Benedicta

Holy Martyr Benedicta of Origny was a virgin martyr, killed on 8 October 362; she is venerated in the Catholic Church, often depicted with a bell and an axe.

The first written mention is in the Martyrology of Usuard, composed between 863 and 896. The main source is the parchment manuscript Life of Saint Benoîte, commissioned in 1312 by the Benedictine nuns' abbey of Sainte-⁠Benoite and kept today in Berlin. If she was a historical person, she lived around 300 at Rome and suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian. According to tradition she came from a family of Roman senators. In the fourth century she went to Gaul with twelve virgins consecrated to God, baptizing and preaching. Later she came with a companion to Laon, drove out a demon and took the power from a pagan place of worship. The Roman governor Matroculus arrested her at Origny; several times she was freed by angels and healed of her wounds. In the end the governor killed her with an axe, on 8 October 362.

About three hundred years after her death, a blind man had a vision of her burial place and led eighteen bishops there; they moved the body, on 26 May 674, to the church of Origny. At the end of the ninth century Benedictine nuns settled there and founded the abbey of Sainte-⁠Benoite, which lasted until 1792 and became the centre of her veneration. In 1246 a shrine of silver and gold was made for the main relics; every year on 26 May the shrine was carried in procession, together with a bell and an axe. The veneration spread to France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. She is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally, without synodal canonization.