I. was replaced by the emperor's nominee, Gregory V. Almost
as soon as Gregory was seated he summoned a council (998), in which
Gerbert, now Robert's bitter enemy, sat as Bishop of Ravenna. This
council, largely controlled by the vindictive Gerbert, threatened the
kingdom of France with a universal interdict, suspending all religious
rites but those of baptism and extreme unction, if Robert would not
repudiate Bertha. The decree commanded "that King Robert, who has,
contrary to the holy canons of the Church, married his cousin, Bertha,
shall forsake her at once, and shall perform a penance of seven years,
in accordance with the rules and customs of the Church. If he obey not,
may he be anathema! And so also be it as regards Bertha! That
Archambaud, Archbishop of Tours, who consecrated this incestuous union,
and all the bishops who sanctioned it by their presence, be refused the
Holy Communion until such time as they shall have come to Rome to make
amends to the Holy See!"

One can imagine that, to a nature as devout as Robert's, such a curse
was almost overwhelming. Yet he and Bertha endured for some time the
horrors which this excommunication brought upon them, and Robert
resisted with far more spirit than one would have supposed him to
possess. The curse fell upon France, and upon its king and queen, who
were surely no more morally guilty than their unfortunate subjects.
Awful were the effects of the curse, according to Petrus Damianus, who
records with pious unction most of the signs and wonders with which the
age was filled. All save a few of the lowest servants fled from the
accursed presence of Robert and his queen, and even these menials, when
they had prepared the king's food, deemed the very vessels from which he
had eaten polluted by his touch, and purified them by fire or destroyed
them. Bertha was reported to be a foul witch, and to have the foot of a
goose, and was nicknamed _la reine pedauque_, or _pied d'oie_ (Queen
Goose-foot). In her agitation and misery, the child she should have
borne was prematurely brought forth. The charitable Damianus tells us
that it was currently reported to be of monstrous form, having the head
and neck of a swan and not of a human being.

Whether these horrors were direct effects of God's wrath or had birth in
the zealous imagination of a writer whose interest it was to lay on the
colors in his description of the blasting effects of excommunication,
Robert and Bertha had to r