Saint Walburga

Saint Walburga was an Anglo-Saxon nun who came from England to Germany in the eighth century and, as abbess, governed the monastery of Heidenheim in Franconia, in present-day Bavaria. She was the sister of Saint Willibald, the first bishop of Eichstätt, and of Saint Winibald, the founder of that monastery. The Church commemorates her on February 25.

She came from Wessex in southern England, from a noble Anglo-Saxon family. The year of her birth is not known; a date around 710 is given. Her father died at Lucca while on pilgrimage to Rome with his sons. The Martyrology commemorates him as Saint Richard, while his being a king belongs to later legend. Walburga was brought up in one of the English monasteries, perhaps at Wimborne.

Her brothers helped Saint Boniface preach the Gospel to the Germanic peoples. The Roman Martyrology states that Walburga came from England at the request of Boniface and of both her brothers. When this happened is not known. Older accounts link her with the nuns who answered Boniface’s call together with Saint Lioba, and with the monastery of Tauberbischofsheim. More recent research suggests rather that she arrived shortly before Winibald’s death.

Winibald died on December 18, 761. Walburga then took over the leadership of the community, and nuns came with her to live at Heidenheim. The monastery became a double one, on the model known from England, for monks and nuns under a single leadership. The nun Hugeburc, a kinswoman of the family, wrote the Lives of both brothers there; Walburga, too, told her about Winibald. On September 24, 777, Walburga was present when Bishop Willibald moved Winibald’s body to the new church.

The sources say little about her own life. Only the day of her death, February 25, is certain. Tradition, and with it the Roman Martyrology, gives the year 779. Some historians now hold that Walburga outlived Willibald, who died in 787, and the abbey at her tomb names the year 788 or 790. She was buried in the monastery church at Heidenheim.

In the 870s Bishop Otgar transferred her relics to Eichstätt. At that time, long before the papal procedure of canonization came into being, such a translation was the way of recognizing someone as a saint. In 893 the monastery of Monheim received part of the relics, and the priest Wolfhard of Herrieden wrote down the miracles that were reported there. In 1035 an abbey of Benedictine nuns was founded at Walburga’s tomb in Eichstätt, and it exists to this day.

What is called Saint Walburga’s oil has been known since the eleventh century: in winter, drops of pure water gather on the stone slab of her tomb. The nuns give them to pilgrims as a sign, not as a medicine. Walburga is the patroness of the Diocese of Eichstätt. At Eichstätt her second feast is also kept, on May 1, in memory of the translation of her relics. The so-called Walpurgis Night took its name from it, but the folk imaginings attached to that night have nothing to do with the life or the veneration of the saint.