St. Peter's Square

When a car park was dug under St. Peter's Square a few years ago, a number of graves were discovered on the site of the former church of the abbey. Only important people were buried in that church. Here they found a skeleton of a woman. This could be the skeleton of Judith of West Francia who died in 870. She was also known as Judith Martel. She was a Frankish princess, married to two successive kings of Wessex. She married for the third time, this time to Baldwin I with the Iron Arm, who had abducted her from the convent in Senlis around Christmas 861, an act known as the Elopement of Judith. To stay out of the clutches of her furious father, they wandered around Europe for a while, taking shelter with her uncle Lothair II until October. They fled on pilgrimage to Rome, and through the intervention of Pope Nicholas I, they were officially married in Auxerre on December 13, 863. Her father would eventually make Baldwin the first Count of Flanders. But Judith had specifically chosen him. And that makes her a bit of the primeval moder of the Counts of Flanders. But proof that this is her skeleton that was found here has yet to be provided.

Pascal Brackman