Feastday: January 30
Patron: of Cancer, Wounds
Birth: 639
Death: 684
Virgin and abess, also known as Adelgundis, Aldegonde, or Orgonne. She was a member of the royal family of the Merovingians and was raised by two saints: St. Walbert and St. Bertila, her parents. The family resided in the Hainault region of Flanders, a region of the Low Countries. Aldegundis reflused offers of marriage from other nobles and received the veil from St. Amandius, the bishop of Maastricht. She followed this ceremony of acceptance into the religious life with the foundation of a convent near the Sambre River, at a desert site called Malbode. Her sister, St. Waldetrudis, had founded a convent at Mons. Aldegundis' foundation became Mauberge, a noted Benedictine monastery, later taken over by canonesses. Aldegundis is reported to have died of cancer at the age of forty-four.
Frankish saint and abbess (c.639-684)Saint Aldegonde (or Adelgonde) (Latin: Aldegundis or Adelgundis) (c. 639–684 AD) was a Frankish Benedictine abbess who is honored as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in France and Eastern Orthodox Church.
Life
Aldegonde was closely related to the Merovingian royal family. Her parents, afterwards honored as St. Walbert, Count of Guînes, and St. Bertilla de Mareuil, lived in the County of Hainaut. She is the most famous of what Aline Hornaday calls the "Maubeuge Cycle" of Merovingian saints.
Aldegundis was urged to marry, but she chose the life of the cloister. Having allegedly walked across the waters of the Sambre, she had built on its banks a small hospital at Malbode, which later became, under the name Maubeuge Abbey, a famous abbey of Benedictine nuns, though at a later date these were replaced by canonesses.
She bore with fortitude the breast cancer that eventually killed her. Saint Aldegundis' Catholic liturgical feast is kept on January 30.
She has been supposed to be the sister of Saint Waltrude (Waudru).
There are several early Lives, but none by contemporaries. Several of these, including the tenth-century biography by Hucbald, are printed by the Bollandists (Acta SS., January 11, 1034–35).
