Queen Radegund, at Holy Cross monastery, Poitiers

Radegund (c. 520-587) was a Thuringian princess taken as war booty by the Frankish king Chlothar I and married to him against her will; she fled the court after he murdered her brother and was ordained a deaconess, founding the monastery of the Holy Cross (Sainte-Croix) at Poitiers, the first nunnery for women in Gaul. A celebrated ascetic who secured a relic of the True Cross from the emperor in Constantinople, she became one of the most venerated saints of Merovingian Gaul. The poet Venantius Fortunatus was her close friend and spiritual companion at Poitiers, writing verse for her and her foster-daughter Agnes; his hymns 'Vexilla regis' and 'Pange lingua' were composed for the arrival of the Cross relic at her monastery.