Saint Lydwine of Schiedam

The state of Europe during Lydwine’s lifetime was terrible. In France, first Charles VI. reigned, then Charles VII. Lydwine was born in the same year that Charles VI., at twelve years of age, ascended the throne of France. Even at this distance of time, the years of his reign call up horrible memories; they drip with blood and reek of licence; and in the light of the old chronicles, behind the dusty veil of history, four figures pass by.

The first is a man of weak intellect, with pale face and hollow cheeks, with eyes now dull, now full of fire. He vegetates in a palace in Paris, his clothes over-run with vermin, his hair and beard swarming with lice. This wretched being, before he became demented, had been a familiar figure, debauched, irascible and weak. It is the King, Charles VI., an imbecile taking part in the wild debauches of those afflicted like himself.

The second is an intriguing woman, eccentric, unreliable and imperious, wearing a head-dress ornamented like a devil’s head with two horns, and a dress cut very low in the neck, and trailing after her a figured train of great length; she shuffles as she walks, shod in slippers with points two feet long. This is the Queen of France, the Bavarian Ysabeau, who, absorbed in the writings of some unknown author, takes her place by the side of the husband she abhors.