VALBURGA, St. — Sister of SS. Willibrord and Wunibald. Of Anglo-Saxon origin, she was born about 710 and died in her monastery on 25 February 779.
She began her monastic life at Wimborne. At the desire of St. Boniface she came to the Continent with St. Lioba to assist in the missions in Germany. Having settled in the new monastery of Heidenheim, founded by her brothers near Eichstätt, she directed it after the death of Wunibald (761) and built the abbey church. Her body was transferred to Eichstätt a hundred years later, to the place where the abbey bearing her name was later founded. Many churches in northern countries are dedicated to her; she is invoked against several diseases. Her feast is kept on 25 February and 10 May.
The abbey of St. Valburga was founded near the saint’s tomb at Eichstätt in 1035, by the transformation of a canonry into a Benedictine nunnery under episcopal jurisdiction. Already in decline at the beginning of the fifteenth century, it revived after the middle of that century. It suffered severely from Swedish invasion in the seventeenth century, until it was suppressed in 1806. Rebuilt in 1835 by the surviving nuns, the community made several foundations in North America, forming a flourishing Benedictine congregation with more than 5,000 sisters in 25 monasteries.