RADEGUND, Saint. - She is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology and in some codices of the Hieronymian Martyrology on 13 August.

Daughter of Bertachar, king of Thuringia, while still a young girl she was taken to France as a prisoner of war by the Merovingian king Chlothar and married by him. The brutal nature of her husband made married life very hard, until, when he killed her brother, she obtained a separation and from the bishop St. Medard of Noyon the veil of a deaconess. She then made pilgrimages to various sanctuaries of Gaul, and at Saix she opened a house for the poor and the sick, to whose service she devoted herself with charity and self-denial. She founded at Poitiers a monastery in which 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 hymns Vexilla Regis and Pange lingua (v.). She died in 587, and at her funeral St. Gregory of Tours was also present.

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: S. Gregorio di Tours, In gloria confessorum, 104; id., Hist. Franc., IX, II, 40; Acta SS. Augusti, III, Paris 1867, pp. 46-92; Venantius Fortunatus, Vita, in MGH, Script. rer. Merov., II, pp. 358-95; R. Aigrin, S. R., Paris 1918; Martyr. Romanum, p. 338; J. F. Görres, Die siebenfache Flucht der Radegundis, Freiburg im Breisgau 1942; Fliche-Martin-Fruta, V, pp. 346 ff., 398 ff., 525 ff.

Agostino Amore

@incollection{ec10_radegonda_santa, author = {Amore, Agostino}, title = {Radegonda, santa}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {454--455}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/radegonda-santa} }

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Radegund, Saint

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