The warmth returned, sun gleaming on new shoots, buds bursting on trees and vines. Birds sang, men ploughed, breezes stirred the leaves. Admiring the great white clouds in the brilliant blue sky, Hrotgund saw all of Nature sharing her exultation in the glory of God.

This Spring was indeed to be a glorious one, for soon it would be Easter, and she would be baptized.

“For this,” Father Elias told her, “you must go to the nearest cathedral, which is at Noyon. That is the bishop’s seat; only he can welcome you into the Church.” Meanwhile he trained her as best he could and told her what to expect. Many, he said, received a new name, most often one from a saint. Hrotgund lit up. “Do you think I can take Saint Genovefa’s name, Father?”

“You must keep your name, Hrotgund. You are not only Hrotgund, you are Hrotgund, princess of Thuringia.”

“What does that matter, Father? Thuringia is lost to us.”

She knew by now when a subject made him uncomfortable. After a long silence, he said, “It may yet matter.” His manner softened. “But we may make this one change: we will put your name into Latin, to show you are part of the Church.”

Though he prepared her for her baptism, he could not leave Athies, where he was slowly strengthening the fragile faith of his flock. Ingund was to go with her to Noyon and to be the sponsor at her baptism.

The two left the morning before Lent began, seated in the back of a wagon with two trunks before them. Four warriors rode alongside it. As they approached Noyon, they came to a Roman road, most of its stone torn away. Soon a pale band appeared up ahead.

“What is that, Your Piety?”

“The walls, Hrotgund. Roman cities are walled with stone.” A long, massive form projected above these. “That is the church,” said the Queen. “The cathedra – the bishop’s seat.”

As they came closer, Hrotgund made out square towers, set evenly around the circular wall. Then they entered a thick stone gate. Up ahead, Hrotgund saw the cathedral at the center of the city. She had never seen a city before. As at Athies, many of the houses were of wattle and daub, but these were neatly set along streets that ran to either side. Others, in the Roman style, were like smaller versions of the villa, built of stone, their slightly peaked roofs covered with red tile.

Just inside the gate, the wagon turned right, into the courtyard of a long building, also made of stone. The entrance rose an extra story above the rest, its deeply sloping roof covered in gray tile. Women came out wearing white head scarves and simple white robes. One, slightly older, wore a fine golden cross and stood a little before the others. “Welcome to our convent,” she said. “I am the abbess.”

The nuns hurried over to help Ingund and Hrotgund down and unload their trunks. The abbess led them into a large reception hall, where other women, some of them mothers with babies, were waiting, standing about or seated on straw pallets set on the floor. Hrotgund and Ingund, being of royal rank, were each put in a nun’s cell, with little more than a straw pallet and a chamber pot to furnish it.

As nuns came to bring her water, brush her hair and otherwise help restore her from her journey, she heard singing, women’s voices raised in prayer. Looking out, she saw all the other catechumens, all women or their children, and thought with wonder that there were no men here; no warriors, no farmers, no craftsmen, only women, some living for prayer, others come to be welcomed into the Church. She felt a sudden surge of bliss at the purity of the place. What must it be to live like this each day!

This was her first Lent since becoming a Catholic. How she delighted in its sobriety, drinking water and eating only bread in the morning. During the day, she and the other catechumens walked to the cathedral, where deaconesses, all old women dressed in white like the nuns, took them aside and questioned them on their knowledge of the Faith, gently correcting them when they were wrong. The church itself stunned her, though it was a simple one of its kind, a long rectangular building flanked by two lower side structures. Inside, it was divided by two rows of columns into three parts, aisles on either side of a central nave which led to an ornate altar at the front. The paintings on the wall were crude, showing Christ and his disciples, and the marble floor mainly made up of black and white squares. But to her it looked magnificent.

Back at the convent, morning and evening, she heard those women’s voices raised in song. At last, she asked one of the nuns, “Do they never rest?”

“Only when relieved, my lady. A new group starts as another ends. A lord has endowed us for perpetual prayer.”

This must be, she thought, how it was in Heaven, with choirs of angels singing for Eternity.

She loved everything about this: the perpetual prayer, the lessons from the deaconesses, the pure female presence she found at the convent and even at the church, the simplicity of sleeping on a straw pallet and eating the meager fast diet. The week went too quickly, ending with the evening before Easter.

She had never celebrated Easter, this most sacred of moments in her new belief, the commemoration of the moment when Christ overcame death and reappeared to his followers, endowing every Christian since with the firm assurance of Eternal Life. The all-night vigil did not tire her in the least, so filled was she with fervor and exaltation. The beauty of the church, lit by innumerable candles with lilies set on every side, itself was enough to fill her with wonder; the psalms and hymns seemed a vibrant tide, lifting her far above the coarse and painful weight of daily existence. Women prayed on one side and men on the other, far more than at Athies, their light and deeper voices sounding as distinct waves in the echoing church.

With midnight came the miraculous moment of Easter. The catechumens moved to the front, ready to go to the baptistery. Bishop Médard, already old and known for his holiness, stepped before them to lead the ritual, his kindly face stern as he asked, “What do you ask of the Church?”

“Faith!” they all said together, the adults for themselves and the infants through their godparents.

When the responses were done, each came up to him and he made the sign of the Cross on their brow. After a brief prayer, he put his hand on each catechumen’s head and recited another short prayer, before a deacon brought him a small silver dish filled with salt. He prayed over this: “I exorcise you, creature of salt, in the name of God…. So that in the name of the Holy Trinity, you became an instrument of Salvation, putting the Enemy to flight...” Then one by one he put a bit of salt in each catechumen’s mouth, saying, “Receive the salt of wisdom, that it be for you a propitiation for Eternal Life. Amen.”

He led them in prayer: “God of our Fathers… deign to cast a redeeming glance on your servants here; and letting them taste this first food of salt, do not allow them to hunger any longer… I exorcise you, foul spirit, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” After each of these names, he made the Sign of the Cross. “Then recognize your sentence, cursed devil, and pay honor to the true and living God...” He took each person in turn and blew on their mouth, their forehead and their chest, reciting yet another exorcism over each, ensuring that Satan was far from this holy work. When he was done, he put part of his stole over each person, welcoming them into the temple of God.

After a third exorcism, he touched his finger to his tongue and then put his spit on each catechumen’s ear and nostrils, saying as he touched the ear, “Epheta!”; that is, “Open!”. Then he asked, “Do you renounce Satan and all his works?” Hrotgund thought of all the times she had prayed to the demons, to Odin and Thor, and answered fervently, “I do!” After the other questions, he dipped his thumb in a cup of oil held by a deacon and made the Sign of the Cross on her chest and between her shoulders.

When he had done this for each catechumen, he put aside his purple stole and wiped his thumb off on a cloth, before putting on a white stole. After another prayer, all the catechumens turned to the west; that is, to the back of the church. He asked, “Do you renounce Satan?” All old enough answered, for themselves or the child they held, “I do”. Having done this three times, all turned to the east, and he asked, “Do you attach yourself to Christ?” and those grown said, “I do,” three times.

He proceeded alone to the baptistery outside, to bless the water and pour the holy chrism in it. Then the deacons began to take the newborns and their godparents out, one by one. Hrotgund stood in silence, already grateful to be attached to Christ and cleansed of the demons who had once been her gods.

At last, a deaconess led her and Ingund into the baptistery, a hexagonal building of stone with a domed roof. A stone bath stood in the middle, fed by a stream that entered on one side and went out the other. An ornate vessel hung above it. The painted walls showed John baptizing Christ. Six alcoves along them were closed with curtains. The old woman and Ingund led her to one at the front and stripped her naked. Wrapping her in a white linen cloth, they took her out to the bath and had her step into it as they pulled the cloth away. She knelt in the water, her head half-bent.

The bishop approached and asked, “Do you want to be baptized?” “I do.” When he asked her what her new name was to be, Ingund answered for her: “Radegund.” Bishop Médard gently pushed her face down into the water, saying, “Radegund, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” making the Sign of the Cross after each name. He did all this three times. Then he lifted her head and anointed her forehead with the Holy Chrism. The lemon scent of the balm smelt to her like Grace itself.

The bishop wiped the oil from his thumb and her forehead, then took a white robe and held it open above her. As she rose into it, he said, “Receive the white robe; may you wear it immaculately before the tribunal of Our Lord Jesus Christ for life eternal. Amen.” She stepped out and on to the edge of the pool, now wearing the white robe. He handed her a lit candle: “Receive a burning torch and, irreproachable, keep your Baptism; observe the commandments of God so that when the Lord comes to the wedding, you may run before him, in the company of all the saints in the celestial host, and so that you have eternal life, and that you live in the century of centuries. Amen.”

“May the Lord be with you.”

With that, the deaconess led her outside, where others already waited in their white robes. All waited for another hour, as others were baptized. Radegund drank in the purity of her white robe, the ecstasy of being at last fully in the embrace of Christ, until finally the bishop came out and began to lead them back into the church.

She entered with the others, carrying her candle and wearing her white robe. They moved to the front of the church where the bishop began the prayers for Holy Communion. He blessed the wine in the silver pitcher and the small, low loaves, marked across the top with a cross, before breaking these up and stacking the pieces on the tray. Radegund joined the line before him. An assistant covered her cupped hands with a cloth, as he did those of each woman, to protect the Body of Christ from the Original Sin in a woman’s touch. Then the bishop placed a piece of the Host on it and she hungrily, blissfully, tasted for the first time the Body of her Lord. She was part of Him now, joined in the most immediate, material way.

When all had received Communion, the bishop blessed milk and honey and the neophytes lined up to receive these. Ingund herself held the spoon as Radegund tasted in this life the promised blessings of that to come.

For the next week, she wore the white robe as she joined processions through the streets, showing to the city all the new members of the Church’s Body, before returning to the cathedral to hear the bishop instruct them in their duties as Christians. At Vespers, they would return together to the baptistery, the holy place where each had been reborn. Each day, too, they took Communion again. She was shocked to see some take this lightly, mechanically. To her, it was, each time, a moment of exaltation and bliss.

The Saturday in albis, she resigned herself to putting aside the white garment which had enveloped her in purity. The next day, the Quasimodo Sunday, the bishop began the Mass by addressing the neophytes: “Like newborn children, desire pure milk, in order to grow to Salvation.” After Communion, each received a small wax medallion, made from the wax of the candles used at Easter and mixed with ointment, marked with the Lamb of God carrying the standard of the cross. They wore it at their neck, a reminder to imitate Christ’s gentle nature and to be ready, like Him, to be sacrificed for the world’s salvation.

And so her rebirth was complete. She had cast off the pagan stain and was born again in Christ.

The next morning, the warriors, who had been staying in the bishop’s house, returned with the ox-drawn wagon and she and Ingund prepared to leave. Radegund tearfully embraced the abbess and the nuns, then lingered a moment longer, listening to those voices raised in perpetual prayer.

As she got up in the wagon and it started towards the town gate, she felt as if she were leaving Paradise.

TO BE CONTINUED -->