RADEGONDA, saint. - She is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology and in certain manuscripts of the Hieronymian Martyrology on 13 August.
Daughter of Bertario, king of Thuringia, while still very young she was taken to France as a prisoner of war by the Merovingian king Clotario and married by him. Her husband’s brutal character made married life very hard until, when he had her brother killed, she obtained a separation and received the veil of a deaconess from the bishop St. Medardo of Noyon. She then made pilgrimages to various sanctuaries in Gaul and at Saix opened a house for the poor and sick, to whose service she devoted herself with charity and self-denial. At Poitiers she founded a monastery in which she embraced monastic life according to the Rule of St. Cesario of Arles. From the emperor Giustino II she obtained a relic of the Cross, and then (569) Venanzio Fortunato composed the two Pange lingua (v.). She died in 587, and St. Gregorio di Tours was also present at her funeral.