Saint Leoba of Tauberbischofsheim
It did not take me long to figure out, after starting this hagiographical series on Old English saints of the Orthodox Church, that the holy mothers of the English Church are equal in importance to the holy fathers. We may have more male saints commemorated in the calendar, but the women who are here seem to shine far more brightly in their virtues, leave spiritual legacies which are every bit as lasting, and earn comparatively greater popular veneration than the men here. The saintly English mothers are truly and fully feminine and do not show any need to become counterfeit men. They do not show the tendencies of modern feminism either to desex themselves or to make an idol out of their femininity. But, as they reflect in various ways the ikon of the Theotokos, we see that they occupy a place of honour that is no whit less than the fathers.
This much is true, very much so, of the holy mother we venerate today, Holy Mother Leoba [also Lioba], who founded the abbey at Tauferbischofsheim. I have mentioned her before. She was one of the three literate women (the others being Holy Mother Éadburg of Thanet and Venerable Wealdburg of Heidenheim) with whom Saint Boniface held regular correspondence – and, indeed, she was a close relative and dear friend of this Apostle to the Germans.
Saint Leoba was born to well-to-do and pious English parents, Dynne and Æbbe, who very much like Saints Joachim and Anna were barren well into their old age. They had lost all hope of having children of their own, but Æbbe dreamt one night that she drew a great church bell from out of her bosom, and as she drew it out it pealed merrily in her hand. She asked her elderly maidservant what it meant; and the old woman told her that it meant she would yet conceive a child in holiness, that once it was born she must offer and consecrate as Hannah did Samuel to the service of God. Æbbe thereafter conceived and bore a daughter, whom she at first named either Leobgýð (‘love-battle’) or Þrýðgifu (‘strength-gift’), but who went by the comelier cognomen of Leoba, which means ‘beloved’.
As Æbbe’s elderly confidant had advised her, Leoba was given at a young age into the care of Abbess Saint Tetta of Wimbourne (whose feast also falls on the twenty-eighth of September), who had a reputation for strict discipline in her abbey which she was able to keep by way of personal example. The hagiographer Rudolf of Fulda recounts a tale which shows the power of Venerable Tetta’s prayers for the dead. She had at her convent a particularly zealous prioress who enforced the rule of the abbey with such severity and harshness that the younger nuns began to complain bitterly of her. This prioress, rigorous and inflexible in her habits, died without having offered the kiss of peace to her sisters, and without having asked their pardon for her sins. The younger nuns cursed her memory after she died; and they went to her grave and trampled the earth over her body.
When this came to Abbess Tetta’s attention, she grew alarmed and went to inspect the grave of her erstwhile prioress, finding the earth there to have been trampled down a full six inches. Knowing full well the cause, she was stricken with fear at the punishment that God had laid upon the prioress for her hardness of heart. She then gathered all her sisters around her and began to reproach them for their own cruelty toward the dead woman, and asked them to forgive her now that she was dead as Christ commanded us to forgive all our enemies – and also to offer prayers for the salvation of her soul. For Abbess Tetta feared as much for the souls of these young nuns who remembered their grudge with such bitterness, as she did for that of the prioress who lay cold in the ground. She enjoined the sisters to a strict fast and vigil for three days, which they undertook together.
At the end of this fast, to which Abbess Tetta enjoined her own tearful prayers, she led a procession before the trodden grave and knelt before it, asking God’s forgiveness for her sins and theirs, and praying for the soul of the deceased prioress. As she rose to her feet, Saint Tetta beheld the ground above the grave rise until it was level and loose as though it had been freshly turned. By this she was given to understand that God had heard her prayer, and had mercy upon the soul of the prioress and forgiven the wrongs she had done in life.
On another occasion, one of the nuns who was in charge of keeping the chapel safe and locked, lost the ring of keys in the dark after Compline. No matter how she looked, the poor girl could not find the keys anywhere – not by daylight and not by candlelight in the dark. Sick with fear, she went and threw herself at the feet of the Abbess, asking pardon for her oversight. Abbess Tetta did not punish the girl, but instead saw that it was a trick of the devil; and so she led her nuns – then about fifty of them – into another building where they sang Matins and Lauds. When this was done, they left the building and found before the door of the first the body of a dead fox with the ring of keys in its mouth. Taking these, Abbess Tetta unlocked the church and gave thanks to God that He had seen fit to answer the nuns’ prayers and unmask the devil’s deceit.
It was to this virtuous Abbess Tetta that young Leoba was entrusted, and Tetta ensured that the girl was given the very best education she could offer. Leoba learned to read, and exercised her capacious intellect by listening raptly at the reading of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels. She committed to memory much of Holy Writ, the better to love Him Who is the Word of God. She fasted according to her strength and according to the Rule; and she prayed without cease. When she was not at rest in prayer, she committed herself to the work of her hands and did not stay idle. And not only did she listen to Scripture, but she listened to every single one of her sisters as though she was Christ Himself, and did her best to learn from them those spiritual gifts at which they excelled. And, of course, as was common to the holy mothers of the English Church and especially those in the Benedictine Order, she gave herself to the care and love of the poor, needy and sick.
Rudolf of Fulda recounts a hagiographical story wherein Leoba was given a dream. In this dream, a purple thread emerged from her mouth; she drew it out from thence, and there appeared to be no end of it. More of it kept coming out, as though it were issuing from her bowels. As she drew it out and it began to fill her hand, she began to wind it around and around, over and under, again and again until it formed a great ball. She awoke from the sheer exertion. Saint Leoba knew that in Wimbourne there lived an elderly nun who had the gift of reading dreams. However, in her modesty, she wished not to make a show of herself. Instead she related her dream to a sister-nun, who went and told it exactly to the elderly soothsayer, except that in place of Leoba she related it as though it had appeared to herself. When she had finished, the old nun became angry, and spoke thus: ‘This is indeed a true vision and presages that good will come. But why do you lie to me in saying that such things happened to you? These matters are no concern of yours: they apply to the beloved chosen by God!’ In this way the old nun referred to Leoba by name, for she knew who truly had the vision.
The old nun explained the dream thus. The purple thread signifies the wisdom of the heart, which is given to a nun who loves God with her whole heart. The fact that she wound it around her hand, shows that she is able to take that wisdom and put it into action. The repetition of her winding the thread around her hand, both around from side to side and over and under, signifies the twofold mystery of the Cross: ascending along the vertical in contemplation and love of God; and spanning the horizontal in the broad and all-giving love toward all people. ‘By these signs,’ the old nun said, ‘God shows that your mistress will profit many by her words and example, and the effect of them will be felt in other lands afar off whither she will go.’
And it so happened as the old nun said. For Saint Boniface, with the blessing of Pope Gregory, had begun his missionary work among the continental Saxons and Frisians – the still-heathen German kinsmen of the insular Saxons who had been enlightened by the True Faith. The Germans were ready to receive the Word, but few were Boniface’s helpers in reaping the harvest. To better serve and pray for the German people, he set up monasteries, and sent his Bavarian disciple Saint Sturm to the Abbazia di Montecassino to study the Rule of Saint Benedict from those who had practised it longest. He also sent back many letters to England to call for learned and zealous helpers to aid him, and of Abbess Tetta he requested Leoba by name.
Saint Sturm and Saint Leoba were chosen by Saint Boniface to have rule over the respective monastic communities. To his Bavarian spiritual son, Holy Boniface entrusted the monks of Fulda in what is now Hesse. To his English spiritual daughter, he entrusted the nuns of Tauberbischofsheim in what is now Baden-Württemberg. Rudolf of Fulda relates that she was dear and loving to all – although she had many nuns as her disciples and they all awed her, she was never proud nor high-handed. Anything she taught others to do, she first did herself. She was ever meek, ever sweet, ever cheerful (though never given to immodest laughter), and treated all who came to her with the same patient ear. She read with her every spare moment; the Scriptures were never seen out of her hands. To her knowledge of Scripture she also added the writings of the Church Fathers, much of canon law and especially the wise judgements of all Six Orthodox Œcumenical Councils that had then been held. (The Seventh, which confirmed the validity of the veneration of icons, would not be held until five years after Saint Leoba’s blessed repose.)
And yet Saint Leoba, though strict on herself, was quite lenient with her sister-nuns. She enjoined them to take as much sleep as they needed, for she wanted to keep their minds sharp and attentive whether at prayer or work. When she went to sleep, she even asked a younger nun to read aloud to her the words of the Lord, a duty which they were glad to do. And yet – Rudolf relates – if one of these nuns made an error in her reading (which some of them did deliberately to test her), even if Saint Leoba was fast asleep, Leoba would at once correct her!
The Klosterhof Tauberbischofsheim under Saint Leoba always kept its doors wide open to any and all who would visit, without exception. She practised diligently the radical hospitality of the early Benedictines, in repudiation of hard-hearted late Rome with its walled villas and brutal latifundium œconomy. Indeed, she would personally give lavish banquets for her poor guests even though she herself was fasting, and would with her own hands wash the feet of her guests.
Saint Leoba was, by the power of her prayers, able to preserve the good name and demonstrate the innocence of the Kloster. At one time the body of a newborn infant, dead from exposure, was found along the bank of the Tauber downstream of the Kloster. The woman who found it raised a great hue and cry against the nuns of the abbey, whom she accused of fornication, of abandoning the child and of befouling the river water with its dead flesh. The whole of the town came out in force to revile the nuns for this wicked deed. It turned out that all of the nuns save one – Agatha – could be vouched for; and Agatha had been given leave to visit her mother. Agatha was sent for, and the crime was laid at her feet. But weeping, Agatha fell at Saint Leoba’s feet, protesting her virginity and innocence of this child’s life.
Saint Leoba believed her, but understood that Agatha (and the whole of the Benedictine community) would be blamed unless the true culprit could be brought out. Therefore she had the nuns pray in constant vigil and make three processions daily around the cloister. As she prayed in the third procession, one woman – an unfortunate with a club foot who lived in the cloister foregate, came forward and confessed to the saint that it had been she who, ashamed of her own fornication, had birthed and then abandoned her child. Thus the good name of the nuns and of Saint Leoba in particular was preserved among the German people as well as the English.
On another occasion a fire broke out outside Tauberbischofsheim. The houses in the hamlet were of the thatch-roofed wattle-and-daub type common to the Teutonic peoples of late antiquity, and they stood close together, so that if the fire so much as licked at one, a disaster was likely to fall upon all – including humans and animals. With the conflagration approaching, the men and women of the hamlet ran in a great mob before Saint Leoba, begging her by the power of her prayers to stop the flames. The saint, unruffled, asked for one to fetch a pail of water upstream from the Tauber. She sprinkled into this some salt that had been blessed by Saint Boniface. Then she bade the water be thrown back into the river, and that water be drawn downstream and used to douse the fire. All the water having been made holy, when the Germans did as the English nun had bade them to do, the fire was extinguished ‘just as if a flood had fallen from the skies’. The crowd, at first dumbstruck by this, afterward broke out in great shouts of praise for God. Saint Leoba’s prayers to God and the blessed water of the Tauber had saved the whole hamlet from sure destruction.
On another occasion, a wild thunderstorm arose, blackening the skies and blowing so hard that the villagers were sure that the world was coming to an end. Again they formed a crowd and huddled in a great mass – men, women, children – in the church, thinking that the Last Judgement had come. Leoba bade them all have patience and join her in prayer, for no man knows the hour. Still, the crowd was sick with fear, and the nun Thekla begged Saint Leoba on their behalf to pray to the Theotokos for deliverance from the storm. Then Saint Leoba leapt up from her prostration as though roused to battle, flung away her cloak and strode toward the door with her eyes ablaze – earning the name she had been given at birth. She stood on the threshold and made the sign of the Cross before her, as though she were holding a shield alone against a host of foes. She invoked the name of Christ and of the Theotokos thrice amidst the peals of thunder. At once, by God’s grace, the wind shifted, the storm clouds blew off, and the air grew still. Armageddon having passed them by, the town again calmed.
Another miracle related by Rudolf of Fulda concerns one of her sister-nuns, named Williswíþ. She suffered, as did the woman in the Gospel, from an effusion of blood which grew so dire that she could not turn herself over, rise from her bed by herself, or so much as walk without leaning on someone else for support. Poor Williswíþ could no longer be kept in the dortoir on account of the smell; and her eldern had to fetch her home over the river on a litter. Her lameness waxed, her body grew numb, and the breath very nearly left her body, so that even her kinfolk thought she was dead. They wrapped her in linens and came weeping to Saint Leoba, asking her prayers for Williswíþ’s soul. Saint Leoba came near her bedside and ordered that the linens be taken off her. Leoba lay her hand on Williswíþ’s breast and spoke: ‘Stop your weeping; her soul is still in her.’ Leoba sent for the little spoon she used at the common table, brought milk and blessed it, and poured it drop by drop down Williswíþ’s throat. The girl gained enough strength that she could sit up and speak. Leoba kept up this treatment, and by the end of the week her issue of blood had stopped and she could stand and walk again on her own two feet. The ailment never returned. Williswíþ lived healthily to the end of her days, outliving her beloved Saint Leoba who had cured her.
As he went toward his martyrdom at Dokkum, Holy Boniface entrusted Leoba to the care of Saint Lul, whom he appointed bishop in his stead. He also went to Leoba personally, gave her his cowl, and begged her not to leave the Germans throughout her life, whose souls had been placed in her charge. It was his dear wish that Leoba’s relics and his be interred together. Thereafter, when Saint Boniface’s remains had been translated to Fulda following his martyrdom among the Frisians, Leoba became the only woman ever to be allowed to enter the men’s monastery and offer prayers there.
Saint Leoba became much trusted and revered among the Frankish nobility and court – particularly Hildegard Queen of the Franks, who loved her like a sister. She received such noble visitors with her wonted impartial hospitality, but Rudolf tells us that she ‘detested court life like poison’ and would not suffer herself to remain there for any length of time. Even so, as she reached the end of her earthly life, one of her last visits was to the young queen Hildegard.
She was taken ill not long after and was bedridden. She sent for a trusted English priest named Torhtat, who was mentioned in one of Saint Boniface’s epistles to her; and he administered to her the Gifts. She offered her soul into the Creator’s hands, and passed peacefully from this life to the heavenly one. Her earthly relics were translated in a great procession to Fulda, where – the monks showing a certain degree of circumspection about opening Boniface’s crypt – she was interred on the north side of the monastery chapel. There her relics worked many wonders for those who came to visit her.
According to Rudolf of Fulda, she had four disciples – Agatha, Thekla, Nana and Eoleoba – a couple of whom, interestingly enough, bore the names of Greek saints. These four holy women and their witness to their mistress’s life were Rudolf’s primary hagiographical source, as mediated through priests and other men of good character who knew them.
Holy Mother Leoba, sweet and gentle bearer of God’s Word among the Germans, tamer of storms and quencher of the fires of hell, and Venerable Abbess Tetta of Wimbourne her faithful tutor and mentor, pray unto Christ our God that our souls might be saved!
English by birth, you were related
To the Holy Hierarch Boniface of Mainz.
On his entreaty you went with several companions
Into his monastery of Tauberbischofsheim
Which you directed with love and wisdom.
Holy Leoba, pray to God that He have mercy on us!
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