Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B., Writes Upon Saint Radegonde. Queen Of France.

Mosaic of Saint Radegonde.

Cappella Palatina, Palermo.

Date: Mediæval.

Source: 

Crop from File:Cappella Palatina 

(Palermo) 16 07 2019 03.jpg

This File: 24 May 2026.

User: Shakko

Author: Unknown.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
   By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
   Volume 13.
   Time After Pentecost.
   Book IV.

Never was such a booty won as that obtained by the sons of Clovis in their expedition against Thuringia towards the year 530 A.D.

“Receive this Blessing from the spoils of the enemy” might they well say on presenting to the Franks the orphan brought from the Court of the fratricide Prince whom they had just chastised.

God seemed in haste to ripen the Soul of Radegonde. After the tragic death of her relatives followed the ruin of her Country.

So vivid was the impression made in the child’s heart that long afterwards the recollection awakened in the Queen and the Saint a sorrow and homesickness which nought but the love of Christ could overcome.

“I have seen the Plain strewn with dead and Palaces burnt to the ground; I have seen women, with eyes dry from the very horror, mourning over fallen Thuringia; I alone have survived to weep over them all”.

The licentiousness of the Frankish Kings was as unbridled as that of her own ancestors; yet, in their land, the little captive found Christianity, which she had not hitherto known.

The Faith was a healing balm to this wounded Soul. Baptism, in giving her to God, Sanctified, without crushing, her high-spirited nature.

Thirsting for Christ, she wished to be Martyred for Him; she sought Him on the Cross of self-renunciation; she found Him in His poor suffering members; looking on the face of a leper, she would see in it the disfigured countenance of her Saviour, and thence rise to the ardent contemplation of the triumphant Spous, whose glorious face illumines the abode of the Saints.

Meanwhile, near the tomb of Saint Martin, another Queen, Clotilde, the mother of the most Christian Kingdom, was about to die.

Unfortunate are those times when the men after God’s own heart, at their departure from Earth, leave no-one to take their place; as the Psalmist cried out in a just consternation: “Save me, O Lord, for there is now no Saint !”

For though the Elect Pray for us in Heaven, they can no longer “fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in their flesh, for His body, which is The Church”.

The work begun at the Baptistery of Rheims was not yet completed; the Gospel, though reigning by Faith over the Frankish Nation, had not yet subdued its manners.

Christ, Who loved the Franks, heard the last Prayer of the mother He had given them, and refused her not the consolation of knowing that she should have a successor.

Radegonde was set free, just in time to prevent an interruption in the laborious work of forming The Church’s eldest daughter; and she took up in solitude the struggle with God, by Prayer and expiation, begun by the widow of Clovis.

The following Text is from Wikipedia — the free encyclopædia,

unless stated otherwise.

Radegund (Latin: Radegundis; also spelled Rhadegund, Radegonde, or Radigund; circa 520 A.D. – 13 August 587 A.D.) was a Thuringian Princess and Frankish Queen, who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers.

She is the Patroness Saint of several Churches in France and England and of Jesus College, Cambridge (whose full name is “The College of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge”).

By 545 A.D., Radegund’s brother was the last surviving male member of the Thuringian Royal Family. Clotaire had him murdered.

Radegund fled the Court and sought the protection of The Church, persuading Medardus, the Bishop of Noyon, to ordain her as a Deaconess;[2] she Founded the Monastery of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, France, circa 560 A.D., where she cared for the infirm. Radegund was widely believed to have the gift of healing.[4]

Her Abbey was named for the Relic of the True Cross that Radegund obtained from the Byzantine Emperor Justin II.

Although the Bishop, Maroveus of Poitiers, refused to instal it in the Abbey, at Radegund’s request King Sigebert I sent Eufronius of Tours to Poitiers to perform the ceremony.

To Celebrate the Relic and its installation into Sainte-Croix, Venantius Fortunatus composed a series of Hymns, including the famous Vexilla Regis, considered to be one of the most significant Christian Hymns ever written, which is still sung for Services on Good Friday, Palm Sunday, as well as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.