Saint Wiborada

The joy she felt at seeing her brother Hitto Hitton Brother of Saint Guiborat, priest and monk at Saint Gall. n enter the ecclesiastical state, and devote the rest of his days to the service of God, led her to convert the work of her hands to his use, deeming herself happy to be able to serve the ministers of the altar. She herself made his clothes, his linens, and his furnishings, which she sent to him at t he Abbey of Saint Ga abbaye de Saint-Gall Famous Benedictine monastery associated with the life of the saint. ll, where he had retired to study Holy Scripture and theology. At the same time, she worked for the religious of this famous monastery, and applied herself primarily to making the covers for their books.

As soon as her brother was a priest, she retired with him, not only to assist him in the care of his temporal affairs, but also in the hope of finding with him greater opportunities to serve God and her neighbor. She was not disappointed, and continuing the exercises of charity she had previously performed at her father and mother's home, she found herself supported by this worthy brother, who, not content with giving her all his income and even his house to turn into a hospital, would also go to find the sick, whom he brought to her sometimes on his mare, and sometimes on his own shoulders. They shared all the care between them, and Guiborat always took charge of what was most humiliating and most arduous.

Her assiduity in treating the sick and feeding the poor who flocked to her from all sides did not diminish her application to prayer, nor the spirit of retreat that she always maintained in the midst of these apparent distractions. She learned the psalms under her brother, recited the office with him, and even served him at the choir and at the altar. She made the pilgrimage to Rome with him, to visit out of devotion th e to Rome Birthplace of Maximian. mb of the holy Apostles and the other places consecrated by the blood of the martyrs. Curiosity played no part in this great journey, which she herself had long before solicited from her brother: she added to the fatigue of the road voluntary abstinences and austerities, distributing to the poor what she cut from her expenses; and the entire stay she made in the city was spent in prayer and shedding tears at the feet of the altars and on the tombs of the Saints whose intercession she invoked.

Upon returning from Rome, she represented so vividly to her brother the difficulties of working well for one's salvation in the world that she persuaded him to abandon it entirely and to retire to the Abbey of Saint Gall. After he had made his profession of religious life there, it seemed that she should follow his example, which she was nevertheless unable to do for more than six years. But she lived in the world like a stranger, who followed neither its laws nor its customs. She regarded herself as being in a place of exile, where she could taste no satisfaction other than that which the hope of leaving it could provide. She lived there as if she were always ready to depart and go to render an account to God. She macerated her body there through vigils and fasts. She ate no meat and drank no wine, although they were always served at the table; which could only contribute to further increasing her mortification.

She also performed many other secret austerities, for which she had as witnesses only two girls who served her, to whom she had taught discretion along with piety, and who took care to distribute to the poor and the sick what was believed to be prepared for her.

She had a very clean bed, and never slept except on the ground, covered by a simple hairshirt, having only a stone for a bolster. Thus, she took very little rest there, interrupting her first sleep to rise again, while everyone else was sleeping, and to spend the rest of the night in prayer.

Such a holy action did not fail to be decried by another of her servants who did not have her confidence. God, wishing to test the fidelity of Guiborat and to purify her virtue more and more, permitted calumny to attack her from the most sensitive side, which was that of honor. This miserable servant went to publish everywhere that her mistress rose every night, but that it was to do something other than to pray to God; that after having lived for a long time in an incestuous relationship with her own brother, she had abandoned herself to the most shameful crimes, which she covered with the veil of night because the light of day could not endure them.

Those who knew the Saint felt only indignation at such black calumnies; but there were only too many people among the others who, following the natural inclination that one usually has for slander, judged her capable of having fallen into these excesses, and believed they were showing her mercy by pitying human frailty in her.

Guiborat, without letting herself be struck down by the arrows of such a cruel defamation, placed all her trust in the divine protector of her innocence, who was also that of her virginity. She made no difficulty in going to present herself at the tribunal of the Bishop of Constance, Salomon, to answer these accusations, and to justify her innocence befo re him through the perilous évêque de Constance, Salomon Bishop of Constance who judged and protected Guiborat. trials that were called the judgment of God, and which were then in great use.

The bishop, who had previously esteemed and honored Guiborat's virtue, became even more confirmed in the high opinion he held of her when he saw that God declared Himself so visibly in her favor. He sought with care the opportunity to benefit often from her company. One day, as he was going to the Abbey of Saint Gall, which was in his diocese, he proposed that she make the journey with him, and she consented with joy. She found the solitude so much to her liking that, renouncing the place of her former dwelling under the pretext of wishing to yield to the malice of slanderers and calumniators, she stopped on a mountain near the abbey, had a cell built for herself near the church of Saint George, and remained there for nearly forty years continuing her austerities. She spent days and nights in that church praying, sometimes remaining there for three days in a row without eating, and only returned to her cell to grant her body a little rest or nourishment when she saw it reduced to the last extremities.

The surrounding people, considering that she had stripped herself of everything for Jesus Christ and had impoverished herself to relieve the poor, brought her alms in competition to help her subsist; this restored her to a certain abundance, which she nevertheless only wished to use to help those who were in need. The distribution of these charities, with which she was often occupied throughout the day, and the frequent visits of those who brought her the means to provide for them or who came to consult her on the affairs of their salvation, created such a great diversion from the silence she wished to keep in her retreat and the contemplation in which she desired to be filled only with God, that she finally resolved to embrace the Institute of recluses who led the life of anchorites in perpetual enclosure.

The Bishop of Constance blessed a cell for her near the church of Saint Magnus, at some distance from Saint Gall, and performed the ceremony of enclosing her. The life she led in this retreat for the space of thirty-four years had much less relation to that of men than to the state of those blessed spirits who subsist without bodies and who are employed only in praising God and enjoying His presence. She was so hidden there that she would have remained entirely unknown to men if her miracles and predictions had not stood in the way.

There was in the neighborhood a young woman of quality na med Rach Rachilde Disciple and recluse, healed by Guiborat. ilde, subject to many bodily infirmities that had reduced her to an illness deemed incurable. Her parents, after having used human remedies in vain, prepared to have her transported to Rome to ask God for her healing through the intercession of the holy Apostles. Guiborat, having learned of this resolution and knowing what God intended for this young woman, had her brought to her cell. After embracing her, she adopted her as her spiritual daughter and declared to her that, in order to obey God, she wished to take care of her soul and body for the rest of her days.

Rachilde found herself greatly consoled in her misfortunes by the testimonies of such great kindness; and God, not wishing to reward her only halfway, restored her to perfect health, as much through the prayers as through the services of Guiborat. Rachilde's parents, overjoyed at such an unhoped-for recovery, initially consented to the Saint keeping their daughter with her. But war having broken out between Henry of Saxony , called the Fowler, newly el Henri de Saxe, dit l'Oiseleur Father of Saint Bruno and King of East Francia. ected King of Germany, and Burchard, Duke of Germany—that is to say, of Swabia—they feared seeing her exposed to the insults of soldiers or the miseries of hunger, and wished to bring her back home. Guiborat opposed this, and having declared to them the will of God regarding their daughter, she sent them away in peace, and shortly thereafter she enclosed Rachilde and made her a recluse like herself, notwithstanding the illnesses that returned at intervals, and from which she recovered in the same way through the prayers and care of her spiritual mother.

Our Saint was often solicited to take on other disciples, whom her humility and love for retreat led her to refuse. She could not, however, refrain from receiving a young lady who believed herself to be a widow and who sought to serve God under her guidance. Th is was Wend Wendilgarde Granddaughter of King Henry, disciple of Guiborat. ilgarde, granddaughter of Henry, King of Germany, who had marr ied Count Uda comte Udalric Count, husband of Wendilgarde, captive of the Hungarians. lric, taken by the Hungarians in a battle shortly after their marriage. The belief that her husband was dead led to her being sought after for very advantageous matches; but having refused to enter into a second marriage, she came to ask the Abbot of Saint Gall for permission to build a cell near that of Saint Guiborat, whom she had chosen as her director. She easily obtained her request, and having kept only what was necessary for her subsistence, she gave large alms of the rest of her wealth to the poor and to the monks of the abbey, for the repose of her husband's soul.

As she had always been raised very delicately, she had much to suffer to accustom herself to the abstinences and other austerities of the life she wished to embrace. She loved the variety of meats and the sweetness of fruits; and although Guiborat reproved her with great severity, and represented to her that this appetite for a variety of foods was not a mark of modesty in a woman, she had inconceivable difficulty in repressing her desires on this subject.

One day, while she was in her mistress's cell, she asked her to give her some sweet apples if she had any. The Saint told her that she had kept some very fine ones for the poor, and gave her one of those wild fruits called wood apples. Wendilgarde threw herself upon it with an avidity that seemed to partake of something like fury. But she had barely bitten into it when she rejected it and said to the Saint: "Ah! How sour your apples are, and how harsh you are yourself! Would to God that there had never been any others in the Earthly Paradise. Eve would have taken care not to touch them; and we would not be reduced to so many miseries."

"Since you speak of Eve," replied Guiborat, "you must know that it is her covetousness for a delicious fruit that caused her fall and our misfortune; and you can judge by this example if yours can be innocent." This remonstrance struck the heart of Wendilgarde, who withdrew, quite confused, to go and weep for her weaknesses in secret. From that moment, she worked so hard to correct herself that, with the grace of God and the advice of Saint Guiborat, she succeeded in entirely mortifying her appetites and practicing perfect abstinence. She then made such progress in other virtues that the Bishop of Constance, with the advice of his synod, believed he should give her the sacred veil she requested.

Her zeal went so far that, accustoming herself insensibly to the most austere life of the recluses, she implored our Saint to grant her the succession of Rachilde, whose death was expected from day to day, because her whole body was rotting from the multitude of ulcers forming upon it. But God disposed of it otherwise. Rachilde was reserved for a long martyrdom, and to leave to Christian posterity a finished model of the patience that God asks of us in the evils He sends us.

Four years after Wendilgarde's retreat, news was brought of the happy return of her husband, Count Udalric, who was believed dead and who had remained in captivity during all that time under the power of the Hungarians or Slavs. It was necessary to return his wife, whom he demanded back; and the bishops assembled in their synod judged that the religious profession could not prevent her from being restored to him. Wendilgarde, thus obliged to return to the world, promised to resume her vows if she survived her husband, and from then on vowed to God, under the protection of Saint Gall, the first child she would have by him. Count Udalric was the faithful executor of this promise: having lost his wife while she was in labor, and saved by Caesarean section, the child who was later Abbot of Saint Gall.

However, the H ungarian Hongrois Barbarian incursion into Swabia causing the martyrdom of the saint. s, having resumed their raids, came to descend with fury upon Swabia and the neighboring lands. Everyone took refuge in fortified places to provide for their safety; and the Abbot of Saint Gall urgently pressed Saint Viborade to take retreat in a fortress that depended on his abbey, and which was in a state to resist the Barbarians. But the Saint, who had predicted this irruption, and who was warned interiorly of what was to happen to her, thanked the Abbot and sent back his deputies who had come to fetch her, testifying that she did not wish to oppose what God had ordained for her. She had the ecclesiastics who served the church of Saint Magnus saved, of whom her brother Hitton was the first, and the other persons who dwelt around her, except for her dear daughter Rachilde, who was still on her sickbed, and of whose preservation she assured her relatives who had come to take her away.

Meanwhile, the Barbarians spread through the region, destroying with fire and sword what they could not plunder. They burned the church of Saint Magnus, and not having been able to do the same to the cell of the Saint, which was well sealed, they climbed onto the roof which they uncovered, and found her on her knees, praying in her small oratory. They stripped her of all her clothes, leaving her only her hair shirt; and irritated at not finding any money in her possession, they dealt her three blows of an axe to the head, from which she fell to the ground. They left her half-dead in the midst of her blood, which flowed to the walls of her cell in such great abundance that they appeared soaked with it for several years. She lived thus exhausted until the next morning, when she rendered her soul to her Creator. It was the second day of May, in the year 925.

Her brother Hitton, having returned a few hours later from the retreat where she had sent him to hide, wanted to bury the body immediately, because he feared that the Barbarians would burn it upon their return. But the blessed Rachilde, whom these furious men had spared, opposed it, and the Abbot of Saint Gall came to remove it with his monks in a great ceremony, to keep it in deposit, firstly, in that fortress dependent on his abbey, which was half a league away, until they were delivered from the terror of the Barbarians; and from there into his church, where it remained until the death of his dear daughter Saint Rachilde, who survived her for twenty-one years, in continuous infirmities and languors, which God made serve for her sanctification.

Meanwhile, God made manifest the glory with which He had crowned Saint Guiborat through various miracles that He performed at her tomb. Her body was transported a few years later into the oratory of her cell, and from there into the church of Saint Magnus which had been restored. The body of Saint Rachilde was also deposited there, whose memory it was thought proper to honor, along with that of Saint Guiborat, based on the signs that were had of her holiness.

The public honors rendered to Saint Guiborat in the abbey of Saint Gall changed into a religious cult from the day of her anniversary, so that the first celebration of her feast took place on the second day of May in the year 926, as a holy virgin and martyr. However, she was not canonically placed among the Saints until the year 1047, by pape Clément II Pope reigning at the time of the saint's death. Pope Clement II. The Martyrologies of Germany and those of the Order of Saint Benedict mention her on this day; but the modern Roman one does not speak of her anywhere.

Saint Viborade or Guiborat is represented standing at the grate of her walled cell, distributing the bread of good counsel to her visitors; for, without a play on words, the German name of Saint Viborade, Weib-R ath, me Baillet French hagiographer, author of the Vies des Saints. ans women's counsel.

Baillet.