VIVINA, saint. – Flemish mystic, foundress (ca. 1120), through the donation of Duke Goffredo di Lorena, and prioress of the Benedictine Monastery of S. Maria at Bigarden near Brussels; she died, apparently, on 17 December 1170.
When this monastery was devastated at the end of the 18th century, the relics of V. S. Maria in Sabulo in Brussels. Her life was written by a Benedictine monk of Afflighem before 1243. In art she is represented with a lighted candle. The office and Mass of St V. were approved in 1903. Feast: 17 December.
BIBL.: BHL, no. 8992. The (legendary) Vita is edited in Auecchia ex codicibus hagiograph. Ioannis Gielemans, Bruxelles 1895, pp. 54–79; G. Colyns, Ste Wivine, Bruxelles 1907. On V.’s psalter, G. Morin, in Mélanges G. Kurth, II, Parigi 1908, pp. 130–44. Alberto Ampe