ABSTRACT

Ingitrude . . . now began to fail in health, and appointed her niece abbess in her stead. The community murmured at this act, but upon our reprimand contention ceased. Ingitrude was on bad terms with her daughter, who had taken her property from her; and she now adjured us that this daughter should not be suffered to offer prayers either in the monastery which she had founded, or at her tomb. She departed this life I believe, in the eightieth year of her life, and was buried on the eighth day of March. Nevertheless, her daughter Berthegund came to Tours, and not being received, went to King Childebert, begging him [for] permission to succeed her mother in the government of the monastery. The king had forgotten the decision which he had formerly given in favour of the mother, and now granted her a new diploma, signed by his own hand, to the effect that she might have possession of all that had belonged to her father and her mother, and take all that Ingitrude had left to the nunnery. Armed with this order she came back, and stripped the place so bare of all its furniture that she left nothing within but bare walls. She then assembled a motley crowd of scoundrels, ready for any lawless act, to carry off all the produce of any other lands given to the monastery by the devout. So many wicked things she did, that it were scarce possible to set them down in order. When she had possessed herself of all that I have described, she returned to Poitiers, venting false accusations against the abbess, notwithstanding that she was her nearest kinswoman.