Pharaildis | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Virgin | |
| Born | Ghent, Belgium |
| Feast | 4 January |
| Attributes | shown with a goose at her feet [1] |
| Patronage | Bruay, France; childhood diseases; difficult marriages; Ghent, Belgium; victims of abuse; widows [2] |
Saint Pharaildis or Pharailde (Dutch : Veerle) is an 8th-century Belgian virgin and patron saint of Ghent. Her dates are imprecise, but she lived to a great age and died on January 5 at ninety. [3]
Pharaildis was born in Ghent, the daughter of Witger, Duke of Lorraine and his wife Amalberga of Maubeuge. Her siblings were: Emebert, Reineldis, Ermelindis and Gudula. Pharaildis was brought up by Gertrude of Nivelles. [4]
Pharaildis was married against her will at a young age with a nobleman, even after having made a private vow of virginity. Her husband insisted that she was married to him, and her sexual fidelity was owed to him, not God. She was therefore physically abused for her refusal to submit to him, and for her late night visits to churches. When widowed, she was still a virgin, [2] and dedicated herself to charity. [3]
The cult of Pharaildis has been documented as early as the eighth century. About the year 754, Agilfrid, Abbot of Saint Bavo's Abbey, acquired her relics and brought them to Ghent. [5] Her feast day is January 4, and her feast, Fru Verelde, was a major festival in Ghent in the late 19th century (according to Acte de Pharailde 1882). [3] She carries a goose as her insignia.
Several miracles are attributed to the saint. Legend says that Pharaildis caused a well to spring up whose waters cured sick children, [2] turned some bread hidden by a miserly woman into stone, [6] and there are accounts of a "goose miracle," in which Pharaildis resuscitated a cooked bird working only from its skin and bones. [6] [7]
Catherine of Siena, TOSD was an Italian member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic in the Roman Catholic Church. She was a mystic, activist, and author who had a great influence on Italian literature and the Roman Catholic church. Canonized in 1461, she is also a Doctor of the Church.
Rosalia, nicknamed la Santuzza, is the patron saint of Palermo in Italy, Camargo in Chihuahua, and three towns in Venezuela: El Hatillo, Zuata, and El Playón. She is especially important internationally as a saint invoked in times of plague. From 2020 onwards she has been invoked by some citizens of Palermo to protect the city from COVID-19.
Rita of Cascia, born Margherita Ferri Lotti - Mancini, was an Italian widow and Augustinian nun venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
Saint Gudula was born in the pagus of Brabant. According to her 11th-century biography, written by a monk of the abbey of Hautmont between 1048 and 1051, she was the daughter of a duke of Lotharingia called Witger and Amalberga of Maubeuge. She died between 680 and 714.
Radegund was a Thuringian princess and Frankish queen, who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. She is the patron saint of several churches in France and England and of Jesus College, Cambridge.
Thecla was a saint of the early Christian Church, and a reported follower of Paul the Apostle. The earliest record of her life comes from the ancient apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla.
Æthelburg was Queen of Wessex by marriage to King Ine of Wessex. Perhaps most famed for her act in 722, when she destroyed the stronghold of Taunton in an attempt to find the rebel Ealdbert.
Mechtilde of Hackeborn, OSB, also known as Mechtilde of Helfta, was a Saxon Christian saint and a Benedictine nun. She was famous for her musical talents, gifted with a beautiful voice. At the age of 50, Mechtilde went through a grave spiritual crisis, as well as physical suffering. In the modern Benedictine calendar, her feast is celebrated on the anniversary of her death, November 19. She died in the convent of Helfta, near Eisleben.
Æthelburhof Kent (born c. 601, sometimes spelled Æthelburg, Ethelburga, Æthelburga; Old English: Æþelburh, Æðelburh, Æðilburh, also known as Tate or Tata), was an early Anglo-Saxon queen consort of Northumbria, the second wife of King Edwin. As she was a Christian from Kent, their marriage triggered the initial phase of the conversion of the pagan north of England to Christianity.
Landrada of Austrasia was a German saint and ascetic. She co-founded Munsterbilsen Abbey, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Landrada's feast day is 8 July. She is the patron saint of Munsterbilsen and Ghent.
The Diocese of Liège is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Belgium. The diocese was erected in the 4th century and presently covers the same territory as Belgium's Liège Province, but it was historically much larger. Currently, the diocese is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. Its cathedra is found within St Paul's Cathedral in the episcopal see of Liège.
Kyneburga, Kyneswide and Tibba were female members of the Mercian royal family in 7th century England who were venerated as saints.
Caritas Pirckheimer was Abbess of Saint Clara's convent in Nuremberg at the time of the Reformation, which she opposed due to the threat posed by Martin Luther to Catholic houses of worship and religious buildings, including her own convent.
St. Mother Irini was the Coptic Abbess of the St. Philopateer Mercurius’ Convent in Old Cairo, Egypt and an influential figure in the Coptic Christian community of Egypt.
Agnes II was a member of the House of Wettin who reigned as Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg.
Baudonivia was a nun and hagiographer at the convent of Holy Cross of Poitiers. Very little is known about her.
Desert Mothers is a neologism, coined in feminist theology as an analogy to Desert Fathers, for the ammas or female Christian ascetics living in the desert of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries AD. They typically lived in the monastic communities that began forming during that time, though sometimes they lived as hermits. Monastic communities acted collectively with limited outside relations with lay people. Some ascetics chose to venture into isolated locations to restrict relations with others, deepen spiritual connection, and other ascetic purposes. Other women from that era who influenced the early ascetic or monastic tradition while living outside the desert are also described as Desert Mothers.
The Abbey of the Holy Cross was a French Benedictine monastery of nuns founded in the 6th century. Destroyed during the French Revolution, a new monastery with the same name was built in a nearby location during the 19th century for a community of Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Mercy of Jesus.
Lina Dorina Johanna Eckenstein was a British polymath and historian who was acknowledged as a philosopher and scholar in the women's movement.
Egburg was a 9th-century abbess about whom little is known. A letter by her remains in the Boniface correspondence, in which she writes to Saint Boniface of her grief. The letter evidences that she was highly learned—according to Eleanor Duckett, "Her letter is short, and her misery is very great; she manages, however, to bring in four reminiscences of Vergil's Aeneid, two of various writings of Aldhelm of Malmesbury ..., two of a letter written by Jerome to the monk Rufinus, together with at least half a dozen quotations from the Bible". Lina Eckenstein proposes she might have been a daughter of Ealdwulf, king of East Anglia, and the abbess of Repton.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .| International | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
