Saint Ida of Herzfeld

Saint Ida of Herzfeld (c. 770 – 4 September 825) was the widow of a Saxon duke who devoted her life to the poor following the death of her husband in 811. While there is disagreement as to her precise parentage, it is generally agreed that she was closely related to the Carolingians. The daughter of a count, Ida received her education at the court of Charlemagne, who gave her in marriage to a favorite lord of his court, named Egbert, and bestowed on her a great fortune in estates to recompense her father's services. It was an apparently happy marriage. Her Life is sometimes quoted in support of the proposition that sexual congress within the institution of marriage reflects spiritual unities as well: “At the moment when the two are united in one flesh, there is present in them a single and similar operation of the Holy Spirit: when they are linked together in each other's arms in an external unity, which is to say, a physical unity, this indivisible action of the Holy Spirit inflames them with a powerful interior love directed towards celestial realities.”