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History of the Franks
St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927
Book 3, 31. Of the Daughter of Theodoric, King of Italy
Theodoric, king of Italy, who had taken to wife the sister of King Clovis, now died and left his queen with a little daughter. When the girl grew up, the levity of her lover1 caused her to neglect the wise counsel of her mother, who destined a king’s son for her; she chose instead her slave named Traguilla, with whom she eloped to a city where she was safe from attack. Her mother was enraged, and implored her no longer to abase her noble lineage, but to dismiss the slave and accept a man of royal blood equal to her own, whom she had chosen for her. But the daughter would by no means consent. Then the mother in her wrath sent armed men against her, who, coming upon them, put Traguilla to the sword, beat the princess, and brought her back to her mother’s house. They both lived as members of the Arian sect, and as it is their custom, when they approach the altar, for the kings to communicate from one cup and the lesser people from another, the daughter put poison in the chalice from which her mother was to drink. The queen drank from it, and straightway died. There can be no doubt that such a crime as this was the work of the Devil. What shall these miserable heretics answer to the charge that the Enemy is present in their holy place? But as for us who confess the Trinity in one equality and omnipotence, even should we drink deadly poison in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, it should nothing harm us. The people of Italy, indignant at the act of this woman, called in Theudat, king of Tuscany, and established him as king over them. But when the new king learned the wickedness which the harlot had wrought, and how she had murdered her own mother for the sake of a slave whom she had taken to her, he caused a bath to be heated to an exceeding great heat, and commanded that she should be shut up in it together with one of her maids. But no sooner had she gone within amidst the hot vapour than she fell dead upon the paved floor and was destroyed. When the two kings Childebert and Lothar, her cousins, and likewise Theudebert, heard that she had lost her life through so shameful a punishment, they sent an embassy to Theudat, upbraiding him for her death, and saying: ‘If thou make not composition for so having used us, we will take away thy kingdom, and condemn thee to a like punishment.’ The king in fear sent them fifty thousand pieces of gold. Childebert, who was always envious and crafty in his dealings with King Lothar, divided this gold between himself and his nephew Theudebert, and they agreed together to give no share to King Lothar. But he, by seizing the treasure of Chlodomer, deprived them of much more than the sum of which they had defrauded him.
Notes
- Amici sui. Perhaps animi should be read, when the sense would be ‘levity of mind’.