Saint Walpurga (c.710–779) was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who became a Benedictine abbess and missionary in Franconia (Germany). Born in Devonshire around 710 to an English sub-king, Richard and his wife Winna (the sister of St Boniface), she was sister to Sts. Willibald and Winibald. As a child of eleven, she was entrusted to St Tetta at Wimborne Abbey in Dorset, where she spent 26 years in the cloister school. There she received a “solid learning and…accomplishments” suitable to her rank, enabling her later to write hagiographies of her brothers. In 748, answering her uncle St Boniface’s call for aid in Germany, Walpurga joined St Lioba and other nuns on the mission across the sea. When a terrible storm arose at sea, Walpurga knelt and prayed and “at once the sea became calm”, so that the sailors hailed her as a miracle worker. In Francia, she was received with joy, stayed briefly in Mainz with Boniface and St Willibald, and then lived under Lioba at Bischofsheim. In 751, she was appointed abbess of Heidenheim, a new double monastery (men and women). When her brother St Winibald died, Walpurga came to rule both communities, an exceptional authority for a woman of her time. She continued to oversee the abbeys faithfully until her death in 779. (Her feast is 25 February, the date of her death.)

Walpurga the Healer

Throughout her life, Walpurga was famed for compassion and cure. Heidenheim became known as a refuge for the sick and poor. Medieval vitae record that the monks and nuns there had deep knowledge of “the medicinal properties of plants and herbs,” and could dispense remedies to those who came seeking help. It is written of the community: “the ignorant peasants would look upon these cures as miracles… and it increased their reverence”. Even Walpurga herself worked miracles of healing: one source notes she “acquired a great reputation for healing all kinds of ills, especially blindness and hydrophobia”. In short, she was remembered as a tireless healer. (A later source says she is invoked even today against hydrophobia, plague, coughs and stormy seas.)

Visually, Walpurga came to be depicted with symbols of healing and fertility. Iconography often shows her holding a flask or cruet (a vessel for the holy oil), recalling the miraculous oil flowing from her tomb. Other images (notably in Regensburg Cathedral) show Walpurga holding a sheaf of wheat, reflecting her association with crops and spring rites. In fact, an 11th-century miniature from the Hitda Codex (c. 1020) shows Abbess Hitda presenting a Gospel book to St Walpurga, who stands on a pedestal bearing a golden sheaf. This wheat symbol links Walpurga to May Day and ancient earth goddess traditions. It also emphasises that Walpurga, as abbess and virgin bride of Christ, nurtured her spiritual “flock” (especially women and children) and watched over the crops.

Behind Walpurga’s legendary cures lay genuine medical tradition. English and German monastic houses cultivated physic gardens of healing herbs from at least the 8th century. Indeed, as one historian notes, 8th-century cloisters had “gardens of medicinal or healing herbs… placed in squares surrounded by monastic cloisters”. Wimborne Abbey, where Walpurga was educated, was famed for learning and discipline; it surely had sickbeds and apothecary herbs. In Germany, Heidenheim continued this practice. A contemporary life of Walpurga explicitly records that Heidenheim monks and nuns “knew something of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs… and were able to treat the sick poor”. Such herbal treatment would often be received with great gratitude as by divine grace. In this way Walpurga’s community transmitted and honoured the ancient art of healing.

Walpurga’s Spiritual Leadership and Influence

As abbess of a double monastery, Walpurga exercised spiritual authority over both men and women – rare for a woman of her era. The Roman Martyrology praises her “at the monastery of Heidenheim” as one “who, at the request of Saint Boniface and his saintly brothers, travelled from England to Germany, where she ruled excellently a double monastery of monks and holy nuns.” In practice, Walpurga governed Winibald’s men (whose lay brothers tended fields) and her own community of nuns together, though in everyday life she was “abbess” of the nuns’ cloister. After Winibald’s death, she took over leadership of the men’s convent as well. All agree that her rule was marked by “virtue, sweetness, and prudence,” and she became beloved by clergy and laity alike.

Walpurga exercised her authority by dispensing both spiritual guidance and practical wisdom. She was living memory to generations of converts. The Life of Walpurga relates that “men and boys of the neighbourhood would go to St. Winibald, and the women and children to the convent to St. Walburga,” indicating she tended particularly to women, children and the sick. The children of the region surely learned from her sisters to read their Paternosters, and many a peasant woman obtained comforting counsel or herbal remedy from the abbess. Among the educated clergy, Walpurga was also revered: she corresponded with Boniface and the other English missionaries and wrote down the vitae of St Willibald and Winibald based on their dictation. In short, Walpurga was a pioneering female teacher and administrator, a “virginal bride of Christ” who took charge of souls and bodies alike. As one scholar has noted, the “silence and humility” of these early nuns masked labours that “history has assigned… at the very beginning of German civilisation”, literally placing “women at every cradle-side” of the nascent Frankish church.

Death, Canonisation, and Cultural Afterlife

Walpurga died peacefully of natural causes on 25 February 779 in Heidenheim. St Willibald, then bishop, buried her beside St Winibald. Immediately, “many wonders were wrought at both tombs”, and local veneration grew. However, by the 9th century, her tomb had been neglected. When Bishop Otkar of Eichstätt renovated the church in 870, he had Walpurga’s remains moved to his cathedral at Eichstätt on 21 September of that year. This translation set the date of her official feast day. Legends later arose around the event: the 14th-century hagiographer Philip of Eichstätt says Otkar profaned the tomb and Walpurga appeared to rebuke him in a dream, prompting the solemn move.

In 893, Bishop Erchanbald opened her shrine to distribute relics and found the body miraculously preserved in oil. That oil (and more recently, “oil” that actually seeped through the stone slab) became famed as a healing fluid. Over the centuries, countless cures have been attributed to “St. Walburga’s oil.” Walpurga’s cult spread widely: she became patroness of cities (Eichstätt, Antwerp, Zutphen and others) and of illnesses (especially hydrophobia). By 870, the Church formally recognised her sanctity – Pope Adrian II canonised Walpurga in that period – and she was entered into the Roman Martyrology with the inscription noted above.

Yet the most famous festival associated with Walpurga is Walpurgisnacht (May 1). This is not originally a Christian feast of Walpurga, but an older spring folk festival (the Germanic Beltane) marking the turning to summer. By a 13th/14th century coincidence or deliberate appropriation, church calendars placed the translated day of Walpurga (May 1) at the same time. Thus, Catholic and pagan meanings merged. Devout Germans still lit bonfires and gathered herbs that night, invoking St Walburga’s protection against evil. Indeed, in iconography, Walpurga often carries a sheaf of grain (corn) – not maize, but stalks of wheat or barley, symbolising fertility and harvest. Some have noted that this image of a corn goddess may have been “transferred… from Mother Earth” to Saint Walpurga. In this way, her Christian cult absorbed and Christianized ancient Mother Earth rites. (Interestingly, medieval sources sometimes confused Walpurga with a pre-Christian spring-goddess “Waldborg” – an echo of this syncretism.)

This weaving of ancient fertility symbolism into Christian sainthood is reminiscent of broader Carolingian-era dynamics. Under Charlemagne’s empire, clerics and scholars deliberately gathered and recast older ritual traditions into forms compatible with Christian doctrine. As noted in EarthwormExpress, “many of the rites associated with ancient female deities were not destroyed, but reinterpreted under the patronage of Mary and the female saints.” The Assumption of Mary on August 15 and Walpurga’s translation on May 1 echo seasonal and agricultural transitions, and reflect the Church’s elevation of sacred femininity into the ecclesiastical calendar. In monastic centres across Europe, including those in Austria, Germany, and Ireland, women’s herbal and liturgical knowledge was integrated into seasonal rites of healing, thanksgiving, and preservation, both spiritual and physical. Walpurga’s continued veneration thus rests at the crossroad of these traditions: Christian, Celtic, and ancient European.

Monastic Preservation, Meat Curing, and the Continuation of Sacred Knowledge

In Walpurga’s time, monasticism was not just a spiritual vocation; it was a guardian of practical wisdom, particularly regarding food, medicine, and the preservation of life through nature’s rhythms. The monasteries that Walpurga helped lead were embedded in an ancient continuum where survival and sacredness met: herbs were not only remedies, but also protectants of food; the care of the sick extended to the care of seasonal abundance.

In double monasteries like Heidenheim and others across the Carolingian world, women were often responsible for the maintenance of physic gardens, kitchens, and the preparation of preserved foods. This included salting, drying, smoking, and sometimes fermenting meats. The herbs used, such as sage, thyme, savory, juniper, and garlic, were selected not only for flavour, but for their antimicrobial and preserving properties. The same hands that ministered to the sick may have laid herbs and salt over the year’s butchered meat, combining theological contemplation with practical stewardship.

From Walpurga to the Brine Vat: The Healing Lineage of Prunella vulgaris and Sal Prunella

While no direct record confirms her use of Prunella vulgaris (self-heal), it is highly probable. The plant was known across early medieval Europe as Brunella, named after die Bräune, the German term for quinsy (a throat infection). Prunella vulgaris was widely applied for mouth ulcers, sore throats, wounds, and fevers, ailments squarely within the scope of Walpurga’s healing ministry. The use of water-based infusions or vinegar steeping was common. In Europe, the oldest references to Prunella vulgaris (self-heal, also known as Brunella or Brunellenkraut) appear in the 16th century. It is worth having a closer look.

1. William Turner, 1548

Turner, sometimes called the “father of English botany,” mentions Prunella in his 1548 work The Names of Herbes, describing it under its German name “Brunella,” linked to the treatment of throat infections (quinsy). He associates it with its curative powers for die Bräune, the German word for that illness. This is likely the first recorded English herbal mention.

“Brunella, called in Dutch die Bräune, is a herbe that cureth the disease of the same name.” — Turner, Names of Herbes (1548)

2. John Gerard, 1597

In his massive herbal The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, Gerard praises self-heal as a wound herb:

“There is not a better Wounde herbe in the world than that of Prunel… it is called Brunella of the Germanes, who do highly commend it.” — Gerard, Herball (1597)

Gerard also notes that it is used both fresh and dried for internal and external healing, and records its popularity in “cottage physic.”

3. Etymology and Earlier Mentions

The name Brunella (later misprinted as Prunella) derives from die Bräune, as used in German-speaking medical texts likely from the late medieval period (15th century), though no full herbal manuscript predating Turner has yet surfaced with the name. Some scholars suggest that the herb may have been in oral use well before this.

From a meast curing perspective, this is where it now becomes very interesting. The name Prunella was a Latinisation error—originally Brunella, misread by Renaissance scribes and printed as Prunella in early herbals. This linguistic twist likely shaped the later naming of Sal Prunella, a fused form of saltpetre. Some have proposed that the name derives from prunus (plum), due to the purple hue of throat infections or plum-like crystallisation of the salt, but this theory lacks linguistic or functional grounding. A far stronger explanation is that early apothecaries and alchemists, well aware of Prunella vulgaris’s use in treating throat ailments, transferred its name to a salt that did the same thing chemically. Sal Prunella, like the herb, was used for sore throats, ulcers, and inflammatory wounds. It is reasonable to see it as a synthetic echo of the herbal tradition, now made in crucibles instead of gardens.

Fused saltpetre (Sal Prunella) was first recorded in the late 17th century, notably by William Samon (1681) and John Quincy (1719), who described its preparation by melting saltpetre and purifying it with sulfur. It was used medicinally as a refrigerant, diuretic, and anti-inflammatory, particularly for tonsillitis and gonorrhoea. By the late 18th century, it began appearing in food brining, most famously in Rundell’s ham-curing recipes (1807), where it complemented salt and sugar. This transition from pharmacy to kitchen likely happened because Sal Prunella was seen as a refined saltpetre, purer and perhaps more effective in preserving meat colour and flavour.

From a chemical standpoint, Sal Prunella is potassium nitrate. When added to brine, it provides nitrate, which must be converted to nitrite by bacteria (notably Staphylococcus carnosus) for meat curing to occur. However, if sulfur dioxide (SO₂) residues remained from its preparation, they could have suppressed these bacteria, slowing the nitrate-to-nitrite conversion. This could explain the paler colour sometimes observed in Oake’s mild-cured bacon—nitrite production may have been inhibited by trace sulfite, resulting in less cured pigment. Nonetheless, the preservation quality would have remained high due to salt and residual nitrate, even without full nitrite development.

William Oake, the inventor of the mild-cure system in the 1830s, was a chemist working with salted meat. He may well have encountered Sal Prunella through the lectures of chemists like Thomas Thomson or Joseph Black. Both taught nitrate chemistry and pharmacy in Scotland, and Sal Prunella was part of the pharmacopoeia. Whether Oake used it consistently or experimentally, it likely entered his formulation as a pharmaceutical-grade saltpetre, favoured for its purity.

Now consider reused brines. There is no direct record of reused brine from Walpurga’s time, but the Benedictine ethos of frugality and the longstanding practice of conserving salt suggest that reuse was likely. The first explicit references come from the 16th century, with more frequent documentation by the 18th century. Chemically, reused brine accumulates meat juice—proteins and sugars that feed nitrate-reducing bacteria. This would accelerate nitrate reduction to nitrite with each reuse. If the brine was boiled between uses (as some recipes recommend), the nitrite would be partially degraded, but some would survive—especially at lower boil times or temperatures.

Therefore, with each reuse, the pool of nitrite could increase, especially if the brine was not sterilised completely. This would create a naturally enriched “super-cure” brine: high in nitrate, with active bacteria, and some retained nitrite. Such brines would develop more intense curing power over time—explaining why reused brines were prized and why Oake’s method, with recurring brine use, was so effective.

William Oake, an Irish chemist and pharmacist, developed the “mild cure” method, an innovation that would revolutionise bacon production. But at its core, Oake’s work was a re-expression of what the monasteries had long known: that preservation could be clean, gentle, and health-focused. Oake’s work preserved meat not through aggressive salting, but by holding meat in a brine solution where equilibrium was reached gradually.

Importantly, Oake was shaped by the world around him, especially the scientific thinking of William Prout, whose classification of foodstuffs into protein, fat, and carbohydrates reflected a new lens on nutrition. But behind this modernisation was something ancient: the monastic focus on wholesomeness, the balance of nature, and the seasonality of life. Oake’s emphasis on maintaining albumen integrity parallels medieval understandings of nourishment. His use of recurring brines echoes monastic frugality and cyclical thinking. Even his occasional use of Sal Prunella (a preparation derived from blackthorn, known to herbalists) harkens back to the nuns’ herb tables.

Indeed, the name Sal Prunella itself reveals a telling convergence of modern pharmacology and medieval herb-lore. While today it is more commonly associated with a purified form of potassium nitrate—used historically to treat fevers, ulcers, and inflamed tissue—its name closely mirrors that of Prunella vulgaris, the “self-heal” herb long cherished in monastic medicine. Both the salt and the herb were employed for similar purposes: calming infections, healing sores, and soothing the throat. This functional overlap made Sal Prunella a natural inheritor of Prunella vulgaris’s reputation, especially in settings where healing practice moved seamlessly between garden, stillroom, and apothecary.

The original name of the herb, Brunella, referred specifically to its use against die Bräune (quinsy, a severe throat infection), and only later shifted to Prunella through a Latinisation error in early printed herbals. This linguistic drift, occurring during the same centuries that chemical salts were being named and classified, makes it likely that the name Sal Prunella was not an alchemical abstraction but a deliberate echo—borrowing the authority of the herb’s long-standing therapeutic role. Apothecaries working at the boundary of chemical innovation and folk wisdom would have found the name not only familiar but resonant, reinforcing the idea that this salt, though refined by fire, belonged to the same healing lineage.

Thus, Oake’s occasional use of Sal Prunella does not represent a break from tradition, but a bridge between ancient and modern formulations. Whether knowingly or intuitively, he drew upon a symbolic continuity that stretched back to the cloister gardens and infirmaries of Benedictine and Cistercian nuns. Just as their herb tables balanced the natural with the sacred, so too did Oake’s curing philosophy—merging protein science with a reverence for functional simplicity. In Sal Prunella, we glimpse not only a chemical tool, but a quiet homage to the healing hands of the past.

In a symbolic sense, Oake and Prout inherited the cloister’s ledger, converting recipes and sacred ratios into formulas and equations. What had once been measured by the eye of the abbess became the domain of the calibrated scale. Yet the spirit remained: to preserve, to nourish, to sanctify.

Today, in reading the lives of saints like Walpurga alongside the recipes of meat preservation, we uncover a lost lineage: a chain of women and men who blessed the soil, learned the leaves, and bent over boiling kettles in the quiet of monastic kitchens. They healed not only bodies, but ensured the preservation of what could be eaten, shared, and celebrated. In Walpurga’s honour, it is fitting to remember that the salt in the curing vat was once held in the same hand that crushed yarrow and whispered prayers for the dying.

The continuation of sacred knowledge is not linear; it is cyclical, much like the liturgical year that celebrates Walpurga on May 1 and Mary on August 15. It travels through women’s hands, through herb gardens, through sacred feasts, and yes, through the curing of meat. In each preserved ham, in each healing broth, we find the vestige of the abbess who ruled with mercy and wisdom, and who, perhaps, once laid rosemary across the meat with the same care she offered a suffering soul.

Summary

This work explores the life and legacy of Saint Walpurga, a healer, abbess, and missionary who bridged the sacred and the practical. Her leadership in early medieval monasticism, her herbal wisdom, and her deep connection to seasonal spirituality positioned her as both protector of the sick and preserver of tradition. Drawing from monastic herbology and sacramental cycles, her influence carried forward into practices of food preservation, including reused curing brines and herb-based meat protection. Her legacy reverberates not only in the rites of May 1st but in the quiet continuity of healing, nourishment, and reverence passed from her world into ours.

Conclusion

Saint Walpurga’s story reminds us that the preservation of life—whether spiritual, physical, or culinary—is a sacred act. Her life as a missionary, healer, abbess, and chronicler connects the threads of womanhood, wisdom, and continuity that run through monastic Europe. Her legacy, preserved in oil, relic, and rite, echoes in both the feast of May 1 and the grain she holds in iconography. Yet she was not a symbol alone. She was a woman of insight and action, dispensing healing, organising communities, and safeguarding knowledge.

As the monasteries became keepers of both spiritual and practical life, Walpurga’s world contributed to practices that touched everything from herbal medicine to the curing of meat. Her influence lives on in modern preservation science, echoed in the thoughtful balance of tradition and innovation seen in figures like William Oake and William Prout. Their science, as this work has shown, may be interpreted as a continuation—translated into chemistry—of a lineage once passed down in cloisters and herb gardens.

Through Walpurga’s life, we glimpse a broader understanding: that to heal is also to preserve, and to preserve is also to love. Her story belongs not only to history, but to the cycles of season, earth, and spirit that continue to nourish us.

References

• Acta Sanctorum, February Vol. III: Vita Sanctae Walburgae
• Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), “St. Walburga”
• EarthwormExpress.com, “Sacred Salt and the Northern Gods” (2024)
• EarthwormExpress.com, “Understanding William Oake” (2024)
• Eichstätt Cathedral Archives, Walburg Oil Shrine Documentation
• Hitda Codex (c. 1020), Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden
• Philip of Eichstätt (14th century), Hagiographic Writings
• Prout, William (1827). On the Ultimate Composition of Simple Alimentary Substances
• The Complete Grazier and Farmer’s and Cattle-Breeder’s Assistant (1830)
• Vorau Abbey Archives (12th century), transcribed in Austrian Ecclesiastical Studies (2001)
• Ziegler, J. (1990). “Heilpflanzen und ihre Anwendung im Mittelalter,” Kräuter und Klosterheilkunde
• Additional attributions to Catherine the Great’s salt policy in the 18th-century Russian agricultural reforms
• Commentary on reused brines and nitrite formation in traditional European charcuterie manuals (anonymous, 19th century)
• References to monastic physic gardens and their documentation across Carolingian and early Benedictine rule texts
• Visual iconography from Regensburg Cathedral and the Hitda Codex
• Unnamed medieval vitae cited for accounts of miracles, healing, and herbal applications