ODILIA, Saint. — Foundress and abbess of Hohenburg, patroness of Alsace. Daughter of Adalric, duke of Alsace, according to legend she was rejected by her father because she was born blind. Bereswinda, her mother, entrusted her to an old servant who lived in Scherwiller near Sélestat, and later to the monastery of Baume-les-Dames, in the diocese of Besançon. O. is said to have recovered her sight at the Baptism administered by St. Erard, bishop of Regensburg. Through the intervention of her brother Hugh, she was admitted to her father Adalric, who gave her the castle of Hohenburg, on the present summit of Mount Saint Odilia, to be transformed into a monastery (between 667 and 680), of which she became the first abbess and where she governed a community of about 130 nuns.
She is also credited with the foundation, at the foot of Hohenburg, of the hospice and monastery of Niedermünster, of which her niece Gondelinda was the first abbess. She died about 720 and was buried in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, which she herself had built at Hohenburg. During the French Revolution her relics were transferred to Ottrott, but were definitively returned on 6 October 1800 to the chapel of the convent on Mount Saint Odilia, today a centre of frequent and numerous pilgrimages.
The popular cult spread rapidly after