WALPURGIS, Walpurga, or W alburga, French forms of the name are Gualbourg, Falbourg, Vaubourg, and Avougourg. 1 St, was born in Sussex about the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century, and was educated at Winburn, Dorset, where, after taking the veil, she remained for twentyseven years. She then at the instance of her uncle, St Boniface, and her brother, St Wilibald, set out along with some other nuns to found religious houses in Germany. Her first settlement was at Bischofsheim in the diocese of Mainz, and two years later (754) she became abbess of the Benedictine nunnery at Heidenheim, within her brother Wilibald’s diocese of Eichstädt in Bavaria, where also another brother, Winebald, had at the same time been made head of a monastery. On the death of Winebald in 760 she succeeded him in his charge also, retaining the superintendence of both houses until her death on February 25, 779. Her relics were translated to Eichstädt, where she was laid in a hollow rock, from which exuded a kind of bituminous oil afterwards known as Walpurgis oil, and regarded as of miraculous efficacy against disease. The cave became a place of pilgrimage, and a fine church was built over the spot. She is commemorated at various times, but principally on May 1, her day taking the place of an earlier heathen festival, which was characterized by various rites marking the commencement of summer. In art she is represented with a crozier, and bearing in her hand a flask of balsam.