Holy Cross Abbey (Poitiers)

The Abbey of the Holy Cross was a French Benedictine monastery of nuns founded in the 6th century. Destroyed during the French Revolution, a new monastery with the same name was built in a nearby location during the 19th century for a community of Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Mercy of Jesus.

The abbey was founded in 552 by the Frankish queen, Radegund (French: Radegonde) as the first monastery for women in the Frankish Empire in what is now the village of Saint-Benoît, Vienne. It was founded due to a threat of excommunication of her husband, King Chlothar I, King of the Franks, by Germain, the Bishop of Paris. To avoid this penalty, the king provided the bishop with the funds to acquire lands near the episcopal palace to construct the Abbey of St. Mary (French: Abbaye de Sainte-Marie), as it was originally called . As his third wife had failed to provide him an heir, the king allowed Radegund to become a nun in the new monastery.

The first abbess was , a former lady in waiting to the queen, who had refused to take this office for herself. The community initially followed the Regula virginum (Rule for virgins) written in 512 by the noted bishop Caesarius of Arles, who had written it for a group of women in his city who had wished to lead lives of greater asceticism.

The monastery was renamed in 567 to the Abbey of the Holy Cross, when Radegond was given a gift by the Emperor of Byzantium of a fragment of the True Cross. As part of the ceremony of processing to the abbey with this sacred relic, she commissioned her friend, the Italian nobleman and religious poet Venantius Fortunatus, later to become bishop of the city, to write a poem to mark the occasion. For this, he produced the hymn Vexilla Regis, considered to be one of the most significant Christian hymns ever written, which is still sung for services on Good Friday.

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