took refuge in Burgundy. With the return of power to the emperor, many of the bishops found it expedient to return to their allegiance.
Lothair gathered an army, met and defeated his father, near Chalons, and with savage ferocity burned the town, and massacred its inhabitants without even sparing the females. Not content with the blood of a son of Duke Bernard, his sister was dragged from the convent, shut up in a wine-cask, and cast into the Saone. But pestilence revenged these atrocities on the victorious army, and the rebel son was driven before it into Italy. *S. Frederick.
In a solemn assembly at Metz, eight archbishops and thirty-five bishops condemned the rebellion, and declared the justice of the cause of Louis.
And now the empress Judith, forgetful of the wrongs done her, laboured by her gentle influence to bind the bands of peace which had been rent in the miserable contests of the last eight years. She succeeded in affecting a reconciliation between Lothair and his father, in 838. In that same year, whilst Judith was thus engaged, Frederick of Utrecht was foully murdered. He had been saying mass, and was returning from the altar, when he was attacked by two assassins and stabbed in the bowels. He expired reciting the verse of the psalm (cxl.), “I will praise the Lord in the land of the living.'' The author of the life of S. Frederick attributes the murder to Louis the Pious, who bade Judith see to it being perpetrated during his absence in Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium]. This author lived two hundred years after the events. It is more than improbable that such was the case. It is utterly inconsistent with the deeply religious character of the king, and his reverence for the persons of the bishops. There was, moreover, no reason at the time for his murder. Judith was at that time concluding a peace with the rebel son. It is also sufficient to state that no contemporary writer, not even Judith's bitterest foes, charge her with having been guilty of this crime. The martyr was buried at S. Saviour's church at Utrecht.
