Saint Heriburg von Nottuln

Heriburg of Nottuln (born in Friesland; died October 16, 839, in Nottuln) was a pious woman of the early Middle Ages, possibly an abbess. According to Altfried’s Vita Ludgeri, who was still able to question her as a witness, Heriburg was the sister of Saint Liudger, the first Bishop of Münster and founder of the monasteries of Werden and Helmstedt, and of Hildegrim, who became Bishop of Châlons in 802. According to the foundation history of the Nottuln collegiate church, imaginatively invented by the Nottuln chaplain Albert Wilkens (1790–1828), Liudger founded the first convent in Westphalia in Nottuln in 803, with Heriburg serving as its first abbess. There is no evidence for the founding of a female religious community in Nottuln during this period. It is possible that Heriburg was a recluse or the abbess of a failed foundation. A silver casket containing remains attributed to Heriburg, which were discovered in an oak coffin during excavations in 1978, is now located in the collegiate and parish church of Saint Martin in Nottuln. Her feast day is October 16.