Monegundis (also ''Monegund, Monegundes,'' died 570 AD) was a Frankish

hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite ( adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a C ...

and

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and denomination. In Catholic, Eastern Or ...

. A native of

Chartres Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 170,763 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Chartres (as def ...

, she married and bore her husband daughters. When her daughters died in childhood, she decided to become an

anchorite In Christianity, an anchorite or anchoret (female: anchoress) is someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. While anchorites are ...

after a long bout with depression, and after receiving permission from her husband. She founded a hermitage, consisting of a private room, at Chartres. She later moved to a site near the tomb of Saint Martin at

Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the prefecture of the department of Indre-et-Loire. The commune of Tours had 136,463 inhabitants as of 2018 while the population of the whole metro ...

. She thence acquired a reputation for holiness. This attracted other women to a similar lifestyle, and Monegundis devised a

monastic rule A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practic ...

that led to the founding of the convent of Saint Pierre-le-Puellier. Her

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context do ...

in the

General Roman Calendar The General Roman Calendar is the liturgical calendar that indicates the dates of celebrations of saints and mysteries of the Lord (Jesus Christ) in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, wherever this liturgical rite is in use. These cel ...

on July 2.

References

External links

St. Monegundis
6th-century Frankish women 570 deaths 6th-century Frankish saints French hermits Year of birth unknown Christian female saints of the Middle Ages {{France-saint-stub