Feast day: January 30
St. Bathild
An English girl sold into slavery in France who became queen, then used her power to outlaw the slave trade that had once taken her and to free captives.
Bathild was an Anglo-Saxon girl who, around the year 641, was carried off and sold as a slave in the kingdom of the Franks — a striking detail in the life of one who would later fight the slave trade. Capable and well-favoured, she rose in the household of the mayor of the palace and caught the eye of the young king Clovis II, who freed and married her.
As queen she bore three sons, all of whom became kings, and on her husband's death she governed the Frankish realm as regent for her eldest. Supported by great bishops such as Eligius and Ouen, she used her power for reform: she forbade the enslavement of Christians and the trade in Christian captives, spent royal funds to ransom slaves, and curbed the buying and selling of Church offices.
She was a lavish founder of monasteries, above all the great abbeys of Corbie and of Chelles near Paris. When her regency ended and she was, in effect, pushed aside, she retired to Chelles and lived there not as a former queen but as an ordinary, obedient nun, serving the sick and the poor.
She died at Chelles about 680 and was later canonized. Her life — from kidnapped slave to queen to humble nun — made her one of the most beloved saints of early medieval France.
Sold as a slave as a child, she rose to queen and then banned the selling of Christians as slaves across her realm — and bought many out of bondage.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02348b.htm
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