Aldegund of Maubeuge

The Venerable Aldegund (Aldegundis, Aldegonde) of Maubeuge was a Frankish Benedictine abbess, related to the Merovingian royal family, founder of Maubeuge Abbey, and she fell asleep in 684. She is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church in France and in the Orthodox Church. Her feast is on 30 January.

She was born in 639, in the Hainaut region, into an aristocratic family close to the Merovingian kings. Her parents, Saint Walbert, count of Guînes, and Saint Bertilla of Mareuil, are also venerated as saints. She is said to have been the sister of Saint Waltrude (Waudru). Her family wished to marry her, but she chose the cloister. It is told that she walked across the Sambre on the water and built on its bank a small hospital at Malbode, later the famous Benedictine nunnery of Maubeuge, in which, in 661, Aldegund was the first abbess; later the nuns were replaced by canonesses. She died in 684 of breast cancer. She was succeeded as abbess by her nieces, the daughters of Waltrude, Aldetrude and then Madelberte. There are several early Lives of her, but none by contemporaries; among them that of the tenth century, by Hucbald, printed by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum. She is the most famous of the so-⁠called Maubeuge cycle of Merovingian saints.