Relindis of Maaseik

Relindis of Maaseik, also known as Relindis of Aldeneik, Renildis, or Renilde, was an eighth-century Frankish noblewoman and abbess, venerated together with her sister Saint Harlindis (Herlindis). She was a daughter of Count Adelard, a Frankish aristocrat of the Haspengouw (Hesbaye) region in the Meuse valley. Along with Harlindis she was sent as a girl to be educated at a convent in Valenciennes in Neustria, in what is now northern France. There the sisters were instructed in scripture, liturgical life, and the arts of writing and textile work that later tradition associated with their names. Almost nothing independent of later hagiography can be established about her childhood or the precise place of her birth, which is not recorded in contemporary sources.

In the second quarter of the eighth century Count Adelard founded a monastery for women at Aldeneik, near the river Meuse and close to the later town of Maaseik in present-day Belgian Limburg. According to the later vita of the two sisters, Saint Willibrord, the Northumbrian missionary and bishop of Utrecht, consecrated the new community and received the religious profession of Harlindis and Relindis. Harlindis became the first abbess. Relindis lived under her sister’s rule as a nun of the house. After Harlindis’s death, Relindis succeeded her as abbess and governed Aldeneik for the rest of her life. The community followed a regular monastic observance that later writers identified with the Benedictine tradition, though eighth-century practice in the Meuse region could still reflect mixed Columbanian and Benedictine customs.

Medieval tradition credited Relindis and Harlindis with unusual skill in calligraphy, illumination, and embroidery, and long attributed to them the Codex Eyckensis, an eighth-century Gospel book that is among the oldest surviving books from the Low Countries. Modern palaeographical and art-historical study has shown that the Codex Eyckensis was produced at the scriptorium of Echternach and only later brought to Aldeneik, so the sisters cannot be regarded as its scribes. The attribution nevertheless reflects the reputation for learning and artistic work that attached to Relindis and her monastery. She is thought to have died at Aldeneik around the middle of the eighth century, traditionally in 750, and to have been buried at the abbey.

Veneration of Relindis and Harlindis developed at Aldeneik and in the surrounding diocese. A Latin vita of the two abbesses was composed in the ninth century and remains the principal narrative source for their lives; it was written well after their deaths and mixes historical recollection with hagiographical convention. Their relics were preserved at Aldeneik and later associated with Maaseik. Relindis is commemorated in the Catholic Church, commonly on 6 February, and is remembered as a local saint of the Meuse region rather than as the subject of a widely diffused cult. Little can be established about her independently of the ninth-century vita and later liturgical tradition. The outline that historians generally accept is that of a noble Frankish sisterhood, a foundation at Aldeneik connected with Willibrord, and Relindis’s succession as abbess after Harlindis.