• General Notes

  [charlemegne.FTW]
  
  St. Begga, widow (AD 693) - December 17 Pepin of Landen, mayor o f the palace to three Frankish kings, and himself commonly calle d Blessed, was married to a saint, Bd Itta or Ida, and two of th eir three children figure in the Roman Martyrology: St. Gertrud e of Nivelles and her elder sister, St. Begga. Gertrude refuse d to marry and was an abbess soon after she was twenty, but Begg a married Ansegisilus, son of St. Arnulf of Metz, and spent prac tically the whole of her long life as a nobleman's wife "in th e world".  Of this union was born Pepin of Herstal, the founde r of the Carlovingian dynasty in France.  After the death of he r husband, St. Begga in 691 built at Andenne on the Meuse seve n chapels representing the Seven Churches of Rome, around a cent ral church, and in connection therewith she established a conven t and colonized it with nuns from her long-dead sister's abbey a t Nivelles.  It afterwards became a house of canonesses and th e Lateran canons regular commemorate St. Begga as belonging to t heir order.  She is also venerated by the Beguines of Belgium a s their patroness, but the common statement that she founded the m is a mistake due to the similarity of the names.  St. Begga di ed abbess of Andenne and was buried there.

Details of Begga's family with Anguise