Fate, most agreeably, has granted my wish, my prayers deserved a savory gift
that fed the sisters, but did more good for me:
they’re sated by food while I’m nourished by love,
glittering with decency as you fashion two meals:
restoring my heart as they eat what you serve,
food feeding their bodies, love nourishing my soul—
because I need you all the more, you come a sweeter meal to me.
In pious prayer may great God hear your petitioning
and wash over your lips an unending feast.
—Venantius Fortunatus, sixth century C.E.1
If such words do not inspire you to infuse your cooking with love and serve it to those you hold dear, you must be missing either a heart or a stomach. As we will see, the sixth-century poet and churchman Venantius Fortunatus—whom the French today call Fortunat—was lacking in neither. His platonic affection for a former queen sequestered in a convent and the divine dishes she prepared especially for him have been preserved in his poetry as a gastronomic love story for the ages.
This particular poem was written at a time when the Merovingian dynasty was often at war within itself, following the death of Clovis in 511. The Merovingian kings had the habit of bequeathing their wealth and land to all of their sons, which meant that every time a king died, the kingdom was divided again. Brothers fought each other frequently to expand their portions of the heritage. Yet somehow, despite all the family feuds, Francia remained in the hands of the Merovingian dynasty, although by the late seventh century its kings had weakened to the point of being virtual figureheads. True authority shifted to the powerful royal official known as the “mayor of the palace.”
Life for the women of the Merovingian aristocracy was particularly grim. Their destiny was to marry and try to produce a male heir, and few women were lucky to live long and not die in childbirth (the life expectancy for women then was only twenty-nine years).2 They could only inherit wealth if no eligible males still lived, and they definitely could not inherit the throne. Polygamy was not forbidden, and it was accepted that a man (especially an aristocratic man) could have more than one wife, although it was not common practice. Adultery by women was strictly forbidden and punished severely, but it was not uncommon for men to have mistresses. All in all, it was a quintessentially patriarchal society. The only option for a woman who did not marry was to enter one of the convents that began to emerge in this era. They became sanctuaries of a sort for unmarried and widowed women.
The woeful options for women at this time can be seen in the story of Radegund, the daughter of the king of Thuringia, a territory in what is now central Germany. In 531, Thuringia was conquered by two Frankish kings, Theodoric and Chlothar, both sons of Clovis. The kingdom was added to the Merovingian lands, and the eleven-year-old Radegund and her brother were given to Chlothar as tribute.
When Radegund turned eighteen, she was forced to marry Chlothar, although she felt no love for the man who had invaded her homeland and uprooted her from her family. In all her years of unhappy marriage, she never gave birth to a child. She took refuge in studying, praying, and helping the poor and the sick—so much so that it was said that the king had married a nun. But Radegund was a warm, intelligent, and extremely pious woman. Her charitable works and her devotion to God soon gave her the reputation of a saint.
Chlothar eventually allowed Radegund to live in a royal villa in Saix, a village in the Loire Valley not far from Saumur. But at some point, the king apparently tired of the arrangement and demanded that she return to his court. According to Christian legend, Radegund was saved from this fate by the “miracle of the oats.” As she fled the king’s men, a field of newly planted oats suddenly grew to full size and concealed her flight. Her pursuers, astounded by this miracle and not wishing to offend God, gave up the chase.
A more prosaic account has it that Radegund fled the king after he had her brother murdered, and she then convinced a few powerful Frankish bishops to make her a deaconess and threaten the king with excommunication should he try to recapture her. In any event, Radegund was now free of the king’s clutches. She embraced a religious life and helped found the abbey of Sainte-Croix de Poitiers. Out of humility, she joined the abbey as a nun, not the abbess. Her lady-in-waiting and friend, Agnès, became abbess instead.
It was at the abbey that Radegund and Agnès came to know the Italian poet and traveler Venantius Fortunatus. He was originally from Treviso, Italy, but fled the city ahead of invading Goths. He eventually reached Metz, where the king of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia had his court. Fortunat’s poetry attracted many royal patrons, and he began to make a name for himself, later moving to Paris, then Tours, then Poitiers. Fortunat loved life and food and was happy to unashamedly proclaim that he did.
How exactly Fortunat met Radegund is not clear, but he would certainly have heard about her, as her story was quite uncommon. What is clear is that a deep friendship and (platonic) love developed between him and Radegund and Agnès, and food seemed to have been a way for the two women to show him their affection. In return, he would write poems praising them and their cooking, and also sometimes send them small gifts. When Radegund and Agnès fasted as part of their religious observance, Fortunat would send them notes begging them to eat a little something. When Lent was finally over, he would send them more letters expressing his happiness that the fast could end.
At one point, it seems that our charming nuns gave Fortunat a bit too much food, and he suffered from some ailment. His doctor put him on a strict diet and he ranted about it to Agnès and Radegund, despairing that he could not see them or eat their culinary delights. He had nothing good to say about the doctor (“No meal ever satisfies him,” he harrumphed).3 But eventually Fortunat recovered, and once again received “meals dripping in honey, like the sweet combs flowing from your devoted lips.”4 Honey was a particular favorite of his.
Fortunat left behind a memorable description of the food provided by the nuns, and it also gives us a good idea of what one might eat during those “dark ages” (if one were lucky enough to be surrounded by attentive nuns, that is):
Your sisterly concern never lets me forget
how the meals you bring keep me alive:
The bounty of today’s supper was prime,
at your table vegetables drizzled in honey
ran twice up and down the board,
the smell alone could have fattened me,
the server could barely manage the loads,
his feet were blistered at meal’s end.
Then a haughty mound of meat appeared,
a mountain—with adjoining hills,
fish and ragout girding them,
a little garden for supper within.
Gluttonous, greedy, I scarfed it all down:
mountain and garden in a sluggish gut.
I can’t remember much after this, since your gifts conquer me.
Off to heaven, conqueror Agnes, above the clouds, fly away.5
The religious authorities must have not seen his gluttony as too terrible a sin, as he ended his life as the bishop of Poitiers and was eventually venerated as a saint in France and Italy. And perhaps unsurprisingly, he is now known in France as the patron saint of male chefs and gourmands, absolving us from our gastronomic sins. Centuries later, the great French chef Auguste Escoffier paid homage to Fortunat and his love of food by dedicating a recipe to him: cochon de lait Saint-Fortunat. It involves cooking a whole suckling pig stuffed with herbs, brandy, sausages, and chestnuts—the kind of dish that undoubtedly would have sent Fortunat into a state of rapture.
As for Radegund, she too became a saint, even more well-known than Fortunat. Her abbey was destroyed in the French Revolution, but the beautiful eleventh-century church built upon her crypt in Poitiers remains. It features a stunning stained glass window, with one panel depicting the miracle of the oats; for centuries, worshippers presented offerings of oats to Saint Radegund. And she is now known in France as the patron saint of female chefs. Whatever one may think of the necessity of considering male and female chefs separately, it is perhaps fitting that in this way, these two great friends and fellow gastronomes are forever linked in the legends of France.