Hildegard of the Vinzgau

Hildegard of the Vinzgau (Hildegarde of Swabia) was queen of the Franks, wife of Charlemagne from 771 until her death on 30 April 783 at Thionville. She is honored as blessed (or saint) in the Roman Catholic Church, without having been officially canonized, and is commemorated on 30 April.

She was born about 757 or 758, daughter of the Frankish count Gerold and the Alemannian noblewoman Imma, of the line of the dukes of the Alemanni. She married Charles right after Carloman's death, before 30 April 772, at thirteen or fourteen, and by this marriage Charles ended his marriage to a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius. She bore nine children, among them the kings Charles the Younger and Pepin of Italy and the future emperor Louis the Pious. She accompanied her husband on campaigns: at the siege of Pavia, in 773-774, she gave birth to a daughter, Adelaide, who died on the way home; in the campaign toward Spain in 778 she bore the twins Louis and Lothar. In 780-781 she made a journey to Rome, where she gave Pope Hadrian I a cover for the altar of Saint Peter's.

She died at twenty-⁠five, at the imperial residence of Thionville, after the birth of her daughter Hildegard, at her ninth childbirth. She was buried in the abbey of Saint Arnulf at Metz, the necropolis of Charlemagne's family. He remarried five months later. She had good relations with the future Saint Lioba, a reassuring counselor, made many gifts to churches, especially the abbeys of Saint-⁠Denis and Saint-⁠Martin of Tours, and the Godescalc Evangelistary was made for the royal couple. Paul the Deacon wrote her epitaph, and Pope Hadrian I expressed his sincere condolences.