Aude of Paris

Aude of Paris (also called Aulde or Odette) was a virgin consecrated to God and a disciple of Saint Genevieve. She was born in the village that bears her name, now Sainte-⁠Aulde in Seine-⁠et-⁠Marne, in the 5th century, in the time of the Frankish king Clovis, in a family of fervent Christians. From her youth she showed a love for the presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. A legend says that one day she so longed to go to the service in the neighbouring village that she managed to cross the Marne walking on large stones that appeared miraculously in her path; the stones later served as boundary marks for fields whose owners were quarrelling.

Moved by the holiness of Genevieve and Celine, she decided to follow the first, whom she met at Meaux. Saint Genevieve and her companions were regarded as the "guardian angels of the kingdom". Genevieve died between 502 and 512, and Aude, no doubt a few years later, on 18 November, her day of commemoration. Her tomb was venerated and placed near that of Genevieve in the royal basilica where Clovis rested, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, now on the Montagne Sainte-⁠Geneviève in Paris. On 18 August 1239 the religious of the abbey of Sainte-⁠Geneviève met with her shrine the Holy Crown of Thorns that Saint Louis had bought. Part of her relics was obtained by Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, for the veneration in her commune, before the rest was destroyed when the abbey was closed in the Revolution. A saint of the undivided Church, venerated in the West.