Heriburg of Nottuln

Saint Heriburg of Nottuln was a pious woman of the early Middle Ages, possibly an abbess, who reposed on 16 October 839 at Nottuln. She was born in Frisia. According to the Life of Saint Ludger by Altfrid, who could still question her as a witness, she was the sister of Saint Ludger, the first bishop of Münster and founder of the monasteries of Werden and Helmstedt, and of Hildegrim, bishop of Châlons from 802.

The story of the founding of the foundation at Nottuln, according to which Ludger founded in 803 the first convent of women in Westphalia, with Heriburg as first abbess, was invented with much imagination by the chaplain Albert Wilkens (1790-1828). Evidence for the founding of a women's community at that time is lacking. Heriburg may have been a recluse or the abbess of a foundation that failed. A silver coffin with bones attributed to her, found in an oak coffin in excavations in 1978, is today in the church of Saint Martin at Nottuln. She is honored by the faithful, without synodal canonization.