SHE was daughter of Walbert, of the royal blood of France, and born in
Hainault about the year 630. She consecrated herself to God by a vow of
virginity, when very young, and resisted all solicitations to marriage,
serving God in the house of her holy parents, till, in 638, she took the
religious veil, and founded and governed a great house of holy virgins
at Maubeuge.[1] She was favored with an eminent gift of prayer, and many
revelations; but was often tried by violent slanders and persecutions,
which she looked upon as the highest favors of the divine mercy, begging
of God that she might be found worthy to suffer still more for his sake.
His divine providence sent her a lingering and most painful cancer in
her breast. The saint bore the torture of her distemper, also the
caustics and incisions of the surgeons, not only with patience, but even
with joy, and expired in raptures of sweet love, on the 30th of January,
in 660, according to Bollandus. Her relics are enshrined in the great
church of Maubeuge, where her monastery is now a college of noble
virgins canonesses. Her name occurs on this day in the ancient breviary
of Autun, and in the martyrologies of Rabanus, Usuard, and Notker: also
in the Roman. At St. Omer, where a parish church bears her name, she is
called Saint Orgonne. See her life written some time after her death: a
second a century later, and a third by Hucbald, a learned monk of St.
Armand's, in 900, with the remarks of Mabillon, (Act. Bened. t. 2, p.
937,) and the Bollandists. Consult also Miraeus's Fasti Belgici, and La
Vie de St. Aldegonde, par P. Binet, Jesuite, in 12mo. Paris, 1625.
Footnotes:
1. The act of this foundation, published by Miraeus, is spurious, as
mention is made therein of persons who were not living at that time:
neither could it have been made in the twentieth year of Dagobert,
as it contains facts which cannot be reconciled with the history of
that prince. See the note of Bollandus, t. 2, p. 1039, and
Chatelain, p 461.