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74 B. MATILDA monastery had been seized by neigh- bonring potentates. She appealed to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. At first he would not move in the matter ; then, as he was anxious to see a woman so fiomed for her good qualities, he said, " If my cousin has anything to ask of me, let her come herself and pay me a visit." So Matilda had to go to tiie court at Eegensburg and stay there some time. She sat at the Emperor's table with the other guests, but arranged to be served with vegetables and water; the water turned into wine for her. When she had completed the business about which she went, she returned to Oettelstettin. About 1160, finding herself dying, she begged the nuns to take her back to Diessen to die and be buried with her own family. She had splendid hair of extraordinary length : a proof, says Wattembach, that she was not under any strict Eule. She concealed it all her life, but after her death it was regarded as a precious relic and used to be hung out from a high tower to ward off storms. Several miraculous cures were attributed to her during her life. Besides her sister Euphemia (14) and her brother St. Otho, bishop of Bam- berg, many saints came of the same family. Hedwig (3) was a daughter of the house of Andechs. AA.SS. Kuen, CoUeciio Scriptorum Ecdesiasticorum. Wattembach, DeuUchlands Geschichts- quelleii. B. Matilda (7), V. of Lapion, April 12, + c. 1200 or rather lat«r. She was daughter of a Eling of Scotland, and had four brothers ; a duke, who left his wife and went into voluntary poverty and exile ; a count, who became a hermit ; an archbishop, who left that office to become a Cistercian monk; the fourth was Alexander, who succeeded to the kingdom at the age of sixteen. Matilda, who was twenty, said to him, " All your brothers are going to save their souls ; you have nothing but an earthly king- dom. It is very pleasant to be a king, but you are losing your soul." So they went away together aud she taught him to milk cows and make butter and cheese. They went to Fogny in the diocese of Laon, and there she placed him as a dairy boy and he was found to excel in making cheese, and was taken by the monks as a lay-brother. Matilda repre- sented to him that their gain was great in having left their country, family, and rank, but that it was incomplete as long as they did not also separate from each other. He wept, for he felt this to be harder than all the sacrifices he had hitherto made, but he was accustomed to be led by her. She Went to Lapion, and lived in a little hut and maintained herself by the labours of her hands. She woold not glean with the other poor people, but after them, among the pigs. She used no pillow, and had scarcely anything to lie upon between her and the ground. She took her food on her horny knees. She spent all her time in devotion and gave her whole soul and attention to prayer, to such an extent that during a tremendous storm she neither heard the thunder nor saw the lightning. She was recognized nine years before her death by some soldiers who had seen her in Scotland ; whereupon she would have fled from Lapion, but the people insisted on her remaining amongst them. She wrought miracles both before and after her death. Only on his death-bed did Alexander, at the command of the prior, reveal his history. Colgan, Jan. 1, Brit. Sancta, Wilson, English Mart, AA.SS, B. Matilda (8) de Bierbeke, May 7, + 1272. She was third abbess of the Cistercian cloister of Florival. She is called Blessed in Gallia Christiana, Stadler. St. Matilda (9) or Mechtild of Magdeburg, 1212-1277. She was born in her father's castle near Magdeburg, and was brought up at Court. She had a brother Baldwin, a Dominican monk of Halle. She was too clever and sin- cere to be content with the lukewarm religion and the abuses in practice which prevailed. " When she was twenty-four she fled from her home and desired to become a nun in her own town, but she would not tell who she was, and as they would not receive an unknown person into any monastery, she took refuge