05 October 2012

Immortal Saint

Comments after the jump.
Spouses are in bold with children listed below each.

 SIGRADE DE ALSACE
 Born: Moselle, Lorraine, France
 Death: Metz, Moselle, Lorraine, France

 Bodilon De Bourgogne
 Adele deTreves
 Count Warinus
 Gunza Treves
 Gunza Kunza Metz
 Kunza Metz
 Warinus Guerin Bourgogne
 WARINUS, W G DE BOURGOGNE, DE POITIERS, B: 638
 Guerin Warin Warinus Poitiers, B: 1853

 Bodilon DeTreves
 Adele DePoitiers
 Guerin DePoitiers
 Kunza DeTreves
 Warinus Franks Burgundy
 Guerin Warin, B: 1150
 Guerin Warin Warinus Poitiers, B: 1853

 Bodilon de Pointers, D: 2000
 Guerin de Autun
 Warinus de Autun Poitiers
 Guerin Warin Warinus Poitiers, B: 1853

 Chlodulf StCloud Bishop Metz
 Alberic d Aquitaine
 Guerin de Autun
 GUNZA DeTREVES
 Kunza DeTreves DeMetz Countess Paris
 Kunza Gunza de Metz
 Kunza Gunza deTreves
 Guerin Warin Warinus Poitiers, B: 1853

 Bodilon Boditon Franks Burgundy
 Adele deTreves
 Immachilde Hymnegilde
 Imnichilde DeSwabia
 Leger Bishop
 Guerin Warin Warinus Poitiers, B: 1853

ⓑⓐⓡⓚⓘⓝⓖ  ⓤⓟ  ⓣⓗⓔ  ⓦⓡⓞⓝⓖ  ⓣⓡⓔⓔ

According to various trees this person is, literally, a saint. I tried to figure out exactly who she was so I did a Google search for Sigrade De Alsace. It looked like I had done a search on Mocavo. Results on the first 7 pages were all genealogy related. It may be that the results for the first 100 pages of results are genealogy related but I gave up after 7. Of course they all go to different disastrous trees on various sites.
Not that it will be reliable but I then tried Wikipedia. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
So lots of people think there was a saint named Sigrade De Alsace and that they are related to her. The person who created the tree with the above profile also believes Sigrade lived over 1000 years. I would love to find out something about this supposed saint but these are an invasive species of tree that has not only taken over genealogy sites but an entire search engine as well. Sigh.

Hat tip to Janet for the heads up about this profile ;-)


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19 comments:

  1. I did a millionshort search and it was STILL all family trees. I couldn't find any reference of sainthood or who the person was outside of what's shared on people's trees.

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    1. Would it be wrong to make up a famous person, inventor, saint, whatever, make up a tree and see how long it would take before it started being copied? :-P

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  2. I found this reference to a Sigrades on Google UK.

    http://www.propheticvoice.co.uk/download/pdf%20books/Butler%27s%20Lives%20of%20the%20Fathers,%20Matrys%20and%20principle%20Saints.txt

    This is a very large text file; Ctl-F to find a reference. The book is available on Project Gutenberg.

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    1. I only see one reference to a woman named "Sigrades." No surname or location. Mother of St. Leodegarius (B: 616). No mention of her spouse's name. The crazy trees have her born anywhere from 600 to 620. There's only a handful of Ancestry trees for Leodegarius. One has his mother as Sigrades d'Alsace. Another has him, and his brother (also a saint) married to the daughter of Sigrades.
      Not surprising that the actual saint has barely a mention on Ancestry and this other one has taken over.
      Your link did give me the idea to narrow the Google search to books. Of course most of the results are in French and I don't know any French :-P

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    2. Yes, there was only the one reference. I wonder if that book has any credibility with the Church? I'm not Catholic so I haven't a clue as to its reliability. It may be entirely apocryphal.

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    3. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Warinus. A lot of family members apparently are saints, including his mother Saint Sigrada of Sainte-Marie de Soissons. Basis for sainthood seems thin to me, but I'm not Catholic.

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    4. The reason for so little available information is probably because these are all early Alsacian saints. I was able to find a document in French from the early 19th century reviewing all the saints from Alsace. Sigrade is not actually referred to as a Saint, but that she died in a monastery of Notre Dame de Soissons "with odeurs de saintete" the litteral translation would be "with whiffs of sainthood". She is the mother of Saint Leger/Ludger/Leutgar. Spruce up your French http://liberius.net/livres/Histoire_des_saints_d_Alsace_000000923.pdf

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    5. Find a grave gives a succinct description of Marie. https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=146297906

      I know their site is tedious because of the ads, and it more often than not excludes ancestors on the side of caution.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I am quite sure that there are "local saints" in many European countries from early times of Catholicism. Another example in France is the world famous Saint Yrieix (pronounce E - RE - A),... From the Creuse departement where I spent many a summer growing up. This is a local Saint with churches, statues, villages named after him, etc....

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  5. From a list of French saints. Sainte Sigrade: She was the mother of St. Leger of Autun (assinated in 679 by order of Ebroin after ordering his eyes be poked out) and of Saint Gerin (arrested by order of Ebroin and stoned to death in 677). Relegated to a monastery in Soissons by order of the mayor of the palace Ebroin, she saw all her property confiscated. We have a letter from Saint Leger to his mother to support her in her trials. She endured them indeed with great dignity and piety. Parton Saint day August 8, celebrated locally in Alsace.

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    1. Thanks Lou, do you have a link or reference name for that list?

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  6. And a final piece.

    Pre-Congregation is my term for the Beatification and/or Canonization of saints and/or beati prior to the institution of the modern investigations performed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. It designates those beati who were canonized by local bishops, primates, or patriachs, often as a result of popular devotion.

    In terms of this web site, it means that the dates for beatification and/or canonization are not available. If the dates were ever recorded, those records are long lost, or simply not available.

    The Catholic Church canonizes or beatifies only those whose lives have been marked by the exercise of heroic virtue, and only after this has been proved by common repute for sanctity and by conclusive arguments. The chief difference, however, lies in the meaning of the term canonization, the Church seeing in the saints nothing more than friends and servants of God whose holy lives have made them worthy of His special love.

    For several centuries the bishops, in some places only the primates and patriarchs could grant to martyrs and confessors public ecclesiastical honour; such honour, however, was always decreed only for the local territory over which the grantors held jurisdiction. Still, it was only the Bishop of Rome‘s acceptance of the cultus that made it universal, since he alone could permit or command in the Universal Church.

    Towards the close of the eleventh century the popes found it necessary to restrict episcopal authority on this point, and decreed that the virtues and miracles of persons proposed for public veneration should be examined in councils, more particularly in general councils. Pope Urban VII published, in 1634, a Bull which put an end to all discussion by reserving to the Holy See exclusively not only its immemorial right of canonization, but also that of beatification.

    - Catholic Encyclopedia

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  7. St Sigrada is mentioned in "The Book of Saints, A Dictionary of Servants of God", compiled by the Benedictine Monks of St Augustine Abbey, Ramsgate (England), Morehouse Publishing, Wilton, Sixth Edition, 1989, page 510. The short entry says "Benedictine nun, d c678. Mother of SS Leodegarius and Warinus. In her widowhood she became a nun in the convent at Soissons. She died shortly after the martyrdom of her two sons, victims of the cruelty of Ebroin, mayor of the palace."

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  8. Also mentioned here as "of Verdun": http://www.geni.com/people/Saint-Sigrade-de-Verdun/6000000000078496632

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  9. And here as "of Sainte-Marie de Soissons": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Warinus

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  10. Also check it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leodegar

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  11. Thank you for this discussion. I am not sure who is who anymore on Ancestry with this family. I think I will just end the line with Warinus since there are no other back up references.

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