Hygeburg

Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 1086, folio 71v, includes the cipher with Hygeburg's name.

Hygeburg (floruit 760–780), also Hugeburc, Hugeberc, Huneberc or Huneburc, was an Anglo-Saxon nun and hagiographer at the Alemannian monastery of Heidenheim. She is "the first known Englishwoman to have written a full-length literary work" and "the only woman author of a saint's life from the Carolingian period".

Heidenheim was founded as a monastery for monks in 752 by Wynnebald, an Anglo-Saxon from Wessex. ) From her choice of phrase and motif, she must have had access to the Carmen paschale, the Vita Bonifatii and the riddles of Aldhelm. Although her two works were a single project, completed by 780, they are textually distinct, indicating her use of oral reports and eyewitness testimony. She was herself a witness to some of the post-mortem miracles she attributes to Wynnebald's intervention.

The name of the nun who wrote the lives of Willibald and Wynnebald was not known until in 1931 Bernhard Bischoff discovered it in a cryptogram in the oldest manuscript (from c. 800).