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"^[1] and "the only woman author of a saint's life from the Carolingian period".^[2]

Heidenheim was founded as a monastery for monks in 752 by Wynnebald, an Anglo-Saxon from Wessex.^[1] On his death in 761, his sister Walburg inherited it and converted it into a double monastery with the introduction of nuns.^[1] Hygeburg was among those who came to Heidenheim immediately after Wynnebald's death.^[1] Probably she had already been in Germany for some time, one of the nuns summoned by Boniface.^[1]

Hygeburg was, in her own words, "a humble relative" of Wynnebald, Walburg and their brother, Willibald.^[1] On Tuesday, 23 June 778, while he was visiting Heidenheim, Willibald dictated to Hygeburg an account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 720s^[2] or 730s.^[1] She subsequently worked this account into a biography of Willibald,^[1] called the Hodoeporicon ("relation of a voyage").^[2] (The conventional name Vita Willibaldi, "Life of Willibald", was given to it by editors.^[3]) From her choice of phrase and motif, she must have had access to the Carmen paschale, the Vita Bonifatii and the riddles of Aldhelm.^[1]

Although there was opposition to her writing within the convent, Walburg encouraged it. Hygeburg also wrote a biography of Wynnebald, the Vita Wynnebaldi.^[1] Although her two works were a single project, completed by 780, they are textually distinct, indicating her use of oral reports and eyewitness testimony.^[1] She was herself a witness to some of the post-mortem miracles she attributes to Wynnebald's intervention.^[1]

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).^[1]