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A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

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July 25 · Virgin

St. Glodesind

St. Glodesind

A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

Traditional feast

July 25
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

July 8
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Virgin

Early life

Selected sentences from the original account, unaltered.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 56 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

Then her parents built her a convent at Metz, and in it she spent six years, and died, at the age of thirty, beloved by all.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Feed your mind with Scripture and good books. Learning and the Scriptures matter in this life.

Build up the community you belong to. This life was lived with and for a community.

Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.

Read more

The full original · 56 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Usuardus, Benedictine and Gallican Martyrologies. Authority: — A Life written shortly after A.D. 882; another life written in the 10th cent, by John, Abbot of S. Arnoul, at Metz.] Glodesind was born in the reign of Childebert II., and was the daughter of Wintrio, duke of Austrasia, who was murdered in 598 by Theodebert, the son of Childebert, at the instigation of the savage Brunehild. She was born in 575; her mother’s name was Godila. When the girl was sixteen or seventeen years old, her parents married her to a young man of noble birth, named Obolen, and he took her home to his castle the same day. It was a bright day for the young couple, who loved each other tenderly, but it was suddenly overcast. When he and his bride arrived at his home, it was found in possession of the royal soldiers, who arrested the bridegroom, and carried him off to Childebert, on a charge of treason. He was cast into prison, where he languished a year, and was then executed. The shock broke all Glodesinffs ties to earth. She had been rudely awakened to the transitoriness of human happiness; and when her parents talked to her ol another husband, the poor young virgin-bride, whose heart was in the grave with her first love, fled from home, and took refuge in the church of S. Stephen at Metz, where she clung for protection to the il confession,” or relics of the proto-martyr. Her parents did not venture violently to remove her, but they watched all the doors of the church, to take her, should she attempt to leave it. For six days she remained in the church, and on the seventh, the Sunday, a priest entered in his glittering robes, followed by two serving boys, and solemnly veiled her, before all the people. He as suddenly retired, and it was rumoured that an angel had veiled the maiden. The parents were induced to give credence to this tale, or to pretend that they did, and they abandoned their ineffectual attempt to overcome the repugnance of Glodesind to another marriage.

She was allowed to remain unmarried, and go to her aunt Rotlinda, a religious at Treves [Trier in Germany], with whom she tarried till she had learned to walk in the religious life. Then her parents built her a convent at Metz, and in it she spent six years, and died, at the age of thirty, beloved by all.

Feast days

Feast: July 8
Traditional: July 25

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Glodesind's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on July 25
St. James the Great

St. James the Great

July 25 · Apostle, Martyr
C

St. Cucuphas

July 25 · Martyr
T

Sts. Thea

July 25 · Martyrs
← All 1727 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.