Saint Aldegonde

On the side of a hillside overlooking Maubeuge, in the middle of one of its suburbs, which owes its name to Saint Aldegonde, one can still see the fountain that miraculously quenched her thirst. Its waters have never run dry. Next to this fountain stands a small chapel which replaced, in 1808, the one that was destroyed during the French Revolution. Few days pass without it receiving some pilgrim.

A few steps away and opposite flows the river that Aldegonde crossed on dry land, supported by two Angels who transported her to the other bank. Its width, not to mention its depth, which is quite considerable, is no less than four to five meters. It is in memory of this crossing, naturally impossible for a fourteen-year-old girl, that, each year, when the procession, known as the Saint-Aldegonde procession, comes into view of the Sambre Sambre River miraculously crossed by the saint. , the clergy sings the canticle of thanksgiving of the Hebrews, who emerged miraculously from the Red Sea.

The monastery that Saint Aldegonde founded in Maubeuge, and which was the origin of this city, having been ruined and rebuilt several times, was destroyed during the French Revolution, as was the chapter church. But what this chapter contained that was most precious was saved: the veil that a dove placed on the head of Saint Aldegonde at the moment of her consecration, transported into exile in Germany by a canoness, was returned by Baron Blondel de Boiregard in 1821 to Mr. Bevenot, parish priest of Maubeuge, and exposed to the veneration of the faithful. Few pieces of goldsmith work are comparable, in beauty, to the one that encloses this veil.

The sacred bones of Saint Aldegonde lost their magnificent reliquary on January 21, 1793, but they were religiously preserved, and their authenticity was recognized by Mgr Be Mgr Belmas Bishop of Cambrai who recognized the authenticity of the relics in 1808. lmas, Bishop of Cambrai, on June 26, 1808. At the siege of 1815, a fire consumed the church and the shrine, but without exerting any action on these relics other than giving them a bluish tint. Twice a year, they are exposed to the veneration of the faithful: on January 30 and on the Sunday following the Ascension, the day on which they are carried solemnly in procession.

A chapel, in the current church of Maubeuge, has just been consecrated to Saint Aldegonde.

Car dinal Baronius no cardinal Baronius Church historian who inserted the saint into the Roman Martyrology. tes that there is yet another Saint Aldegonde, a virgin, daughter of Sai nt Basin, w saint Basin Father of another Saint Aldegonde, martyred in Flanders. ho was also of royal blood and had built three churches in Flanders, on the river Lys. As he was guarding one of them, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, against the invasion of the Gentiles, he was martyred and buried at Bronghen, near Ghent, at the same place where there was later an abbey o f the Premonstratens Ordre des Prémontrés Religious order represented by two martyrs (Adrien Becan and Jacques Lacop). ian Order; it is there that this blessed woman had served Our Lord in great holiness. Her body was also buried there next to that of her father, Saint Basin. Her feast is celebrated on June 20, and that of her father on the 14th.

Ancient Martyrologies, particularly the Roman, comme Romain Official catalogue of the saints of the Catholic Church. morate Saint Aldegonde on January 30th. Modern information is drawn from the Life of Saint Aldegonde, published by Abbé Delbos.