Early medieval (6th century)
Feast: August 13
A captured princess forced to marry the king who murdered her family, she walked out of the palace and dared him to stop her.
Radegund was about ten when the Frankish king Clotaire I invaded Thuringia, killed most of her family, and took her as a prize. He had her educated, waited for her to grow up, and then married her. She was one of several wives. Court life was violent and unpredictable — Clotaire eventually murdered her brother too. Radegund endured it for years, wearing a hair shirt under her royal robes and slipping out at night to pray. She washed lepers’ sores at the palace. She gave food away until the servants complained. Finally, after her brother’s murder, she walked out. She went straight to Bishop Medard at Noyon and demanded he consecrate her as a deaconess. Medard hesitated — consecrating the king’s wife without his consent was a good way to lose your head. Radegund put on a nun’s habit right there in the church. Medard relented. She founded the monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers around 560, where she gathered a community of over two hundred women. She obtained a relic of the True Cross from Constantinople, inspiring the poet Venantius Fortunatus to write the great hymn ‘Vexilla Regis.’ She spent the rest of her life in prayer, study, and scrubbing the floors herself. She washed the sick with her own hands, kissing their wounds. She died at Poitiers in 587.