Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

Leoba. 65 A third was the double house of Heidenheim, founded in c.750 as a joint
enterprise of Wynnebald and Walburga, brother and sister of bishop Willebald of
Eichstätt. When Wynnebald died, Walburga carried on alone as abbess. It was at this
monastery that Hugeburc composed her life of Willebald and Winnebald sometime
between 776 and 786. By 790, however, it had become a community of male canons. 66
The cross-fertilization of monastic ideas between Francia and the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms is evident. In the latter half of the seventh century, Bertila, abbess of Jouarre
and subsequently Chelles, sent female and male teachers, relics and books to help
establish communities in England. 67 The nephew of Theudechildis, the first abbess of
Jouarre, was bishop Leuthere of Winchester. 68 Conversely, Barbara Yorke has suggested
that Boniface’s foundation of Tauberbischofsheim for his relative Leoba may have been
influenced by similar practices in England. Bishop Eorcenwald of London had founded
Barking in c.666 for his sister Aethelburh. 69 Of course, as she herself acknowledges, such
foundations by bishops for their sisters already had a long tradition in Francia by that
point; the example of Caesarius and Caesaria need not be laboured here.
Leoba, or Leobgyth, is perhaps the most well-known of Boniface’s female
followers owing to the composition of her vita early in the ninth century. 70 The work was
composed on the orders of Hrabanus Maurus, and was completed by c. 836, dateable by
the lack of mention of the translation of Leoba’s relics in 837. Leoba died in 779, and
Rudolf’s sources are the written memories of four nuns, Agatha, Thecla, Nana and
Eoloba, and a priest named Mago. 71 The dedicatee of the work, a nun named Hadamout,
is otherwise unidentified. The fact that Mago appears to have gathered much of his
information on Leoba as a result of extended conversations held with the four named
nuns shows in itself that the women at Tauberbischofsheim enjoyed considerable
65
Epist. 67, ed. Dummler MGH Epp. III, 335-6.
66
DHGE XXIII, cols. 785-6.
67
Vita Bertilae Abbatissae Calensis ed. W. Levison, MGH SSRM VI (Hanover, 1913) 95-109, at 106-7.
68
Yorke, ‘The Bonifacian mission’, 164.
69
Yorke, ‘The Bonifacian mission’, 163.
70
Rudolf of Fulda, Vita Leobae MGH SS XV:I ed. Waitz (Hanover, 1887), 118-31; ed. and trans. C.H.
Talbot, The Anglo-Saxon missionaries in Germany (London, 1954) 205-226.
71
Vita Leobae, praefatio.
188