Gisela of Bavaria

Gisela of Bavaria (Gisela, Gizella) was the first queen of Hungary, wife of King Stephen I, sister of the emperor Henry II, and later abbess of Niedernburg in Passau. She was born around 985 and reposed on 7 May 1065. She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

She was a daughter of Duke Henry II of Bavaria and Gisela of Burgundy and received a solid Christian education, perhaps from Bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg. In 996 she married Stephen I of Hungary, as part of Hungary's policy of opening toward the West. Their wedding was a turning point in the history of Hungary. They had a son, Saint Emeric, who died on 2 September 1031 while hunting boar. As queen she had a fundamental part in spreading the Christian faith and Western culture in Hungary. The sons of Edmund Ironside of England, sent abroad after Cnut took the throne, ended up under the protection of King Stephen; one of them, Edward Atheling, was brought up as a protégé of Queen Gisela.

After the death of Stephen, in 1038, Gisela left Hungary in 1046, with her attendants and many Bavarian settlers, and returned to Bavaria. She joined the convent of Niedernburg in Passau and became abbess. She died there. Her grave is well known and regarded as a holy place. In the 18th century her canonization was attempted, without success; she was beatified in 1975. Her remembrance is on 7 May and 1 February.

She is honored as a blessed in the West; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.