St. Radegund

For last night I assigned my students the Life of St. Radegund. Radegund was one of several early medieval queens who became saints. She founded a nunnery and persuaded the Empress of Byzantium to send her a piece of the True Cross and several other relics, which put the place on the map. I chose her life because her story intersects several times with the story of Gregory of Tours, whose book we have been reading -- Gregory knew her and preached at her funeral -- and because Gregory tells the story of a revolt that took place among the nuns of Radegund's monastery just 20 years after she died.

Radegund was an athlete of asceticism who starved and otherwise tortured herself, and she liked to stage public scenes of self-humiliation, by washing lepers and the like. There is a funny line in the life, saying that whenever any holy abbot or bishop visited her she insisted on humbly washing his feet – “there was no resisting her.”

Good Sir, may wash your feet?

No, thank you.

Please, Sir?

Really, it’s not necessary.

But Sir, it is my custom and my dearest wish to humbly wash your feet.

My lady, I really do not wish to have my feet washed.

(Grabs cloth, lunges for bishop’s feet.) I must wash your feet!

Please stop!

I must! I must!

I insist that you stop molesting my feet!

YOU WILL SUBMIT TO MY HUMBLE FOOT WASHING! NUNS, SEIZE HIM AND HOLD HIM STILL!