Život svaté Radegundy z Poitiers – Engelbrechtová Jana (2026)

Who was Saint Radegund? In France, her name is borne by at least seventeen villages and towns and fifty churches. Devotion to this remarkable woman—princess, captive, queen, wife and nun, miraculous healer and intercessor—is strongest in Poitiers, where she founded a monastery and spent the rest of her life. Churches dedicated to her can also be found in Germany, England, Italy and Belgium. We have relatively extensive information about Radegund (d. 587) from her contemporaries and friends, including the poet and Bishop of Poitiers Venantius Fortunatus (d. 609), the nun Baudonivia (d. after 614), and the bishop and historian Gregory of Tours (d. 594), who mentions her in his Chronicle of the Franks. Five hundred years later, Hildebert of Lavardin (d. 1133), Archbishop of Tours, wrote his own text about Radegund; in modern times, in 1887, Pope Leo XIII (d. 1903) donated a gold, jewel-encrusted royal crown for her statue in a church in Poitiers. This publication by medievalist Jana Engelbrechtová presents the first Czech translation of Radegund’s biographies, several poems by Venantius Fortunatus, and comprehensive information about her personality, inspiring life story and posthumous veneration. The contents are in Czech.