The Flemish count Charles the Good was stabbed to death in the church of St. Donatian by Borsiard, a member of a wealthy family whose commercial power the count was attempting to curtail.
Charles knew his investigation had made him a target, but he wouldn’t issue a pardon just to save his own neck. “If [Borsiard] wishes to find the mercy he seeks, he should restore justly everything he has unjustly stolen,” Charles said. “For by what reckoning can he obtain forgiveness and keep what he has stolen from the poor?”
On March 2, 1127, Charles started his usual prayers at an altar to the Virgin Mary. Jeff Rider, a modern-day professor at Wesleyan, tells an especially moving version of the count’s murder in his book God’s Scribe, which I’m happy to quote from here.
“From time to time Charles took a silver penny from the small pile his chaplains had placed on the psalter and gave it to a pauper whom they had led to his side. As he was reciting the fourth psalm, he reached out his right hand to give a penny to a poor woman whose turn had finally come. As he did so, he felt a light tap on the left side of his head and the woman cried out: ‘Lord count, look out!’ He turned his head to the left and looked up, but he may never have seen Borsiard or the sword that crushed his forehead and ‘knocked his brains out on to the floor.’”