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347 B. GERTRUDE 347 Savionr, very little of saints and relics. She relied instead on Gk)d's grace, and was joyful and full of hope. She advises the devont soul sometimes to set apart a day to be devoted without interraption to praise and thanksgiving, lest this dnty should be imperfectly fulfilled in the daily devotions ; she says that in this function we should endeavour to be united with the saints and angels. She had a great gift of grace in the matter of the Holy Communion. She says in her book that any one approaching this great sacrament without repentance, or any one who is in the habit of indulging in vain or scandalous conversation, re- ceives the Lord as if when receiving some distinguished guest he were to assail him on the threshold with stones or strike him on the head with a club. Tet, although so impressed with the danger of unworthy reception, her hu- mility made her regard all her own piety and the practices by which people prepare themselves for this rite as so small and unimportant, that she never abstained from Holy Communion for want of them, regarding all the e£fort8 of piety as a mere drop compared to the measureless splendour of the grace given in the Lord's Supper. She used will- ingly to tear herself away from con- templation on every opportunity, for industry and for benefiting others, and then she could return to her pious meditations with great ease. St. Gertrude, abbess of Helfta, and her sister St. Matilda, have been called Countesses of Hackebom, of Lachenbom, of Bodarsdorf, or Bodarda, of Eisleben, of Mansfeld, abbesses of all these places, of Ettelstettin, of Heldelfis, of Delft, of Helft, of Halberstadt. Ac- cording to Preger, Oeschichfe der deut^ achen Mystik im Mittelalter, the facts are these — Count Burkhard von Mansfield and Elizabeth, countess of Schwarzburg, his wife, founded a Cistercian cloister at Mansfeld in 1229. Burkhard died the same year, and his widow removed the community to Bodarsdorf, near Eisleben, and there she spent the remainder of her life among the nuns. The house was soon filled with the daughters of the Thuringian nobles. In 1251, Gertrudo von Hackebom, at nineteen, became the second abbess. Her family owned lands extending from Eisleben to the Hartz, and had on their eastern frontier a castle called Helfta, or HelfFde, about a mile from Eisleben. As the house at Bodars- dorf suffered from want of water, Ger- trude obtained from her brothers the gift of this castle with its surrounding lands, and thither, in 1258, she took her community. The annals of the monastery record many grants from the Lords of Hackebom, with the explanation that these gifts are made for the sake of members of the family among the nuns. Gertrude and her sister Matilda had already received a good education in this convent, and under Gertrude's rule the house of Helfta was charac- terized by a joyous activity and an intellectual life rather in advance of the age. She busied her community with books, herself with adding to their store. She bought some, she made the nuns copy others, and ornament them with drawings and paintings inside and out ; they studied the Bible and the other books. Her house very soon became a famous school. The gifted Matilda von Wippra was the chief teacher. Gertrude ruled for forty years, and died about 1292. Helfta continued to be the resi- dence of this community for half a century longer, when it was destroyed in a feud between the Duke of Brunswick and the Count of Mansfeld. The nuns were removed to a suburb of Eisleben. St. Gertrude (13). 1256-c. 1311. Was more than twenty years younger than St. Gertrude the abbess, and was under her care and influence from child- hood to middle age. Preger says she was bom in 1256, in Thuringia, apparently of poor parents, and was received into the convent of Helfta in her fifth year. She was very clever, and had an un- bounded thirst for knowledge, and was soon in advance of all the other scholars. He comes to the conclusion that Gertmde the Great was the nun and not the abbess. Butler, Nov. 15, ignores the nun, and dates the birth of the abbess ten years earlier than Preger does. B. Gertrude (14) van Oosten, Jan.