Dagobert, king of the Franks, who had made Pepin of Landen mayor of the palace, asked him to allow him to give Gertrude in marriage to a young Frank nobleman. The father hesitated, knowing that his daughter desired to lead the religious life, and the king seeing his reluctance to force his daughter to a match for which she was not inclined, sent for Gertrude herself, then aged about ten, and endeavoured to persuade her to accept the hand offered her. But Gertrude resolutely refused, declaring that she would have no other bridegroom but Jesus Christ. The king dismissed the child, and she returned to her mother, who educated her in the love and fear of God. On the death of Pepin, in 646, Iduberga, following the advice of S. Amandus, bishop of Maestricht, built the celebrated convent of Nivelles, and retired into it with her daughter, then aged fourteen. They were soon followed by a numerous company of maidens, and a community was formed, to which the blessed Iduberga gave rules. The sisters were called canonesses, and Iduberga appointed her daughter abbess. Thus the mother obeyed the child. The holy woman spent twelve years in this peaceful retreat, and died in the odour of sanctity. After her mother's death, Gertrude made some alterations in the community. She instituted canons, who should attend to the temporal affairs of the house, whilst she devoted herself to the internal government of the sisterhood, and their spiritual training. For this latter purpose Gertrude devoted herself especially to the study of Holy Scripture, and nearly learnt the whole by heart. She also built hospitals for the reception of pilgrims, widows, and orphans, and entrusted the discipline of them to the canons and canonesses of her community.
After having spent many years in the practice of every virtue, feeling a great langour come over her, so that she was unable to discharge her duties with that activity which had been so conspicuous in her government of the house, she resigned the office of superior, and created her niece, S. Wilfetrudis, abbess in her place. Wilfetrudis was aged twenty; she had been brought up by S. Gertrude, who had made of her a mirror of perfection. Gertrude now redoubled her austerities, wore a rough horsehair shirt, and adopted an old veil which a nun who had lodged in the convent, on her way elsewhere, had left behind her, deeming it too poor to be worth preserving. Gertrude cast it over her, and bade the sisters bury her in it when she was dead. When she felt that her hour was approaching, she sent one of her canons to the monastery of Fosse, in the diocese of Liége, to ask S. Ultan, brother of SS. Fursey and Forillan, when she must die. The saint replied to the messenger, "To-morrow, during the celebration of the holy Mass, Gertrude, the spouse of Jesus Christ, will depart this life, to enjoy that which is eternal. Tell her not to fear, for S. Patrick, accompanied by blessed angels, will receive her soul into glory." And it was so, that after she had received extreme unction, and the priest was reciting the prayers before the preface in the holy Sacrifice, on the morrow, the second Sunday in Lent, she breathed forth her pure soul.
Her relics are preserved to this day at Nivelles, together with a goblet (Patera Nivigellensis), in which the custom to drink to the honour of S. Gertrude (Sinte Geerts-Minne). From the saint having established large hospices for the reception of pilgrims and travellers, whom she entertained with great liberality, arose the custom of travellers drinking a stirrup cup to her honour before starting on their journey. She became the patroness of travellers. Then, by a curious popular superstition, she was supposed to harbour souls on their way to paradise. It was said that this was a three days' journey. The first night they lodged with S. Gertrude, the second with S. Gabriel, and the third was in Paradise. She, therefore, became the patroness and protector of departed souls. Next, because popular Teutonic superstition regarded mice and rats as symbols of souls, the rat and mouse became characteristics of S. Gertrude, and she is represented in art accompanied by one of these animals. Then, by a strange transition, when the significance of the symbol was lost, she was supposed to be a protectress against rats and mice, and the water of her well in the crypt at Nivelles was distributed for the purpose of driving away these vermin. In the chapel of S. Gertrude, which anciently stood in the enclosure of the castle of Moha, near Huy, little cakes were distributed, which were supposed to banish mice. For long the right to distribute these cakes belonged to the Jesuits; after the suppression of that order, the Augustinians of Huy usurped the right, but it was resisted by the curé of Moha, who claimed the privilege as belonging to the parochial clergy. The chapel was destroyed at the French Revolution, and with it the custom disappeared.
In order to explain the significance of the mouse in pictures of S. Gertrude, when both of these meanings were abandoned, it was related that she was wont to become so absorbed in prayer that a mouse would play about her, and run up her pastoral staff, without attracting her attention.
S. WITHBURGA, V.
(A.D. 743.)
[Some ancient martyrologies, others on July 8th. Authority:—The Ely Chronicle, and a Life supposed to be by Goscelin, the historian of S. Werburga.]
The royal race of the Uffings of East Anglia was remarkable for the crowd of saints which it produced. King Anna, who married the sister of Hilda, the celebrated abbess of Whitby, became father of three daughters and a son. The son became in his turn the father of three daughters, two of whom were in succession abbesses of Hackness in Northumbria, founded by their grand-aunt S. Hilda, and the last, Eadburga, became abbess of Repton.
The three daughters of Anna,—Etheldreda, Sexburga, and Withburga—are all counted among the saints. Withburga was sent into the country to be nursed, and remained there till she heard, while still quite young, of her father's death on the battle-field. She resolved immediately to seek a refuge for the rest of her life in claustral virginity. She chose as her asylum a modest remnant of her father's lands at East Dereham, in Norfolk, and there built a little monastery. But she was so poor that she, her companions, and the masons who built her future dwelling, had to live on dry bread alone. One day, after she had prayed long to the blessed Virgin, she saw two does come out of the neighbouring forest to drink at a stream whose pure current watered the secluded spot. Their udders were heavy with milk, and they permitted themselves to be milked by the virginal hands of Withburga's companions, returning every day to the same place, and thus furnishing a sufficient supply for the nourishment of the little community and its workmen. This lasted till the ranger of the royal domains, a savage and wicked man, who regarded with an evil eye the rising house of God, undertook to hunt down the two helpful animals. He pursued them with his dogs across the country, but, in attempting to leap a high hedge, his horse was impaled on a post, and the hunter broke his neck.
Withburga ended her life in this poor and humble solitude; but the fragrance of her gentle virtues spread far and wide. The fame of her holiness went through all the surrounding country. The veneration given to her by the people of Norfolk was maintained with the pertinacity common to the Anglo-Saxon race, and went so far that, two centuries after her death, they armed themselves to defend her relics from the monks of Ely, who came, by the king's command, to unite them to those of her sisters at Ely.