Along the front of a great hall, the bishops sat in their white robes, each wearing his embroidered stole. The rebel nuns, their few remaining followers and simple spectators stood before them. They first called Chrodield to speak. Haggard and wild-eyed, she began to accuse the abbess of every crime. “She has hidden a man in the convent, dressed as a woman.” With that, she pointed towards the crowd, where the bishops were shocked to realize that one of those dressed as a woman was, indeed, a man. The bishops called him forward and asked why he did not wear men’s clothes. “I cannot do what a man does, and so this clothing suits me. But I only know the abbess by name and have never seen nor spoken to her, since I live forty miles from the convent.”

“Have you never lived in the convent then?”

“Once, long ago.”

Chrodield sneered. “What kind of abbess makes a man a eunuch, then has him live with her, as if at the Emperor’s palace?” But the abbess knew nothing of this. Reoval stepped forward in his black robe and explained that it was Radegund herself who had ordered him to ease the man’s suffering. “As I once saw done in Constantinople, I cut off his testicles, and returned him cured to his sorrowing mother. I have never heard that the present abbess had any knowledge of this.”

Chrodield twisted with anger. “Very well then! But that is not all!” She could no longer, she said, bear the hunger, the lack of clothes, the ill treatment resulting from Leubovera’s rule. She went on in an angry litany. The convent bath had been open to all comers; the abbess spent her time playing games; lay people came to eat with her; she had held her niece’s engagement feast in the convent. What is more, she said, her eyes alight, the abbess had had clothes made for her niece, using the silk covering for the altar, and taken the leaves of gold from around it to place on her niece’s neck; worse, she had had a strip made, with gold trimmings, for her niece to wear while putting on plays within the convent.

The abbess denied the nuns had gone hungry, except, like everyone else, in times of shortages. One had only to inspect their chests to see that each had more clothes than needed. As for the bath, it was Radegund herself who had decided that the new chalk was too harsh for the nuns and so the less sensitive servants had been invited to use it. Chrodield interjected: “But others have come to use it since!”

“I was unaware of that,” said the abbess. “If in fact it is true. Certainly, I never consented to it. And if you saw such a thing, why did you never inform me?” Chrodield flushed, silent. “As for playing games, we did that during the time of our Holy Mother and she never objected. Nor do the canons forbid it.” Here the bishops intervened. “Games have no place in a convent!” They imposed a penance on her for this, which she humbly accepted.

Radegund and Agnes too had served meals to select visitors, and this since the convent had been founded. But neither they nor she had shared in these. She had indeed received gifts for the engagement of her niece, an orphan, and done so with the knowledge of the bishop and others. But she had never held a feast inside the convent.

Didimie, a nun of noble birth, had given her the silk cloth, which she used to cover the altar. But first Didimie had cut out a piece for her to use as she chose, and it was that she had used to trim her niece’s tunic with purple. Didimie herself stepped forward and confirmed this. As for her supposed use of the leaves of gold and the gold trimming on the bandelette, Maccon himself declared he had had passed on twenty gold pieces from her niece’s fiancé, which she had used for these. All of this had been done publicly, using nothing of the Church’s.

Gregory turned to Chrodield and Basina. “Do you accuse the abbess of adultery, of commerce with a man? Of murder? Of witchcraft? Of any capital crime?”

Chrodield and Basina lowered their heads. “We only accuse her of what we have said. Of violating the Rule.”

With that, the bishops began to question nuns whose bellies stuck out beneath their habits. “Is this then what happens when you go about here and there, outside the convent, without the firm hand of your superior?” Shamed, the women begged pardon.

The bishops began to confer in low voices. At last, Maroveus, as bishop of the city, spoke. “We agree that the abbess has taken her obligations too lightly and have already imposed a penance for her worst fault. But none of this merits her removal.” His voice began to tremble. “You who have revolted however have ignored our own commands and even attacked ourselves and those of our party, besieged the convent and set fire to barrels in the courtyard, broken the doorposts with axes and levers, setting them on fire, mistreated the nuns even in the chapel, dragged them by the hair through the streets, locking them up. When we offered to ransom your prisoner so that she could take part in baptisms, neither our prayers nor hers sufficed.”

Chrodield writhed in fury. “I never ordered any of this! I never knew of it! And it was I who intervened to keep the abbess from being killed!”

Maroveus silenced her with a hard look. He went on. “And the man from the convent who was killed before Saint Radegund’s tomb? And your lack of repentance, even as you multiplied your faults?” His tone grew harsher. “Your group occupied the convent, refusing orders from the King himself, fighting those he sent under the Count with arrows and spears. And only yesterday did we learn that you had shamelessly taken the Holy Cross from the chapel! By God’s Grace, it has been returned. You have committed one capital crime after another and, when these went unpunished, only added others.”

He searched the women’s faces for some sign of repentance. Basina struggled to meet his gaze, but Chrodield remained defiant. “Will you then beg pardon of the abbess,” Maroveus asked, “and return in obedience to the convent?”

“No!’ she snarled. “I will kill her, the first chance I get!”

The crowd began to murmur as she turned on her heel and headed for the door, joined by a few nuns. Maccon’s men stepped forward, unsheathing their swords, but Maroveus put up his hand. “We must have no more violence.” He and the other bishops conferred again before he spoke, in a quavering voice, to the crowd: “We again declare these nuns excommunicated. The abbess is to be restored to her position. As for all that has been stolen from the convent which these nuns, despite our own orders, refuse to return, the King alone has power to see that this is done. Regarding Chrodield and those who have followed her, they are not to return to the convent they have attacked with such sacrilegious impiety.” Though his words were stern, his voice trembled; neither he nor his brother bishops could believe that their own orders and the King’s, the power of the Church itself, had so failed to restore the shattered community.

The Devil, it was plain, had won.

Chrodield returned to Childebert, accusing the abbess now of what she had not during the inquiry, saying that men lived with her in illicit commerce. The King had his soldiers arrest several of those named and bring them before him. But he found them guilty of no crime.

Still, he was weary of these quarrels. He ordered that Chrodield and Basina be given Communion. Basina, now fully repentant, begged forgiveness of the bishops and humbly returned to the convent. Chrodield, adamant, refused to follow suit so long as Leubovera was abbess. Despite her crimes – the deaths and mutilations that had followed, the dispersal of the nuns, the theft of so much from the convent –, the King gave her a country house near Poitiers, and allowed her to live in peace. The bishops did not dispute this decision; they were weary of the unrest.

Months after the nuns’ revolt, Gregory and Fortunatus knelt before St. Radegund’s tomb. Both were in tears, knowing how much harm had been done to their old friend’s work. They prayed to her to intercede, to undo the work of the Devil in her own convent. “The Church grows ever stronger,” said Gregory, “but the Devil does not sleep. We and those who follow us will long have need of your aid.” “Amen,” said Fortunatus.

They knelt together for a long time, praying fervently, calling on Radegund to continue her struggle from beyond the grave.