Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/358

344 appeared to, abbess of Trèves. She was buried, by her own desire, without any linen or woollen robes or sheets, merely in the cilicium she had long worn, her head wrapped in a shabby old veil which had been given her by a nun who stayed at the monastery for a short time on a journey.

Many years afterwards, when St. Begga, the sister of Gertrude, obtained from Nivelle a few nuns well qualified to establish the new community at Anden, in the holy rule and practices observed by them, she received also the present of a piece of the saint's bed, which was placed in the new church as a holy relic, and resorted to for miraculous cures. It was soon covered with gold and set in a band of precious stones by its grateful votaries.

According to Grattan, History of the Netherlands, the monastery was transferred, in the 12th century, to canonesses, and was occupied in the 18th by a double chapter of canons and canonesses. It was so rich in the 10th century as to have 14,000 families of vassals.

St. Gertrude was held in veneration from very early times. She seems to have been worshipped immediately after her death, and a church was dedicated in her name by a woman she had brought up, namely, Agnes, the third abbess. is said to have been her relation and pupil.

In histories and chronicles where her contemporaries are called by their worldly titles or simply by their names, Begga, Pepin, Itta, Arnulf, etc., Gertrude is never mentioned without some epithet of respect, such as saint, servant of God, virgin of Christ, most blessed woman, holy abbess, etc. Many churches are dedicated in her name in Brabant and Hainault. Her worship and the fame of her sanctity and miracles were early spread over Germany. Her name is in the true Martyrology of Bede, and also in the metrical one attributed to him, and in that of Menard. It is not in the Martyrology of Ado, which is the Vetus Romanum, but it is in the additamenta to Ado, and in the present Roman Martyrology on March 17. In an Anglo-Saxon Missal, formerly belonging to the Abbey of Jumièges, and now in the public library of Rouen, her name is added to those in the canon of the mass. She is the most famous of eleven holy women of the same name honoured by the Benedictines as belonging to their order. Her contemporary biographer relates two anecdotes concerning her, the first of which she told him herself. One day when she was praying before the altar of St. Sixtus in her own church, a globe of fire appeared and hung over her head, to her great consternation, lighting up the whole place for about half an hour, and then returning whence it came. The second anecdote was told him by one of the persons saved by her miraculous assistance. Some monks were at sea on business connected with the affairs of her monastery, when their lives were endangered by a sudden storm, and still further by the approach of an enormous whale. They were giving themselves up for lost, when the narrator called out three times in an agony of tenor, "Gertrude, help us." At the third mention of the abbess' name, the monster dived to the bottom of the sea, leaving the ship safely afloat, and the travellers all arrived happily in port the same night

Baring-Gould, in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, tells that from being the patron saint of travellers on earth, Gertrude was next supposed to entertain departed spirits at their first halt on their three days' journey to Paradise; the second resting-place was with one of the archangels; and the third day brought them to the gates. As patron of souls, rats and mice became her emblems in German imagery, having from the most ancient times been regarded as typifying human souls.

All the stories of St. Gertrude are founded on the Life by a contemporary monk, who had some of his information from herself, and the rest from eyewitnesses of the events he records. This life is given in full by Mabillon, Sæc. ii. 464, and in part by Bouquet, iii. 517, De Dagoberto. She is also mentioned in almost all the biographies and chronicles of her time and country, which