Saint Bertilla of Chelles

Butler took his account from a life of her "written soon after her death," printed by Mabillon. ¹ Giampietro Cattini, in the fuller of the two biographies on Santi e Beati, says the life is a medieval tradition published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and the Acta Sanctorum, and that its edifying details are not the same thing as an eyewitness's; her identity as first abbess of Chelles and her links with Jouarre and with Bathild, he says, are firmly rooted. ¹³

Her dates are where the sources part. Butler argues from Bede that she died in 692, against Mabillon's 702. ¹ Nicolò Del Re, in the shorter biography on Santi e Beati, says she died about 705, and Cattini says the New Catholic Encyclopedia allows anywhere from 705 to 713. ³

She was born near Soissons, Butler says, of "one of the most illustrious families" of the region, in the reign of Dagobert I. ¹ Cattini says the sources do not let us recover her parents' names or the year of her birth. ³

Butler says she did not dare tell her parents she wanted to be a nun, and opened her mind first to Saint Ouen, who encouraged her. ¹ They took time over it, praying that God would show "by what spirit she was directed; knowing that every impulse is not from the Holy Ghost." ¹ Del Re, who calls him Dado, the future bishop of Rouen, says she was not yet twelve, and that he helped her overcome her parents' stubborn opposition. ³ Butler says that when her parents were told, God inclined them not to oppose her. ¹

They took her to Jouarre, a great monastery in Brie, near Meaux, which Butler says Ado, the elder brother of Ouen, had founded about 630. ¹ Its first abbess, whom Butler calls Thelchildes and Cattini Theodechilde or Telchilde, received her. ¹³ Butler says that "by her perfect submission to all her sisters she seemed every one's servant." ¹ She was put in charge of guests, of the sick and of the children brought up in the monastery, and then made prioress. ¹³ Del Re lists the offices as nurse, mistress of novices, and prioress. ³

Chelles had been founded by Saint Clotilde, the wife of Clovis I, and was refounded by Queen Bathild, the wife of Clovis II. ¹³ Butler says Bathild asked the abbess of Jouarre for a small company of experienced nuns to train the new community, and that Bertilla was sent at its head and made first abbess, "in 646, or thereabouts." ¹ Pierre Fournet, in the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, says only that "Berthilde, the first Abbess of Chelles, who is honoured as a saint, came from Jouarre." ⁴

The other dates are later. Butler reports Mabillon's 656 and Yepez's 662 for the refounding, and keeps his own earlier date because of what Bede says about an English queen at Chelles. ¹ Cattini puts the start of her abbacy about 659, and Del Re has Bathild already retired to Chelles, between 663 and 667, when she chose Bertilla to be its abbess. ³

Del Re says she brought with her the customs of Jouarre and the rule of Saint Columban. ³ Butler says the double monasteries of that time kept Columban's rule and later changed to Benedict's. ¹ Cattini adds a caution: the modern habit of calling her a Benedictine is understandable, he says, but does not by itself show that the Rule of Saint Benedict alone was kept there in her time. ³

The house became famous, and Butler says its reputation "drew several foreign princesses thither." ¹ Bede, who calls Chelles "Cale," says that few monasteries had yet been built among the English, and that many went to the Frankish houses for the monastic life and sent their daughters there, "especially in the monasteries of Brige, of Cale, and Andilegum." ⁵ He says that when Saint Hilda resolved to leave the world, she meant to follow her sister Hereswith, who "was at that time living in the same monastery, under regular discipline, waiting for an everlasting crown." ⁵

Butler makes Hereswith the wife of King Anna of the East Angles. ¹ Herbert Thurston, in the encyclopedia's article on Hilda, and Sellar's note to Bede say she married Ethelhere, Anna's brother. ⁵⁶

Bathild came after her regency. Butler dates her retirement to 665; Fournet says she spent fifteen years at Chelles before her death in 680, wishing "to be the lowest in rank among the inmates." ¹⁴ Butler says she took the habit from Bertilla and "obeyed her as if she had been the last sister in the house." ¹ Of the abbess, he says she "saw two great queens every day at her feet" and seemed the humblest of all her sisters. ¹ Cattini, more cautiously, says the lives present the queen's submission to the abbess as a reversal of worldly rank, and that no records survive that would let us reconstruct how the two women governed together. ³

Butler and Del Re both say she governed Chelles for forty-six years. ¹³ Cattini says the tradition gives forty-five or forty-six, and that the figure fits a start about 659 and a death about 705, but sits less easily with other chronologies. ³ In her old age, Butler says, far from slackening, she strove daily to redouble her penances and her devotions. ¹

Cattini says a tradition places the elevation and translation of her relics in 1185, remembered on May 26, and that the New Catholic Encyclopedia reports them kept at Chelles, except for the head, which went to Jouarre. ³ Studies of the burials at Chelles have described remarkably preserved textiles among the remains attributed to her and to Bathild. ³

She is not to be confused with Saint Bertilla of Maroeuil, or with the twentieth-century Italian nun Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin. ³

No source used here names Saint Bertilla patron of anything. ¹³ She is remembered for Chelles, and for the women she received and trained there. ¹³

Saint Bertilla's feast is November 5. ¹³ The Roman Martyrology commemorates her that day, "in the monastery of Calais near Meaux," as the Italian bishops print it, in translation; Calais here is the old name of Chelles, which Butler gives as Kala. ²¹ Cattini says tradition holds November 5 to be the day she died, though the year is disputed. ³

Before she told her parents anything, she asked one person she trusted, and the two of them prayed about it and waited. ¹ Butler, telling it, is careful to say that not every impulse comes from the Holy Spirit. ¹

At Jouarre she was given the guests, the sick and the children before she was given any authority. ¹³ When she was sent to Chelles, she went with a few others to start something new. ¹

For fifteen years she had among her nuns a queen who had ruled the kingdom and wanted to be the least in the house. ¹⁴ The lives say Bertilla was the humblest of them all; Cattini adds that the sources do not let us see more of the two women than that. ¹³