A letter to her brother

Translated letter:

Most beloved brother in God and dearest in the flesh, Berhtgyth salutes Balthard in the name of Christ. My soul is weary of my life because of our fraternal love, for I am alone, left behind and without help of kin. For my father and my mother abandoned me, but the Lord has taken me up. Many are the congregations of water between me and you, yet let us be joined in love because true love is never divided by the borders between places. But still I say that sadness never recedes from my soul, nor can I rest my mind in sleep, because love is as strong as death. I therefore ask you now, most beloved brother, to come to me or have me come to you, so that I might see you before I die, because your love never leaves my soul. Brother, your only sister salutes you in Christ. I pray for you as for myself, in days and nights, in hours and moments, that you might always have health with Christ.

Farewell, living happily, so that you might be holy in simplicity. May eternal health be granted to you by the heights. Let us live life only for God, always forever more. Indeed, I seek this very thing in my prayers, to ask for His aid most frequently with tears pouring down to the ground, so that we might be worthy of glory where the most joyful songs of the angels resound, the joy of heaven, the clear compassion of Christ, He of high praise forever. May we thrive, victresses* joined with the angelic thousands, living forever in the perpetual joys of paradise. Elonqueel and Michael, Acaddai, Adonai, alleuatia, alleluia.*

Original letter:

Dilectissimo fratri in Domino et in carne carissimo, Balthardo Berhtgyth in Christi nomine salutem. Tedet animam meam vitae meae* propter amorem fraternitatis nostrae, ego enim sola, derelicta et destituta auxilio propinquorum. Pater enim meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me, Dominus autem adsumpsit me.* Multae sunt aquarum congregationes* inter me et te, tamen caritate iungamur quia vera caritas numquam locorum limite frangitur. Sed tamen dico quod umquam non recessit tristitia ab anima mea, neque per somnium mente quiesco, quia fortis est ut mors dilectio.* Nunc ergo rogo te, dilectissime frater mi, ut venias ad me aut me facias venire, ut te conspiciam antequam moriar, quia numquam discedit dilectio tua ab anima mea. Salutat te in Christo, frater, soror tua unica. Oro pro te sicut pro me, diebus ac noctibus, horis atque momentis, ut sanitatem semper habeas cum Christo.

Vale, vivens feliciter, ut sis sanctus simpliciter. Tibi salus per saecula tribuatur per culmina/ Vivamus soli domino vitam semper in seculo./ Profecto ipsum precibus peto profusis fletibus(a)/ Solo(b) tenus sepissima subrogare auxilia/ Ut simus digni gloria ubi resonant carmina/ Angelorum laetissima, aethralea laetitia,(c)/ Clara Christi clementia, celse laudis in secula./ Valeamus angelicis victrices iungi(d) milibus/ Paradisi perpetuis perdurantes in gaudiis/ Elonqueel et Michael, Acaddai, Adonai, alleuatia, alleluia.(e)

Historical context:

Maude notes that Berhtgyth speaks of herself as "your only sister" and in the third letter she addresses him as her "only and beloved brother." This emphasis suggests that they are each other's only close relations.  The letter ends with a short poem.

Scholarly notes:

* These names appear to be “names for God in garbled Hebrew,” and it’s possible that she thought they would function as a guarantee that her prayer for salvation would be heeded. This list of magical names “is not a usual aspect of Anglo-Saxon Christian writing, and is not paralleled elsewhere in the mission's letter collection.” See Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 95. However, a parallel could be found in the obscure codes used elsewhere in the Vienna Codex, including a coded alphabet used in some of the letters and a palindrome on f. 39v. See Unterkircher, Sancti Bonifacii Epistolae, 27-29.

a flectibus b sola c laetititia d iunge * In my translation of victrices as “victresses” here, I follow Jane Stevenson in her monograph Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 95. This translation calls attention to the feminine collective noun, suggesting the poem could first have been written for a female companion.

* Job, 10.1. * Psalms 27.10. * Genesis 1.10. * Song of Songs, 8.6

Printed source:

Kathryn Maude, Berthgyth's Letters to Balthard, ed. and trans. (Medieval Feminist Forum, A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, 2017).  The text and translation are reprinted here with the generous permission of the translator and the series editor, Mary Dockray-Miller.

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