At Pithiviers in the diocese of Orleans Gregory felt inspired to settle, and he built himself a hermitage and set about leading the life of a recluse after the Eastern manner, hitherto little practised in France. He abstained from all food on Mon­days, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and even on Tuesdays and Thursdays never ate till after sundown. His ordinary food was a handful of lentils, steeped in water and exposed to the sun, supplemented by a little barley bread and sometimes by a few roots eaten raw. Much as St Gregory wished to live in solitude, it soon became known that a holy hermit had settled at Pithiviers, and visitors began to throng to his cell. He worked many miracles of healing and gave wise spiritual counsel. The faithful brought him offerings, but these for the most part he distributed to the poor. For seven years St Gregory lived in his hermitage, combining the severe life of a solitary with the missionary zeal of a great preacher, and when he died the whole countryside was filled with lamentations.

The Latin Life of St Gregory has been printed in the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. ii. See also Cochard, Saints de l’Eglise d’Orléans, pp. 384—393.

The king of Sweden, whose name also was Olaf, was himself converted by St Sigfrid, who baptized him at Husaby in a spring which afterwards bore Sigfrid’s name and was the channel of many miracles. St Sigfrid continued his labours successfully for many years, and at his death was buried in the church pf Växjö. Tradition has added many details to the accounts of St Sigfrid’s labours. It is said that when he first arrived at Växjö he began by planting a cross and building a wooden church in which he celebrated the divine mysteries and preached. The twelve principal men of the district were converted by him, and one of them, who died almost immediately, received Christian burial and had a cross placed on his grave. So wonderfully did the truth spread, that within a short time the faith was planted in all Varend. The fountain in which St Sigfrid baptized the catechumens long retained the names of the first twelve converts, engraved on a monument. It is said that he ordained two bishops, for East and West Gothland. His three nephews, Unaman a priest, Sunaman a deacon, and Vinaman a subdeacon, were his chief assistants.

After a time, St Sigfrid entrusted the care of his diocese to these three and set off to carry the light of the gospel into more distant provinces. During his absence, a troop, partly out of hatred for Christianity and partly for booty, plundered the church of VaxjO and murdered Unaman and his brothers, burying their bodies in a forest and placing their heads in a box which they sank in a pond. The heads were duly recovered and placed in a shrine, on which occasion, we are told, the three heads spoke. The king resolved to put the murderers to death, but St Sigfrid induced him to spare their lives. Olaf compelled them, however, to pay a heavy fine which he wished to bestow on the saint, who refused to accept a farthing of it, notwithstanding his extreme poverty and the difficulties with which he had to contend in rebuilding his church. He had inherited in an heroic degree the spirit of the apostles, and preached the gospel also in Denmark. Sigfrid is said, but doubtfully, to have been canonized by Pope Adrian IV, the Englishman who had himself laboured zealously for the propagation of the faith in the North over one hundred years after St Sigfrid. The Swedes honour St Sigfrid as their apostle.

1040 St. Cunegundes Empress Patron of Lithuania virgin

Upon the death of the Emperor Otto III, Henry was elected king of the Romans, and his coronation by St Willigis at Mama was followed, two months later, by that of his wife at Paderborn. In 1013 they went together to Rome to receive the imperial crown from Pope Benedict VIII.

In spite of her exemplary life, Cunegund is said by the hagiographers of a later age to have become the victim of slanderous tongues, so that even her husband’s confidence in her was momentarily shaken, Feeling that her position required her vindication, the empress asked to be allowed the ordeal by fire, and walked unscathed over red-hot ploughshares. Henry was eager to make amends for his unworthy suspicions, and they lived thenceforth in the closest union of hearts, striving in every way to promote the glory of God and the advancement of religion. But this story too is insufficiently supported.

It was partly at the instigation of St Cunegund that the emperor founded the monastery and cathedral of Bamberg, to the consecration of which Pope Benedict came in person, and she obtained for the city such privileges that by common report her silken threads were a better defence than walls. During a dangerous illness she had made a vow that if she recovered she would found a convent at Kaufungen, near Cassel, in Hesse. This she proceeded to do, and had nearly finished building a house for nuns of the Benedictine Order when St Henry died.

Her later bio­graphers relate a quaint story about the first abbess. It appears that the empress had a young niece, called Judith or Jutta, to whom she was much attached, and whom she had educated with great care. When a superior had to be found for the new convent, St Cunegund appointed Judith and gave her many admonitions and much good advice. No sooner, however, did the young abbess find herself free, than she began to show symptoms of frivolity and lax observance. It was soon noticed that she was ever the first in the refectory and the last to come to chapel, and that she was a gossip and listened to tales. In vain did her aunt remonstrate with her. The climax came when she failed to appear in the Sunday procession and was found feasting with some of the younger sisters. Filled with indignation St Cunegund sternly upbraided the culprit, and even struck her. The marks of her fingers remained impressed upon the abbess’s cheek until her dying day, and the marvel not only converted her, but had a salutary effect upon the whole community.

On the anniversary of her husband’s death in 1024 Cunegund invited a number of prelates to the dedication of her church at Kaufungen. There, when the gospel had been sung at Mass, she offered at the altar a piece of the true cross, and then, putting off her imperial robes, she was clothed in a nun’s habit, and the bishop gave her the veil. Once she had been consecrated to God in religion, she seemed entirely to forget that she had ever been an empress and behaved as the lowest in the house, being convinced that she was so before God. She feared nothing more than any­thing that could recall her former dignity. She prayed and read much and especially made it her business to visit and comfort the sick. Thus she passed the last years of her life, dying on March 3, 1033 (or 1039). Her body was taken to Bamberg to be buried with her husband’s.

It is to the contemporary chroniclers, rather than to the relatively late biography of St Cunegund, that we must look for a trustworthy statement of the facts of her life. The latter is under suspicion of having been written with a view to her future canonization, which even­tually came about in the year 1200. J. B. Sägmüller, in particular (Theologische Quartalschrift, 1903, 1907, 1951), has shown good reason for doubting that the childlessness of the emperor and empress was due to any compact between the parties to live together as Mary and Joseph; cf. A. Michel in the same, vol. xcviii (1916), pp. 463—467. The biography, in varying forms, has been edited in the Acta Sanctorum (March, vol. i) and by G. Waitz in MCII., Scriptores, vol. vii. There are popular but rather uncritical modern lives of St Cunegund written by Toussaint and by H. Muller, the latter including an account of both St Henry and St Cunegund in one narrative. Cf. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, vol. iii, p. 539.