An Austrian servant girl famed for feeding the poor from her employer’s kitchen despite opposition, and for a legendary sickle said to hang suspended in the air.

Notburga was a laywoman who worked as a household servant and later a farm laborer in the Tyrol region of Austria, around Rattenberg, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. She became known for insisting on giving food to the poor even when her employers objected, and legend holds that when ordered to keep working past the hour set aside each day for charity, her sickle hung suspended in midair as a sign of divine favor. She died at Buch in Tirol on 13 September 1313 at about forty-seven, and her cult grew steadily among rural and working communities throughout the Alps.

Quick Facts

• Born: c. 1266, Austria
• Died: September 13, 1313, Buch in Tirol, Austria
• Feast Day: September 13
• Canonized: 1862
• Patron of: servants, farm workers, and peasants

Who Was Saint Notburga von Rattenberg?

Notburga’s identity is defined entirely by her working life: a domestic servant and, later, a farm laborer, holding no position of authority or status within the households she served. What set her apart, according to the record and the strong local tradition that grew up around her, was her insistence on practicing charity toward the poor from within a position of servitude, even at the risk of her own employment.

Historical Setting

Medieval Tyrol was a largely agrarian, feudal society in which servants and laborers occupied the lowest rungs of the social order, with little independent power to act against an employer’s wishes. Notburga’s persistent charity, carried out in defiance of at least one employer’s objections, stands out precisely because it came from someone with almost no social leverage to resist such demands.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Notburga von Rattenberg

The Church remembers Notburga for demonstrating that charity is not the privilege of the wealthy or powerful but can be exercised, sometimes at real personal cost, by those with the least social standing. Her legendary suspended sickle became a popular symbol across the Alps of divine approval for prioritizing mercy over labor and obedience to unjust demands.

Canonization and Feast Day

More than five centuries after her death, Notburga was formally canonized in 1862, without a separately recorded beatification in the source record; her long-sustained popular devotion among Tyrolean farming and working communities carried her cause forward across the intervening centuries.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Notburga’s example speaks directly to anyone without institutional power who still faces a choice between compliance and compassion, showing that even the humblest position offers real room for charity toward others.

A Prayer to Saint Notburga von Rattenberg

Saint Notburga, humble servant who fed the poor at the cost of your own comfort, give courage to workers today who wish to act with charity despite pressure from those above them. Amen.

Sources

• Diocese of Innsbruck, historical devotional records
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• Roman Martyrology