Hildegund (virgin)

Hildegund (died 1188) was a German woman who lived under the name Joseph disguised as a man in a monastery.

Her father, a knight of Neuss in Germany, took the 12-year-old Hildegund on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land upon her mother's death.

The father died on the way back, and Hildegund was robbed and abandoned in Tyre by the man charged with her protection.

Still dressed as a boy, she managed to return to Germany, where she became servant to an old canon of Cologne.

An abbot of a nearby monastery wrote an account of her life in 1188, the year of her death.