Saints celebrated on the 25th of July
GLODESIND OF METZ, ABBESS
One of the exterior sculptures of the Cathedral of Saint Stephen of Metz |
Her father tried in vain to persuade Glodesind to accept a second fiancé. To avoid this, she fled to Metz, to the Church of Saint Stephen, the proto-martyr, which happens to be the cathedral where the relics of this holy lady are kept to this very day. Legend tells us that her father had her followed and the entrance to the church guarded for six days; but she remained inside in prayer without food or drink. On the seventh day, a Sunday, an angel appeared to her there and handed her the virginal veil.
She knelt at the foot of the altar and accepted the veil; when she looked around, the apparition had disappeared. Transfixed, the henchmen had witnessed all that happened. They immediately stopped pursuing her and asked her for forgiveness of ever having regarded her as an ordinary runaway.
After this miraculous event, Glodesind went to Trier to stay with a pious virgin (her father's sister, called Rotlindis [according to Butler* X. 51 Nothilda]), in order to cultivate the spiritual life together with her. After some time she returned to Metz and built a monastery there, which, to distinguish it from the upper monastery of Saint Arnulf, was generally known as the lower one.
It was so richly endowed by her parents' fortune that one hundred nuns could be admitted straight away and soon after. After she had headed this monastery for six years, she died in A.D. 608 (according to Lechner* 610), at the age of 30, in her first innocence.
In Metz, Glodesind was always venerated as a saint due to her great merits and powerful intercession. The first evidence of public veneration dates from the year 830, when the solemn elevation of her relics took place. Sauffaius* says that she is remembered on July 20; all other sources list her on July 25. According to Migne*, the Benedictine nuns who lived at the monastery in 1791 were able to protect the saint's relics from desecration during the storms of the revolution and then, after the restoration of worship, sent them to the diocesan bishop, who again exposed them to the veneration of the faithful in the episcopal chapel, where they are enclosed in a very beautiful reliquary.
(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, Volume 2, Augsburg, 1861, p. 444)
*A hagiography source used by the authors
Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints - Sources and Abbreviations
Sources of these articles (in the original German): books.google.co.uk, de-academic.com, zeno.org, openlibrary.org
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