Baring-Gould’s sources: German Martyrologies. Venerated especially in the diocese of Wurzburg. Authority The Latin Acts, written somewhat later.] In the reign of Louis the Pius (814 — 840), there lived a nobleman of Noric race, named Ernest, who, when the emperor came to Vienna, in 832, attended his court, and finding favour with him, accompanied him in his return Westward; and was appointed by Louis, steward, or count of Lauffen, on the Neckar, with supervision of the forest of the Spessart, a royal hunting domain. Accordingly, Ernest moved to Lauffen with his wife Frideburga, and all his household. There, after a few years, his wife presented him with a little daughter, who was given the name of Reginswinda, and committed to the charge of a nurse, the sister of one of the count’s grooms.

This groom was an idle, neglectful fellow, and as he was continually leaving his duty undone, Count Ernest repeatedly gave him a severe whipping. The groom’s sister so bitterly resented this, that in a fit of revenge she strangled the little child, then seven years old, and flung it into the Neckar, and then, overcome with horror at her crime, plunged in to destroy herself, but was saved by some peasants, and in her terror and remorse, she confessed her guilt. The little body was found floating with arms expanded, and was solemnly translated and buried at Lauffen by Humbert, bishop of Wtirzburg (d. 842).

The popular sympathy for the murdered child took the form of popular canonization, the usual mode of expressing in those days sympathy with those who had been wronged.