Feast day: February 25

St. Walburga

Abbess · c. 710–779

Patron of Against storms and plague

An English nun who joined St. Boniface's mission to Germany and ruled a double monastery at Heidenheim, becoming one of the great women of the German conversion.

Walburga was an English noblewoman of the eighth century, daughter of a West Saxon chieftain and sister of the saints Willibald and Winnibald. Educated at the great abbey of Wimborne, she was among the band of English nuns who answered the call of St. Boniface to help convert the still-pagan peoples of Germany.

Crossing the sea about 748, she joined the missionary effort in Franconia and Bavaria, and in time became abbess of the double monastery of Heidenheim, governing both monks and nuns after the death of her brother Winnibald. Learned as well as holy, she is sometimes counted among the earliest woman writers of England and Germany.

She died at Heidenheim about 779. Long after her death a medicinal oil or moisture was reported to flow from the rock around her relics at Eichstätt — the so-called 'Walburga's oil' — to which many cures were attributed, carrying her fame across Europe.

Because her feast fell near the old May Eve, her name became attached in German folklore to 'Walpurgisnacht'; but the saint herself was honoured as a gentle missionary and abbess, invoked against storms, plague, and sickness.

The eve of her feast, 'Walpurgisnacht,' became famous in European folklore — though the saint herself was a quiet, learned English missionary abbess.

Image: Master of Messkirch (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/15526b.htm