A saint of one place only: a Swabian hamlet of thirty-five souls, and the chapel grown out of a cave.
She is venerated at Wenglingen, a hamlet of Bavarian Swabia set at seven hundred and sixty metres, in the diocese of Augsburg — and nowhere else in the world. Tradition makes her a young woman withdrawn into the woods; an old manuscript catalogue names her with a single word, silvicola, she who dwells in the forest, and calls her crowned with martyrdom. The chapel that holds her grew out of a cave: a first building, mentioned as early as 1679, had come from it, and the pointed arches of windows earlier than 1500 have been found beneath the plaster. The present building dates from 1700-1706. About 1730 the parish priest of Apfeltrang, one Kögel, painted there the altarpiece that fixed her image: a figure ringed with rays, a palm in one hand, a basket of roses in the other — her name called for the flower — and the sword of martyrdom laid at her feet. Nineteenth-century scholarship observed that everything believed about her death comes from that painting and not from any text. Her bones were long a goal of pilgrimage; few now come from beyond the neighbouring villages. The village itself holds to her: it calls itself a village with a saint of its own.
A young woman in a glory of rays, a palm in one hand, a basket of roses in the other, a sword laid at her feet — altarpiece of about 1730. The chapel of 1679 showed her otherwise: a virgin martyr with lily, palm and sword — the lily is the eldest of her attributes, the roses came with the name.