Wolfsindis of Reisbach

Wolfsindis of Reisbach is a regional saint of the Middle Ages in Lower Bavaria, honored as a holy virgin and martyr. Her veneration goes back to the 7th or 8th century. She is commemorated on 2 September.

According to legend, she became a Christian in secret and was slain by her pagan father, whereupon a spring rose at the place of her death. A different tradition says that, as a Christian virgin, she was bound to the tail of a horse by a rejected suitor and dragged to death. The saint and her grave have been venerated at least since the 8th century, when the Bavarian duke Tassilo III (748 to 788) gave Reisbach to Wessobrunn Abbey, around 753 or 772. At this place a church synod took place in 798 or 799. She is further mentioned in a Wessobrunn necrology of the 10th century, in an indenture of Bishop Henry I of Regensburg (1132 to 1155) of 1139 and in a necrology of the Abbey of Saint Gall of the 12th century. Since 1753 her feast is celebrated at Reisbach and neighboring Dirnaich. There are no doubts about her historicity, but there are questions about her martyrdom. The cult is connected with a spring: in the 18th and 19th centuries many healings were attributed to the water that now flows from beneath the altar of the small church built in 1822.