Lioba/Leobgytha/Leoba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim
Overview
Biography
Lioba was a missionary in Germany with Boniface to whom she was related through her mother AEbbe. She had been trained first by abbess Eadburg at Minster, then by abbess Tetta at Wimborne. Boniface asked Tetta to send Lioba to help in his mission, and made her abbess of Bischofsheim on the Tauber, where she trained several nuns who later became abbesses, according to the life of Lioba (Vita Leobae) written by Rudolf, a monk of Fulda in the ninth century. Rudolf says she was learned in the scriptures, the fathers, the councils, and ecclesiastical law, that she was respected by kings, that bishops discussed spiritual matters and ecclesiastical discipline with her, and that she was the only woman allowed to pray in the monastery of Fulda. Boniface asked to have her body laid beside his when she died, "so we who with a like desire and devotion have served Christ here may side by side await the day of resurrection" (cited by Eleanor S. Duckett, Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars [New York: Macmillan, 1947], 452). Lioba was also known to lay rulers: Charlemagne sent presents and his queen Hildegard pressed her to visit the court, which she did, and to live there, which she did not.
Letters from Lioba/Leobgytha/Leoba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim
A letter to Boniface (c.732)Letters to Lioba/Leobgytha/Leoba, abbess of Tauberbischofsheim
A letter from Boniface (735?-55)A letter from Boniface (742-46)
A letter from Lul (732-55)