Adèle d'Orp-le-Grand

Who they were

Adèle was a 7th-century nun, daughter of a Merovingian nobleman, who took the veil at the monastery of Nivelles founded by Itte Idoberga and St Gertrude. Around 640 she founded her own monastery at Orp-le-Grand and became its abbess; under King Childeric II it grew prosperous enough that she built a larger monastery dedicated to St Martin, to which her whole community moved.

Two local traditions surround her: one says she was cured miraculously of blindness, the other that she was born blind and received her sight at baptism. She died around 670 and was buried in the crypt of St Martin's; her relics were carried in procession each year, and she continues to be invoked for eye ailments.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

Merovingian abbess who founded the monastery of Orp-le-Grand around 640; invoked for eye ailments after a tradition of miraculous healing from blindness.