THE TENTH BOOK 237 and when they found no candles to light they took a cask from the storehouse which had been pitched and left to dry and set fire to it, and there was a great light while it burned, and they made plunder of all the furniture of the monastery, leaving only what they were unable to carry off. This happened seven days before Easter. And as the bishop was distressed at all this and could not calm this strife of the devil, he sent to Chrodield, saying:
- 'Let the abbess go, so that she shall not be kept in prison during
these days ; otherwise I will not celebrate the Lord's Easter festival nor shall any catechumen receive baptism in this city unless you order the abbess to be set free from the confinement in which she is held. And if you refuse to let her go, I will call the citizens together and rescue her." When he said this, Chrodield appointed assassins, saying : ^'If any one tries to carry her off by violence, give her a thrust with the sword at once." Now Flavian came in those days ; he had lately been appointed domesticus, and by his aid the abbess entered St. Hilary's Church and was free. Meantime mur- ders were being committed at the holy Radegunda's ^ tomb, and certain persons were hacked to death in a disturbance before the very chest that contained the relics of the holy cross. And since this madness increased daily because of Chrodield's pride, and continual murders and other deeds of violence, such as I have mentioned above, were being done by her faction, and she had become so swollen up with boastfulness that she looked down with lofty contempt upon her own cousin Basina, the latter began to repent and say : ^'I have done wrong in supporting haughty Chro- dield. Behold I am an object of contempt to her and am made to appear a rebel against my abbess." She changed her course and humbled herself before the abbess and asked for peace with her; and they were equally of one thought and purpose. Then when the outrages broke out again, the men who were with the abbess, while resisting an attack which Chrodield's followers ^ had made, wounded one of Basina's men who fell dead. But the abbess' men took refuge behind the abbess in the church of the confessor, and on this account Basina left the abbess and departed. But the men fled a second time, and the abbess and Basina entered ^ Daughter of Berthar, a Thuringian king, and the wife of Clothar I. ' Chrodieldis scola.
