Wivina

Saint Wivina, also known as Wivine or Wivin, was a twelfth-century Benedictine nun, hermit, and abbess venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. She was born in 1103 at Oisy in Flanders, of noble parentage. From youth she desired a life consecrated to God. Although her family intended that she should marry, she firmly refused all proposals of marriage and chose instead a path of virginity and prayer. Hagiographical tradition presents her as resolute in this decision despite the social expectations and family pressure typical of the nobility of the Low Countries in the early twelfth century.

In her early adulthood she left home and established herself as a hermit in a forested place at Grand-Bigard (Groot-Bijgaarden), near Brussels in the Duchy of Brabant. Godfrey I, Count of Louvain, granted her land, which made possible the foundation of a community of women. About 1133 a Benedictine convent was established there, and Wivina became its first abbess. The monastery followed the Rule of Saint Benedict. Under her leadership the house attracted vocations and gained a reputation for austerity and regular observance. She was known for personal asceticism, for the instruction of her nuns, and for a reputation for holiness and miracles that drew the faithful to Grand-Bigard.

Wivina governed the abbey for many years. Later accounts mention trials and opposition that she endured with patience, as well as her spiritual authority within and beyond the cloister. She died at Grand-Bigard on 17 December 1170 and was buried in the abbey church. Her cult developed locally in Brabant and neighboring regions. Like many holy founders of the twelfth century, she was honored as a saint by popular and monastic veneration rather than by a formal papal canonization of the kind that later became standard. The Abbey of Grand-Bigard continued as a Benedictine house of nuns until it was suppressed at the end of the eighteenth century. Relics associated with her were preserved through the dissolution of the monastery.

Her liturgical feast is kept on 17 December. She is remembered above all as foundress and first abbess of Grand-Bigard and as a representative figure of female Benedictine monasticism in the medieval Low Countries.