Eustadiola of Bourges

Saint Eustadiola of Bourges was born in 594 at Bourges in France to wealthy and powerful parents of the senatorial nobility. She received an education and, while young, showed herself wise in spiritual things. Her parents urged her to marry in order to have heirs, and she had a son, Tetradius. She was widowed young, which gave her the freedom to lead a nearly monastic life without formal vows, like many wealthy widows of the time. The little that is known of her comes from the life of Saint Sulpicius the Pious, bishop of Bourges, who helped her resist her family's pressure to remarry.

She gave her wealth to the poor and dedicated her houses as basilicas in honour of the Mother of God and of the holy martyr Eugenia of Rome. She adorned the churches with vessels of gold and silver, jewels, books and vestments, many of them embroidered by her own hands and those of her servants. She built a monastery for monks and a convent for women, where she and other women, inspired by her example, lived in community. She was abbess of the convent she founded, Moyenmoutier at Bourges, and lived as an ascetic for seventy years, caring for the poor, widows and orphans. She went every day to the basilica of Saint Paul at Bourges, which she had helped to build. Her convent received rich and poor women alike, and rank counted for nothing.

It is told that the water in which she washed her hands and face gave sight to the blind, and that her prayers and those of her sisters ended a drought, the rain falling almost at once after the nuns asked for it at the basilica of Saint Paul. Eustadiola reposed in 684, at the age of ninety, and was buried in the basilica of Saint Paul. The bishop who attended her funeral reported that he had never seen such great grief at the death of a religious. The Orthodox calendar gives her repose as 690 and commemorates her on 8 June, as a saint of the West before the Great Schism (a saint of the undivided Church), by the New Calendar.