The Saints In Art - W

( Originally Published 1908 )

WALBURGA, ST. (WALPURGIS, VALPURGE, or GUALBOURG). (25th February)

Was the niece of St. Boniface, and passed twenty-seven years of her life at the monastery of Winburn, in Dorset. She then went on a missionary journey with ten other nuns, and taught at Mayence, and afterwards at Eichstadt. She was made first abbess of a Benedictine nunnery at Heidenheim, between Munich and Nuremburg, and died in 778. Her festival is the first of May, Walpurgis Nacht. She was skilled in medicine ; the cave near Eichstadt where she was buried became a place of pilgrimage, and it is said that an oil found there, and called Walpurgis oil, worked miraculous cures.

She is represented as a Benedictine nun, with crozier as abbess, and in her hand a vial or flask.