GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES, ST.

Abbess; b. 626; d. between 653 and 659. The daughter of Pepin of Landen and St. Iduberga, she entered the double monastery of Nivelles (Belgium) that her mother, a widow, had just founded (640). There she succeeded her mother as superior (652), ruling a house in which, according to Celtic custom, the nuns and monks were subject to an abbess. Gertrude was an example of virtue and a defender of Irish monasticism; her abbey later sent the first nuns to Andenne, founded by her sister, St. begga. Gertrude is invoked against mice, then the bane of the countryside. Her remains are preserved in a reliquary, a masterpiece of silverwork (dating from 1272–98), now in the collegiate church of Nivelles. The vita of St. Gertrude of Nivelles was written c. 670, and it was rewritten sometime in the 11th century.

Feast: March 17.

Bibliography: Life. Acta Santorum March 2:590–603. Monumenta Germaniae Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum (Berlin 1826–) 2:447–474. Literature. l. van der essen, Étude … des saints mérovingiens (Louvain 1907). p. wenzel, Die Frauenstifte der Diözese Lüttich (Bonn 1909). b. delanne, Histoire … Nivelles (Nivelles 1944). j. hoebanx, L'Abbaye de Nivelles … (Brussels 1952). a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater, 4 v. (New York 1956) 1:620–621. r. forgeur, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 4:761–762. a. wauters in Biographie nationale de Belgique, v.7 (1880–83) 680–684.

[É. brouette]