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Description
All saints must be born. For every holy man and woman who lived in medieval Christendom, there was a mother who laboured to bring them into the world. Sometimes, according to legends, these mothers received signs from above that their child would be special, marked out for a life of special service to God.

One such mother was Raingarde, a French noblewoman from the powerful family of Montclard. She had at least one brother, a priest called Rencon who would go on to become the powerful Bishop of Clermont, and she married into a family of similarly high standing. Her husband, Gerald, was lord of Turlande, ruling from the family castle on the banks of the Truyère. By the end of the 10th century, Raingarde and Gerald had four sons: Gerald, Deusdet, William and Pons. But a fifth son would be born to them as the new millennium dawned, a son who would one day be venerated as a saint.

Heavily pregnant, Raingarde was one day making her way through the forest to a nearby town. The Turlande family lived in the Livradois, a forest in France's Auvergne region which was technically part of Aquitaine. However, the rough terrain of the high-altitude forest made the region notoriously hard to control, isolated from the rest of the duchy, and it had been basically independent for decades. Local lords vied with each other for dominance without having to answer to dukes or kings. To the people of Christian France, a remote forest like this was seen as a "desert", or spiritual wilderness, with few churches and no monasteries. For a Christian woman like Raingarde, the forest would have been a foreboding place, home to demons who could tempt a person's soul to damnation.

But it was in one such spiritual desert that Raingarde, by now a veteran of several childbirths, felt her water break and her contractions begin. Trailing behind the rest of her party, she stopped to steady herself against a tree. Only the forest path and her family's distant castle anchored her to civilization - she was otherwise very much caught in the wilderness. It was hardly the ideal place for a childbirth, but there was no stopping the baby. With the help of her experienced attendants, Raingarde brought her fifth son into the world in the depths of the forest. She called him Robert, and all those around her said that the fact he was born in the wilderness was a sign from God that he would one day become a hermit.

Raingarde was a wealthy aristocrat, and it was the custom for such women to have someone else nurse their children. She hired a wet nurse for her son as she had done plenty of times before. However, something was different about Robert. He refused to drink the milk from his nurse's breast, and could not be satisfied by the milk of anyone but his own mother. It was later said that Robert, even as an infant, had been able to detect that his nurse was a prostitute, and he refused to be nursed on the milk of sin. Of course, prostitution was a profession women took up because they had no other choice. Prostitutes often worked as wet nurses for the more fortunate women of the world just to help put food on the table, but the struggles of sex workers were not of much concern to Robert's hagiographer. What mattered to the later writer was that Robert had been able to detect sin even before he could speak, and would only accept the milk of a properly married Christian woman. That this was seen as a sign of God's will might tell us more about society's attitudes towards vulnerable women than it does about Robert's holiness.

What Raingarde thought of her infant son's unusual pickiness about breast milk went unrecorded. Indeed, nothing is known of her after she takes the infant Robert back into her arms to nurse him herself. However, when Robert went on to have a very successful career in the church, he did indeed seek out the spiritual solitude of monasticism. He founded the first monastery of the Livradois, La Chaise-Dieu, living the life of a metaphorical desert hermit that had been predicted when Raingarde delivered him in the middle of the forest. The youngest sons of noble families were usually destined for the church, and in a politically fractured region like the Auvergne, it was especially useful for a family to tie their sons to powerful international church networks who could support a family's local claims. But Robert took on his destiny with a great reforming zeal and went much further than that, working to spread the latest monastic influences throughout the region and wresting the local church from the control of power-hungry magnates. He was greatly helped in his ecclesiastical career by his maternal uncle, Bishop Rencon, a friend of the king himself. If Raingarde was still alive, she was no doubt happy to see her own family connections prove at least as useful to her son as those of his father, and to see that his difficult birth in the forest had proven to be prophetic.

I have been working on this illustration since November! Sometimes you have to spend some time away from an illustration before you are able to figure out what's wrong with it and start again. The perspective on this one stumped me for a long time, especially since forests are challenging. It was definitely worth redrawing this one after all those months so that I could finally bring Raingarde's story to wider attention. It's unlikely anyone has ever illustrated her before, since St Robert de Turlande isn't exactly a household name. I had to fight the university scanners so I'm not 100% happy with the image quality, but oh well.

Special thanks are due to my dad for his help with this illustration! Robert's saint's life has never been translated into English, as far as I'm aware, so I got a copy of the original Latin on inter-library loan and my dad gave me a translation to work with. That was an especially exciting part of this project! Even the revamped version of this illustration gave me some trouble trying to work out how to colour it with the shades of green at my disposal while still creating a sense of depth. Astute followers may notice the similarity to Bonna's outfit, since Bonna and Raingarde both lived in the Holy Roman Empire. It's now been over a year since the Women of 1000 project began, so I'm happy to bring you the latest illustration in the series.

Learn more on the Women of 1000 AD website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/raing…

Others in the Series
  Sei Shōnagon
  Oni Oluwo
  Princess Olith
  Coniupuyara
  Sitt al-Mulk and Taqarrub
  The Mother of Pueblo Bonito
  Gudridr Thorbjarnardottir and Thorbjorgr Litlvolva
  The Weaver of Xuenkal
  Niguma
  Guni
  Bonna
  The Oneota Messenger
  Empress Chengtian
  The Pilgrim of Pariti
  Queen Gurandukht
  Mwana Mkisi
Ama
Sahiqat
Jigonsaseh

Description
All saints must be born. For every holy man and woman who lived in medieval Christendom, there was a mother who laboured to bring them into the world. Sometimes, according to legends, these mothers received signs from above that their child would be special, marked out for a life of special service to God.

One such mother was Raingarde, a French noblewoman from the powerful family of Montclard. She had at least one brother, a priest called Rencon who would go on to become the powerful Bishop of Clermont, and she married into a family of similarly high standing. Her husband, Gerald, was lord of Turlande, ruling from the family castle on the banks of the Truyère. By the end of the 10th century, Raingarde and Gerald had four sons: Gerald, Deusdet, William and Pons. But a fifth son would be born to them as the new millennium dawned, a son who would one day be venerated as a saint.

Heavily pregnant, Raingarde was one day making her way through the forest to a nearby town. The Turlande family lived in the Livradois, a forest in France's Auvergne region which was technically part of Aquitaine. However, the rough terrain of the high-altitude forest made the region notoriously hard to control, isolated from the rest of the duchy, and it had been basically independent for decades. Local lords vied with each other for dominance without having to answer to dukes or kings. To the people of Christian France, a remote forest like this was seen as a "desert", or spiritual wilderness, with few churches and no monasteries. For a Christian woman like Raingarde, the forest would have been a foreboding place, home to demons who could tempt a person's soul to damnation.

But it was in one such spiritual desert that Raingarde, by now a veteran of several childbirths, felt her water break and her contractions begin. Trailing behind the rest of her party, she stopped to steady herself against a tree. Only the forest path and her family's distant castle anchored her to civilization - she was otherwise very much caught in the wilderness. It was hardly the ideal place for a childbirth, but there was no stopping the baby. With the help of her experienced attendants, Raingarde brought her fifth son into the world in the depths of the forest. She called him Robert, and all those around her said that the fact he was born in the wilderness was a sign from God that he would one day become a hermit.

Raingarde was a wealthy aristocrat, and it was the custom for such women to have someone else nurse their children. She hired a wet nurse for her son as she had done plenty of times before. However, something was different about Robert. He refused to drink the milk from his nurse's breast, and could not be satisfied by the milk of anyone but his own mother. It was later said that Robert, even as an infant, had been able to detect that his nurse was a prostitute, and he refused to be nursed on the milk of sin. Of course, prostitution was a profession women took up because they had no other choice. Prostitutes often worked as wet nurses for the more fortunate women of the world just to help put food on the table, but the struggles of sex workers were not of much concern to Robert's hagiographer. What mattered to the later writer was that Robert had been able to detect sin even before he could speak, and would only accept the milk of a properly married Christian woman. That this was seen as a sign of God's will might tell us more about society's attitudes towards vulnerable women than it does about Robert's holiness.

What Raingarde thought of her infant son's unusual pickiness about breast milk went unrecorded. Indeed, nothing is known of her after she takes the infant Robert back into her arms to nurse him herself. However, when Robert went on to have a very successful career in the church, he did indeed seek out the spiritual solitude of monasticism. He founded the first monastery of the Livradois, La Chaise-Dieu, living the life of a metaphorical desert hermit that had been predicted when Raingarde delivered him in the middle of the forest. The youngest sons of noble families were usually destined for the church, and in a politically fractured region like the Auvergne, it was especially useful for a family to tie their sons to powerful international church networks who could support a family's local claims. But Robert took on his destiny with a great reforming zeal and went much further than that, working to spread the latest monastic influences throughout the region and wresting the local church from the control of power-hungry magnates. He was greatly helped in his ecclesiastical career by his maternal uncle, Bishop Rencon, a friend of the king himself. If Raingarde was still alive, she was no doubt happy to see her own family connections prove at least as useful to her son as those of his father, and to see that his difficult birth in the forest had proven to be prophetic.

I have been working on this illustration since November! Sometimes you have to spend some time away from an illustration before you are able to figure out what's wrong with it and start again. The perspective on this one stumped me for a long time, especially since forests are challenging. It was definitely worth redrawing this one after all those months so that I could finally bring Raingarde's story to wider attention. It's unlikely anyone has ever illustrated her before, since St Robert de Turlande isn't exactly a household name. I had to fight the university scanners so I'm not 100% happy with the image quality, but oh well.

Special thanks are due to my dad for his help with this illustration! Robert's saint's life has never been translated into English, as far as I'm aware, so I got a copy of the original Latin on inter-library loan and my dad gave me a translation to work with. That was an especially exciting part of this project! Even the revamped version of this illustration gave me some trouble trying to work out how to colour it with the shades of green at my disposal while still creating a sense of depth. Astute followers may notice the similarity to Bonna's outfit, since Bonna and Raingarde both lived in the Holy Roman Empire. It's now been over a year since the Women of 1000 project began, so I'm happy to bring you the latest illustration in the series.

Learn more on the Women of 1000 AD website: womenof1000ad.weebly.com/raing…

Others in the Series
  Sei Shōnagon
  Oni Oluwo
  Princess Olith
  Coniupuyara
  Sitt al-Mulk and Taqarrub
  The Mother of Pueblo Bonito
  Gudridr Thorbjarnardottir and Thorbjorgr Litlvolva
  The Weaver of Xuenkal
  Niguma
  Guni
  Bonna
  The Oneota Messenger
  Empress Chengtian
  The Pilgrim of Pariti
  Queen Gurandukht
  Mwana Mkisi
Ama
Sahiqat
Jigonsaseh