he were determined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God.  The king, having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the assembly.  He came barefooted, in a posture of devotion and humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his excommunication by expiatory deeds.  And thus, by your authority, he earned absolution.  Then laying his hand on the book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath, in the following terms, to renounce his guilty and unlawful marriage:  ’Hearken, thou Lambert, bishop of Arras, who art here in place of the Apostolic Pontiff; and let the archbishops and bishops here present hearken unto me.  I, Philip, king of the French, do promise not to go back to my sin, and to break off wholly the criminal intercourse I have heretofore kept up with Bertrade.  I do promise that henceforth I will have with her no intercourse or companionship, save in the presence of persons beyond suspicion.  I will observe, faithfully and without turning aside, these promises, in the sense set forth in the letters of the Pope, and as ye understand.  So help me God and these holy Gospels!’ Bertrade, at the moment of her release from excommunication, took in person the same oath on the holy Gospels.”

According to the statement of the learned Benedictines who studiously examined into this incident, it is doubtful whether Philip I. broke off all intercourse with Bertrade.  “Two years after his absolution, on the 10th of October, 1106, he arrived at Angers, on a Wednesday,” says a contemporary chronicler, “accompanied by the queen named Bertrade, and was there received by Count Foulques and by all the Angevines, cleric and laic, with great honors.  The day after his arrival, on Thursday, the monks of St. Nicholas, introduced by the queen, presented themselves before the king, and humbly prayed him, in concert with the queen, to countenance, for the salvation of his soul and of the queen and his relatives and friends, all acquisitions made by them in his dominions, or that they might hereafter make, by gift or purchase, and to be pleased to place his seal on their titles to property.  And the king granted their request.”

The most complete amongst the chroniclers of the time, Orderic Vital, says, touching this meeting at Angers of Bertrade’s two husbands, “This clever woman had, by her skilful management, so perfectly reconciled these two rivals, that she made them a splendid feast, got them both to sit at the same table, had their beds prepared, the ensuing night, in the same chamber, and ministered to them according to their pleasure.”  The most judicious of the historians and statesmen of the twelfth century, the Abby Suger, that faithful minister of Louis the Fat, who cannot be suspected of favoring Bertrade, expresses himself about her in these terms:  “This sprightly and rarely accomplished woman, well versed in the art, familiar to her sex, of holding captive the husbands they have outraged, had acquired such an empire over her first husband, the count of Anjou, in spite of the affront she had put upon him by deserting him, that he treated her with homage as his sovereign, often sat upon a stool at her feet, and obeyed her wishes by a sort of enchantment.”