Medieval Royalty, Religious figure. He was the next to the last King of the Burgundians from 516 AD to his death; Burgundy was a medieval kingdom located at the site of present-day Switzerland. The son of King Gunebald, he became king upon his father's death. Educated by the bishop of St. Avitus of Vienne, he abandoned his ancestors' faith of Arian and converted to Roman Catholic, yet retained the personality of a raging, ill-tempered man. In 515 to honor St. Maurice, he built the monastery Saint Maurice at Agaune in Valais, Switzerland near Geneva. Within a year of becoming king, he had a serious dispute with his son, Sigeric. Sigeric was the son of Sigismund and his first wife, the daughter of Ostrogoth King Theodoric. After the first wife's death, he remarried and had other children. There was hard feelings between his second wife and his oldest son for various reasons, but it was clear that the second wife's agenda was to have her son be king. When Sigeric insulted his second wife for wearing clothing that had belonged to the first wife, the king ordered, in a rage, his own son to be killed. Overcome with remorse after his son's murder, he retired to the monastery of Saint-Maurice to live for years in penance. His heart softened as he was surrounded by daily singing of praises to God, giving to the poor, praying for forgiveness of his barbaric act, and asking for punishment. When the north neighboring kingdom of Franks, or present-day France and part of Germany, started to wage war against his kingdom for a murder that his father had done years earlier, he and his brother, Godomar, were called to lead the kingdom's army in battle. Being the largest kingdom in the area, Franks had a strong military. With no surprise, the battle was loss to the Franks, thus the Kingdom of Burgundy was overrun by the Franks military, who looted the households, killed the males and enslaved the women of the kingdom. At this point, Sigismund fear for his life putting on a monk's habit and hiding in a cellar near the abbey. He was eventually captured and taken to La Beauce d'Orleans or present-day Orleans, France where he was beheaded in 523. His second wife and remaining children, including sons, Gistaldo and Gundebado, were also executed ending his lineage, hence his brother Godomar became the last King of Burgundy. His body along with those of his sons' were thrown down a well in the rural farm area of Columelle. Soon after his death, his countrymen claimed him and his sons to be saints for their martyrdom. In 535, his relics were recovered and placed in a shrine near the Abbey of Saint-Maurice. Later in 1364, The Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV ordered his relics to be transported to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague in present-day Czech Republic, where a collection of relics of many Roman Catholic Saints are housed in the Saint Wenceslas Chapel.