Saint Cunegund of Luxembourg

Saint Cunegund of Luxembourg was an empress, the wife of Saint Henry II. Together with her husband she was a generous benefactress of the Church and helped bring about the founding of the diocese of Bamberg, and after his death she became a nun in the monastery she had founded at Kaufungen. The Church commemorates her on March 3. She should not be confused with Saint Kinga, also called Cunegunda, who lived in Poland in the thirteenth century.

She was born about 978, the daughter of Siegfried, count of Luxembourg, and his wife Hedwig; the exact date is not known. Toward the end of the tenth century she married Henry, duke of Bavaria. When Henry became king of Germany in 1002, Cunegund was crowned queen at Paderborn by the archbishop of Mainz, Saint Willigis. In 1014, in Rome, Pope Benedict VIII crowned Henry emperor and Cunegund empress.

Cunegund took part in governing. Her name appears in many of her husband’s charters, especially where support for churches and monasteries was at stake, and in Henry’s absence she sometimes acted in his place. In 1007 the king brought about the founding of the diocese of Bamberg. For its sake Cunegund gave up Bamberg, which she had received from her husband as a wedding gift. The bull of canonization says that the couple founded and endowed the church of Bamberg from their own property and supported many other churches, “making Christ their heir.”

The marriage remained childless. The Life of Cunegund, written more than a hundred years after her death, and after it the bull of canonization relate that the couple lived in a virginal marriage and that the empress, wrongly suspected of infidelity, walked barefoot over red-hot plowshares and was not harmed. Historians regard both stories as a later legend, unconfirmed by the sources from the imperial couple’s own time.

After recovering from a serious illness, Cunegund founded a monastery of Benedictine nuns at Kaufungen near Kassel. Henry died on July 13, 1024. The widowed empress, together with her brothers, watched over the peace of the realm until a new king was elected. On the first anniversary of her husband’s death, during the dedication of the church at Kaufungen, she presented the monastery with a relic of the True Cross, laid aside her imperial robes, and received the habit of a nun.

From then on she lived as an ordinary nun: she prayed, read Sacred Scripture, did the humblest tasks, and visited the sick sisters. She died at Kaufungen on March 3, most probably in 1033; some accounts give the year 1039. She was buried in Bamberg Cathedral beside her husband. Today the two rest there in a shared tomb carved by Tilman Riemenschneider.

Henry II was canonized in 1146. The bishop and chapter of Bamberg sought to have Cunegund raised to the altars. Pope Celestine III ordered her life and miracles to be examined, and Innocent III enrolled her among the saints in 1200. She is venerated as patroness of the archdiocese of Bamberg and of Luxembourg.