Begga

Saint Begga (also Begue or Begge) was a Frankish noblewoman of the seventh century and a member of the Pippinid family that dominated Austrasian politics under the later Merovingian kings. She was the daughter of Pepin of Landen, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, and of Saint Itta of Metz (Iduberga). Her siblings included Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, abbess of the monastery their mother founded at Nivelles, and Grimoald the Elder, who followed their father in the mayoralty. Contemporary narrative sources do not record a precise birthplace or an exact year of birth; later tradition places her origin in Austrasia in the early seventh century. She therefore belongs to the same aristocratic and religious milieu that produced several of the best-known saints of the Merovingian Low Countries.

Begga married Ansegisel, a son of Saint Arnulf of Metz. The marriage joined the Pippinid and Arnulfing houses, a connection of great later importance because it stands at the root of the Carolingian dynasty. Their son Pepin of Herstal (Pepin II) became Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia and extended his authority over Neustria and Burgundy; through him Begga was an ancestor of Charles Martel, of Pepin the Short, and of Charlemagne. Frankish historical writing and Carolingian genealogy preserved this descent, which is among the better-attested facts of her life. Ansegisel is reported to have died by violence, after which Begga lived as a widow.

In widowhood she turned to monastic life. Tradition records a pilgrimage to Rome. After her return she founded a convent at Andenne on the Meuse, in what is now Belgium, and established seven churches or chapels there in imitation of the seven principal churches of Rome. She governed the community as abbess. The foundation belongs to the later seventh century, near the end of her life. Like other Frankish houses of the period it is associated in later hagiography with Benedictine observance, though early Austrasian convents often followed mixed Columbanian and Benedictine customs. She died at Andenne; martyrologies and standard historical compilations give the date as 17 December 693.

Begga has been venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church from an early period. Her cult is of the pre-congregation type: there is no record of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval kind. Her feast is kept on 17 December. She is the patron saint of Andenne, where her monastery stood and where a collegiate church later bore her name; local devotion and relics sustained her memory through the Middle Ages. A later legend, not supported by seventh-century evidence, linked her name to the Beguines, the semi-religious women’s communities that arose in the Low Countries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Historians treat that etymology and founding story as retrospective rather than historical.