# A Dictionary of Saintly Women/Hadumada

​St. Hadumada, Nov. 28 (Adumade, Hadmode, Hathmuthe, Hathumod, Hathumoth, Haymode). + 874. First abbess of Gandersheim. Granddaughter of St. Ida. Her parents were Ludolf, duke of the Saxons, son of Ecbert and St. Ida, and Oda, daughter of Billung and Eda. They went as pilgrims to Rome, and brought thence the relics of the holy Popes Innocent and Anastasius to enrich the new monastery of Gandersheim, which they had founded 852. They had twelve children, one of whom, Bruno, is regarded as the founder of the house of Brunswick. Another, Otho the Illustrious, was duke of Saxony and father of the Emperor Henry the Fowler. (See St. Matilda (2).)
Ludolf died in 860. Oda lived through the whole of the 9th century and part of the 10th, and attained to the age of one hundred and nine. She was born in the reign of Charlemagne, and lived until after the birth of her great-grandson, Otho the Great. Five of her daughters were veiled nuns, living in her house at Brunshausen; but as they were joined by others, the place was soon too small for them, and Oda removed them all to Gandersheim. Hadumada was the eldest of these five. Her contemporary biographer says that from her infancy she never cared for toys or fine clothes, but addicted herself to letters which others were compelled with blows to learn, and was soon conspicuous for her acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures and for her charity, her great kindness and obedience to her mother, and all virtues. She was for several years a nun at Herford, on the Werra, which was the first great nunnery on Saxon ground, and was called "Dat Hillige Hervede," being very rich in bones and other holy relics. It was founded by King Louis, about 822, on the model of Notre Dame de Soissons, where Ludolf s grandmother, St. Theodrada, was abbess. The abbess and all the nuns of Herford were very sorry when the time came that Hadumada, now twelve years old, must leave them and take the post of abbess of Gandersheim, six leagues from Goslar. It was one of the conditions of the foundation and endowment that the abbess should always be a member of the house of the founders when one of suitable learning and piety could be found. Accordingly, the three first abbesses were daughters of Ludolf and Oda. It was one of the four great abbeys where none but daughters of princes were received. The abbess was ex officio a princess of the empire, and sat in the German diet.
Hadumada died in her thirty-fifth year, and was succeeded by her sister, B. Gerberga, and she by another sister, Christina.
A contemporary Life of St. Hadumada in the appendix to the works of Hroswitha (Migne, Cursus Completus, cxxxvii.), is chiefly a panegyric, and tells little but her extraordinary virtues. The particulars of her family and of the two abbeys are in Clarus, Die Heilige Mathilde; Migne, Dic. des Abbayes; Giesebrecht, Kaiserzeit. Pertz and Leibnitz have among their Monumenta several chronicles in which Gandersheim and its founders and inmates are mentioned. The chronicle of Henry Bodo, for instance, contains copies of sundry grants of land and other privileges given to this abbey by the sovereigns of the 9th and 10th centuries.