WILGEFORTIS is a female folk saint whose legend arose in the 14th century, and whose distinguishing feature is a large beard. Today is her feast day. According to the legend of her life, set in Portugal and Galicia, she was a teenage noblewoman who had been promised in marriage by her father to a Moorish king. To thwart the unwanted wedding, she had taken a vow of virginity, and prayed that she would be made repulsive. In answer to her prayers she sprouted a beard, which ended the engagement. In anger, Wilgefortis’s father had her crucified.

Her name is thought to have derived from the Latin “virgo fortis” (“courageous virgin”). In England her name was Uncumber, and in Dutch Ontkommer (meaning one who avoids something, here specifically other people from suffering). In German lands she was known as Kümmernis (“grief” or “anxiety”). In Poland she was called Frasobliwa (“sorrowful”). She was sometimes confused with a female martyr saint known as Liberata in Italy and Librada in Spain (“liberated”) whose feast day is on July 10th; while Saint Liberata is a crucified, beardless female usually with a crown, Wiltegefortis is always depicted with a beard and generally crownless. In France Wiltegefortis is known as Débarras (“riddance”). The confusion between the martyr Saint Liberata and Wiltegefortis extended to places such as Sigüenza, Spain, where Liberata was widely venerated.

While venerated by some Catholics, Wiltegefortis was never officially canonized by the church, but instead was a popular intercessor for people seeking relief from tribulations, in particular by women who wished to be liberated (“disencumbered”) from abusive husbands.

St Wilgefortis remained popular in the North of England until the end of the Gothic period; there is a carving in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey of Wilgefortis, standing while holding a cross, with a very long beard. She also appears in a similar pose, very lightly bearded, on the outside of a triptych door by Hans Memling.

Her cult was decisively supressed during the late 16th century (after a period in the 15th and 16th centuries in which she was popular), and thereafter disappears from high art, although lingering well into the 20th century in more popular forms, especially in Bavaria and Austria, but also in northern France and Belgium. In the 12th-century church of Saint-Etienne in Beauvais, there is a 16th-century wooden statue of Saint Wilgefortis on the cross. She is depicted in a full blue tunic with a substantial beard. She is venerated by the name of Santa Librada in Argentina and Panama.

She is often shown with a small fiddler at her feet, and with one shoe off. This derives from a legend, also attached to the Volto Santo of Lucca, of a silver shoe with which the statue had been clothed dropping spontaneously at the feet of a poor pilgrim. In Wilgefortis’s version, the poor devotee became a fiddler, perhaps in the 13th century.

Because of her appearance, Wilgerfortis has been described as a “transgender saint” and is sometimes seen as a patron saint of gender fluid people.