Your Royal Majesty Queen Mathilda of Germany,
I
write to you as your humble and devoted servant on this the 14th of
February, a fitting day, I believe, to compose such a letter as this. For I must confess that, though I have had
the opportunity to observe you only from afar, being unworthy of the honor of
approaching Your Majesty in a more intimate manner, I nevertheless feel in both
my heart and soul an overwhelming love for Your Majesty’s eminent grace and
virtue. Having witnessed on several
occasions your remarkable magnanimity and having heard various and wondrous
tales of your deeds, I do believe that in both your words and actions you have
come to exemplify both the duties of a wife and queen as well as the chasteness
of a true Christian woman.
It
has been recorded in the annals of your glorious dynasty that you trace your
lineage from the venerable Widikund who, as the story says, was by the grace of
God and the benevolence of the reverend bishop Boniface turned away from the
spiritual penury of paganism to embrace the Christian faith. Just as he became a true and devout servant
of our Lord, so too have you seen fit to devote large amounts of your wealth to
the establishment and upkeep of monasteries and nunneries across the realm. Not
only do you lavish your wealth upon the servants of God, but you willingly give
to the poor on every possible occasion. For it is said that Your Majesty
“neither [lusts] for wealth nor [fears] poverty” and that your “hand [is] always
open to the poor”; indeed, you believe Christ’s own body to be hidden beneath
the rags of the destitute who come to you for succor.
It
is amazing when one considers the words of those who sing your praises, that
even after the abrupt passing of your husband the King of blessed memory, you comport
yourself “with such complete modesty that many people would have thought [Your
Majesty to be] a maiden, had they not seen the great multitude of [Your
Majesty’s] offspring.” And indeed, it is
this which sets you apart from most other women, that even as you are bound by
the earthly obligations of a queen and wife, you do not let your secular duties
tear you wholly away from your devotion to spiritual matters. One need only
look to the exalted characters of your numerous children to see that you have
not shirked your duties as a mother even as you have worked so diligently to
serve the Lord.
If
only my wife would conduct herself according to your most lofty example! Unlike Your Majesty, she hoards her wealth
for her own pleasure. I have numerous times caught her nodding off during
church services, while it is said that you are daily occupied in fervent prayers. I heard tell of a peculiar miracle, in which
Your Majesty tossed a loaf of bread from a cliff into the valley below,
intending with it to feed the hungry peasantry.
The loaf, it is said, fell unbroken into the lap of the peasant for
which it was intended. Had my wife possessed that loaf of bread, she would
doubtless have just eaten it herself, so given is she to gluttony! Would that I, in my younger years, had met a
woman such as you whom I might have made my wife!
In
your marriage to the late King Henry, you surely conducted yourself in
accordance with the ideals of conjugal chastity. I marvel only (and I pray Your Majesty not
find it too presumptuous of me to ponder such a thing) that the King did not mind
you leaving his bed at night to spend your time in solitary prayer, or that he
gave you leave to question his legal decisions and intervene on behalf of those
who had incited his anger. Did he never
feel that his authority was being undermined? The only explanation can be this – that he viewed Your Majesty’s
exceeding holiness as such a boon both to his court, his kingdom, and his
legacy that he too was swept up by your zealous chastity. For as it is said of
Your Majesty and the late King Henry: “In them lived one love for Christ, a
shared sense of goodness, one will pleasing to God, and a singular capacity for
righteousness.”
I
leave you, then, with this pithy exhortation to your immense virtue. Though I must continue to admire you from
afar, being myself unworthy to approach your eminence and myself a married man,
I pray that you hold these words dear to your heart, and continue in your
pursuit of righteousness.
With
love,
Your
Most Ardent Admirer
[All
quotes taken from Gilsdorf, Sean, trans.
Queenship and Sanctity: The
‘Lives’ of Mathilda and the ‘Epitaph’ of Adelheid. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2004.]
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