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Not far from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in 1848, where, during a stay at Ems, we paid a visit of two days.
"Dear me!" said the Professor to himself, not without a little shiver of apprehension, "this is very interesting. I seem to have put myself back into the tenth century. Yes, that is certainly tenth-century armour that they're wearing. I mustn't let them see me, or there's no telling what they'd think of an elderly gentleman in a soft hat and a twentieth-century morning suit.
That the defeated side sometimes consoled themselves with this explanation of a notable warrior's fall is proved by the tenth-century dirge on Eirik Bloodaxe, where Sigmund the Volsung asks in Valhalla: "Why didst thou take the victory from him, if thou thoughtest him brave?" and Odin replies: "Because it is uncertain when the grey Wolf will come to the seat of the Gods."
Three tenth-century Spanish MSS., two from the Abbey of S. Pedro de Cardeña, one from Silos, happen, by an odd and lucky accident, to be elaborately described in Berganza's España Sagrada; how it was that exactly these books came into Libri's hands it is not likely that we shall discover.
Not far from Coblenz, and past the island of Nonnenwerth, is the old tenth-century castle of Sayn, which stood until the Thirty Years' War, and below it, quiet, comfortable, large, but unpretending, lies the new house of the family of Sayn-Wittgenstein, built in the year 1848.
There are many striking fragments of architectural carving, among which one of the most interesting is a balustrade bearing close resemblance to the carving upon an ambo at S. Agata, Ravenna, but constructed of many pieces, whereas that is an adaptation of a portion of a fluted column. There are also a good many pieces of ninth and tenth-century work, and a large collection of Christian lamps.
The cloister of the abbey is certainly of a date later than the massacre of the monks, which took place according to tradition in the little square of wild greensward which lies within it; but the roughness of its masonry, the plain barrel roof, and the rude manner in which the low, gloomy vaulting is carried round its angles, are of the same character as in the usual tenth-century buildings of Southern Gaul.
Here, in its frowning tenth-century castle, which fronts upon the river immediately in the foreground of the Cathedral of St. Here, too, Anne of Brittany was born, and here she married Charles VIII., thus uniting the Duchy of Brittany with the crown of France. Her subsequent marriage, in the chapel of the castle, with Louis XII., made for ever impossible the future independence of the city.
We are on firmer ground when we come to the time of the tenth-century house of Benedictine nuns dispersed by Henry II for "that they did by their scandalous and irreligious behaviour bring ill fame to Holy Church." It had been founded by a royal criminal, that stony-hearted Elfrida of Corfe, who murdered her stepson while he was a guest at her door.
Amongst fragments of ninth and tenth-century carving a pattern closely resembling Syrian ornament was found. At Knin, when the railway was being made, stones with ninth-century patterns were also found. This city was a royal residence and seat of the courts of justice, and in the middle of the eleventh century the bishop of Knin was made primate of Croatia and a councillor of the king.
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