The dead could not be buried in the city. This had been true since Roman times. When nuns died, their bodies were taken to a small graveyard some distance from the city walls. Radegund was an old woman now, and felt her time near. She began to consider what would become of her remains and those of Agnes.

She petitioned Maroveus to build a small chapel by the graveyard. As always, he put obstacles in her way. But as the small graveyard grew, he too saw the problem must be addressed and allowed work to begin on what was to be called St. Mary’s Chapel.

As she felt her powers waning, Radegund began to worry about the future. Some of the younger nuns were quarrelsome. Their families had sent them to the convent as a “gift” to the Church or simply to be relieved of their care. Husbands who had found a favored mistress were not ashamed to exile their wives to the convent. She understood that not all the nuns left the world willingly, but she could only welcome them once they had.

Some too stayed proud. Chrodield still demanded deference as the daughter of a king, prompting Basina to do the same. When Agnes ordered them to clean the latrines, thinking to humble them, it only hardened their wills. Worse, word came to Agnes that Chrodield was spreading rumors. “Don’t you think it strange,” she said, “that the abbess spends so much time with that poet?” When accused of attacking Agnes, she protested, “Oh no, I would never say a word against her! But the abbess is so innocent. She does not understand what might be in a man’s mind.”

Agnes was too mortified to mention it to Fortunatus. When Radegund gently warned him that some were questioning his frequent meetings with the abbess, he was shocked. A few days later, he sent Agnes a poem:

By your office mother to me, sister in sweet love,

Whom I cherish in piety, faith, breast and heart,

Only with celestial feeling, not with any crimes of the body,

Not my flesh, but my spirit desiring your love.

This witness Christ and the apostles Peter and Paul

Pious companions to holy Mary who sees

That in my eyes is no other feeling

Than if, like Tatiana, you were my sister from the womb.

As if we both had been born from our mother Radegund,

Engendered from her chaste flanks

And fed together at her dear blessed breasts

By one flowing milk.

Ah, how I sigh at the hurt, I never feared a tale-bearer

Would give my words an evil sense.

But still I would live as we have

If you wish to maintain our sweet affection.

He asked Radegund if he should meet less often with Agnes; she assured him neither he nor Agnes was at fault. Taking Chrodield aside, she firmly reminded her of Leviticus 19:16: “Do not spread tales among thy people.” Chrodield sullenly denied she had done any wrong. But the talk soon ended.

More often, the nuns judged each other. One, Clotula, complained that her sisters did not devote themselves sufficiently to prayer. Agnes asked her privately to show more charity. But one morning a rope was found hanging from the outside walls – Clotula had escaped. Word came from St. Hilary’s that she had taken refuge there, living as a recluse. Agnes ordered that the rope be left hanging, an invitation for her to return. Months later, she did exactly that, climbing the same rope. Repenting her own pride, she asked to be locked into a hidden cell to live a solitary life.

Such incidents troubled Radegund. What would happen when she was gone? Would Maroveus remove Agnes as abbess? Would the more rebellious nuns appeal to their royal relations? Though she fought to stay humble, Radegund understood only too well that it was her own firm hand and unshakable will that held the convent together. Even the Rule seemed sometimes seemed at risk of fraying.

Turning to the bishops of Gaul, she wrote a long letter, appealing to them to protect the convent when she was gone. “Holy Lords…,” she began, asking them to ensure that Agnes remained abbess, that no royal hand be allowed to disrupt the convent, nor anyone allowed to leave it. She specifically, if glancingly, referred to “the bishop of the city”, praying that his brother bishops counter any move by Meroveus to take control.

After laying out other concerns, she asked that her letter be placed in the Church archives, as a guide for the future. The letter sent, she felt a great relief, the sense that at last she had completed her task.

Like the Great Deluge, grief’s terrible tide flooded the convent.

When Radegund did not come out, as she always had, to pray and do her chores, Agnes went into her cell and found her still, and not breathing. Too dumbstruck to cry, the abbess stumbled out, struggling speak, choking on her own words: “Sisters, our beloved Mother is no more.”

As the news spread through the dormitory, the kitchen, the workshops, the chapel, the scriptorium, some of the nuns started quietly sobbing, others let out piercing cries; yet others began to fall to the ground and rage with grief. Agnes stood watching, numb, unable to react, unable to fully comprehend that her companion, truly her mother since a young age, would no longer be there to guide and sustain her.

Fortunatus arrived a short while later, pale with grief. He came into the chapel where the nuns all knelt before the benches, praying for Radegund’s soul. He knelt before the relic of the Cross, fervently praying Christ to receive her soul, before rising to his feet and singing the Mass for the dead. When the Mass was done – he had barely gotten through it – he and Agnes, unable to embrace, looked with shared pain into each other’s eyes. “I must leave you to see to her,” he said, turning away as tears overwhelmed him.

Agnes returned to Radegund’s cell, her two assistants with her. Radegund lay on her palette, wearing her shirt of goat hair. “Bring me hot water, towels and ointments,” said Agnes. After the women left, Agnes knelt beside her old friend and began to pray for her soul.

Once they returned, carrying buckets of hot water, towels and jars of ointment, she rose to her feet and dismissed them, closing the curtain to Radegund’s cell. She began to roll up the hair shirt, then lifted Radegund’s frail body to remove it, revealing the martyred flesh: the lean, wrinkled body of an old woman with scars along the arms left long ago by the iron rings, the Chi Rhos branded inside her thighs, the scars above her knees where she had held the heated rim of the bronze bowl. Much of her skin was raw from the harsh goat hair. Her bones showed too clearly through her translucent skin.

For the first time, Agnes saw all the horrors Radegund had inflicted on herself, the burning and the cutting that marked her aged body, and for the first time she understood how much pain must have roiled inside her beloved Mother for her to inflict such torture on her outward self.

She did not know the details – Radegund had never told her of Erfurt, or of the other horrors, the killing of the two little princes, the slaughter of the Goth mothers and children – which had affected her so deeply. But now, seeing this self-ravaged body, she felt all the pain Radegund had never shared with her, and grief, an immense, suffocating grief, overcame Agnes as she buried her face against her Holy Mother’s cold body, weeping bitterly and inconsolably.

At last, struggling to be strong, she lifted her head, got to her feet and began to wash and anoint the body.

Laid out before the altar, her gray hair covered with a veil, her body beneath the white robe wrapped in perfumed bandages, Radegund was the picture of peace, her face serene despite its deep lines. Day and night the nuns streamed through, waiting patiently as others knelt to pray before the revered form. Many burst into tears as they came to where it lay.

Gregory had set out from Tours as soon as he heard the news. Agnes met him in the refectory. “When will Meroveus bury her?” he asked. A rare flash of anger crossed Agnes’ gentle, aged face. “He will not. He has left Poitiers, pleading urgent business.”

Gregory was aghast. “But she must be laid to rest!”

“Properly,” said Agnes, “with a bishop’s blessing.”

Gregory stared at the table, his jaw working. At last, he looked up. “Then I will officiate. And brave the wrath of my brother bishop.” While he shared Agnes’ anger, above all he was shocked. How could Maroveus slight Radegund even in death?

Workers came the next morning to take the body. After morning Mass, Agnes ordered the nuns into the refectory on the pretext that men had come to the convent. In fact, she wanted to avoid a disturbance when Radegund was taken at last from her bereaved community.

This worked long enough for the men to put the body, now fully wrapped, into the wagon. But one nun peeked out an opening in the hallway and saw the wagon start off. She gave out a piercing shriek and in an instant all the nuns were frantic, hysterical with renewed grief. Agnes tried to order them to stay inside, but as the wagon reached the gate, they flooded out, begging their mother not to leave them, tearing at their hair and robes.

Outside the convent walls, townsfolk began to follow the wagon, many too overcome with grief. As soon as it left the city gates, others from the countryside joined them. Gregory walked behind the wagon, through clouds of incense spread by two assistants. As the procession turned towards St. Mary’s Chapel, it approached the part of the wall that ran along the convent. Crowds of nuns clambered dangerously up to the battlements from the roofs beneath them, shouting and weeping as the wagon passed below.

Priests gave candles to those who followed, and so as the wagon came to the newly built chapel, a long line of lights followed. The crowd strained to see as the workers lifted the light, small body, wrapped in bandages, and took it down into the crypt, carefully laying it in a huge stone sarcophagus. All those who could followed and soon the small vaulted space was bright with candlelight, as Gregory stepped forward to speak and give his blessing.

No sooner had he finished than someone shouted, “She was a saint!” At once others took up the cry. Gregory hesitated; it was not his place to declare this. But all at once, a candle landed at the foot of the sarcophagus – many later claimed it flew on its own – and in a rush others followed, until the brilliant light of innumerable candles lit the stone, casting shadows on the body inside it.

Whatever the Church would later declare, she was now a saint in the people’s eyes, and so she was called from that day on: St. Radegund.

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