Radegund

Radegund (also Radegunde or Radegundis) was a Thuringian princess who became a Frankish queen and later a nun and monastic foundress, venerated as a saint in the Latin and Eastern churches. She was born in the early sixth century, usually placed around 520 by modern scholars though no exact year is attested, as a daughter of Berthar (Bertachar), one of the kings of Thuringia. After Berthar was killed by his brother Hermanfrid, she was raised at her uncle’s court. In 531 the Frankish kings Theuderic I and Chlothar I invaded Thuringia, overthrew Hermanfrid, and divided the royal household as booty. The child Radegund and her brother were allotted to Chlothar and taken west. She was brought up at Athies in the Vermandois, where she received a Christian education notable for its literacy and religious seriousness.

Chlothar later married her, making her one of several queens in a polygamous Merovingian household. As queen she was remembered less for political power than for charity and an already severe asceticism. Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours, the principal near-contemporary witnesses, describe her leaving the royal bed at night to pray, washing the feet of the poor, and tending lepers with her own hands. She used royal resources to found hospices and to ransom captives. The marriage remained childless. The decisive break came when Chlothar had her last surviving brother killed, extinguishing the male line of the Thuringian royal house and destroying whatever loyalty she still felt to the Frankish court.

Radegund fled and demanded consecration from Bishop Médard of Noyon. He hesitated to veil a woman who was still, in law, the king’s wife, but she insisted with such force—placing monastic clothing on herself and warning him of divine judgment—that he ordained her a deaconess. She withdrew first to a villa at Saix and then, with Chlothar’s eventual acquiescence and endowment, founded a monastery for women at Poitiers dedicated to the Holy Cross. She refused the abbacy, installing her companion Agnes instead, and placed the community under the Rule of Caesarius of Arles, which stressed enclosure, liturgical prayer, and the reading of Scripture. Around 569 she obtained from the Byzantine emperor Justin II a relic of the True Cross; for its reception her friend Fortunatus composed the hymns Vexilla regis prodeunt and Pange lingua gloriosi, which entered the Western liturgy.

In the monastery she lived as an ordinary sister, practicing fasting, night vigils, and manual work, while corresponding with bishops and acting as a peacemaker among Frankish factions. She remained a protector of the poor and of prisoners until her death at Poitiers on 13 August 587. Gregory of Tours, who knew her, attended the funeral and recorded miracles at her tomb. She was buried in the monastic funerary church outside the walls, later the Church of Sainte-Radegonde, where her cult began at once. Her feast is 13 August. She is remembered as foundress of Sainte-Croix of Poitiers, as a model of royal renunciation, and as patron of Poitiers and of Jesus College, Cambridge, which occupies the site of a medieval nunnery dedicated to her.