Radegund, Saint. — She is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology and in some codices of the Gerominian on 13 August.
Daughter of Bertharius, king of Thuringia, while still a young girl she was taken to France as a prisoner of war by the Merovingian Clotario, who married her. The brutal nature of her husband made married life very difficult until, when he killed her brother, she obtained a separation and from St. Medard, bishop of Noyon, the veil of a deaconess. She then traveled to various shrines of Gaul and at Saix she opened a house for the poor and sick, serving them with charity and self-denial. She founded a monastery at Poitiers, where she embraced the monastic life according to the Rule of St. Caesarius of Arles. From the emperor Justin II she obtained a relic of the Cross, and then (569) Venantius Fortunatus composed the two Pange lingua (v.). She died in 587, and St. Gregory of Tours was present at her funeral.