Saint Clotilda. By Godefroi Kurth, Professor at the Liege University.
Translated by V. M. Crawford. With a Preface by G. Tyrrell, 8.5. (Duckworth and Co. 3s.)—This Life of St. Clotilda appears in a series, and is written upon principles which, if carried through, will not, we think, make the series a success. The idea of the editor seems to be that truth about saints is only to be arrived at by ignoring the popular estimate of contemporary or nearly contemporary opinion; and so Professor Kurth endeavours to restore the real portrait of Clotilda by eliminating some savage traits tradition had worked into it ; and then having got rid of legendary accretions, he makes up for the paucity of material by overloading his pages with pious guesses and plausible proba- bilities about he Frankish Queen's life and character. This does not appear to us to be a profitable way of making hagiology. People who want saints without weaknesses or passions are not worthy to read saints' Lives at all. St. Clotilda has lived till now in the reverence of Christendom as a great-souled woman, who did good works, believed passionately, and lived virtuously; and to whom it was given to convert her husband Clovis to Christianity. But tradition, in painting her character, gives it some of the qualities of the virago. We can probably now never be quite sure whether or not Clotilda had violent pas- sions and thirsted for cruel vengeance after. suffering cruel . wrongs. But seeing what human nature is still capable of in such directions after nineteen centuries of Christian civilisation, it seems only too probable that she had these characteristics ; and we fail to see why, in order to glorify God and the Church, her biographers should find it necessary to be quite sure that she had them not. There is no doubt about her faith, her piety, her charity, and the austere retirement of her widowhood, spent in prayer awl fasting and almsgiving. We are quite willing to believe that some of her austerities went to the account of her own sins, and yet to honour her as a saint. But we hope all the saints who come into Mr. Duckworth's series are not going to be made colourless in order to satisfy the editorial conception of the best historic method of arriving at the truth o! medi val characters.
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