Читать книгу Hereward, the Last of the English - Charles Kingsley - Страница 8

The dominion of Baldwin of Lille,—Baldwin the Debonair,—Marquis of Flanders, and just then the greatest potentate in Europe after the Kaiser of Germany and the Kaiser of Constantinople, extended from the Somme to the Scheldt, including thus much territory which now belongs to France. His forefathers had ruled there ever since the days of the “Foresters” of Charlemagne, who held the vast forests against the heathens of the fens; and of that famous Baldwin Bras-de-fer,—who, when the foul fiend rose out of the Scheldt, and tried to drag him down, tried cold steel upon him (being a practical man), and made his ghostly adversary feel so sorely the weight of the “iron arm,” that he retired into his native mud,—or even lower still.

He, like a daring knight as he was, ran off with his (so some say) early love, Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald of France, a descendant of Charlemagne himself. Married up to Ethelwulf of England, and thus stepmother of Alfred the Great,—after his death behaving, alas for her! not over wisely or well, she had verified the saying:

and ran away with Baldwin.

Charles, furious that one of his earls, a mere lieutenant and creature, should dare to marry a daughter of Charlemagne’s house, would have attacked him with horse and foot, fire and sword, had not Baldwin been the only man who could defend his northern frontier against the heathen Norsemen.

The Pope, as Charles was his good friend, fulminated against Baldwin the excommunication destined for him who stole a widow for his wife, and all his accomplices.

Baldwin and Judith went straight to Rome, and told their story to the Pope.

He, honest man, wrote to Charles the Bald a letter which still remains,—alike merciful, sentimental, and politic, with its usual ingrained element of what we now call (from the old monkish word “cantare”) cant. Of Baldwin’s horrible wickedness there is no doubt. Of his repentance (in all matters short of amendment of life, by giving up the fair Judith), still less. But the Pope has “another motive for so acting. He fears lest Baldwin, under the weight of Charles’s wrath and indignation, should make alliance with the Normans, enemies of God and the holy Church; and thus an occasion arise of peril and scandal for the people of God, whom Charles ought to rule,” &c., &c., which if it happened, it would be worse for them and for Charles’s own soul.