| ST. ALDEGONDES, V. ABBESS. |
| Feast: January 30
|
| She was
daughter of Walbert, of the royal blood of France, and born in Hainault about
the year 630. She consecrated herself to God by a vow of virginity, when very
young, and resisted all solicitations to marriage, serving God in the house of
her holy parents, till, in 638, she took the religious veil, and founded and
governed a great house of holy virgins at Maubeuge. She was favored with an
eminent gift of prayer, and many revelations; but was often tried by violent
slanders and persecutions, which she looked upon as the highest favors of the
divine mercy, begging of God that she might be found worthy to suffer still more
for his sake. His divine providence sent her a lingering and most painful cancer
in her breast. The saint bore the torture of her distemper, also the caustics
and incisions of the surgeons, not only with patience, but even with joy, and
expired in raptures of sweet love, on the 30th of January, in 660, according to
Bollandus. Her relics are enshrined in the great church of Maubeuge, where her
monastery is now a college of noble virgins canonesses. Her name occurs on this
day in the ancient breviary of Autun, and in the martyrologies of Rabanus,
Usuard, and Notker: also in the Roman. At St. Omer, where a parish church bears
her name, she is called Saint Orgonne. See her life written some time after her
death: a second a century later, and a third by Hucbald, a learned monk of St.
Armand's, in 900, with the remarks of Mabillon, (Act. Bened. t. 2, p. 937,) and
the Bollandists. Consult also Miraeus's Fasti Belgici, and La Vie de St.
Aldegonde, par P. Binet, Jesuite, in 12mo. Paris, 1625.
(Taken from Vol. I of "The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints" by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company) |
|
Provided Courtesy of:
|