Saint Gertrude of Nivelles

She was born in 626. ¹² Her father was Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace to the Merovingian kings of Austrasia, and the vicariate of Walloon Brabant places her birth near Landen itself, on a family estate that reached as far as Nivelles. ²³ Her mother appears in the sources as Itta, Itte, Ida or Iduberga. ¹²³ An older sister, Begga, also became an abbess and a saint. ¹

The one story of her childhood comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia. When she was about ten her father gave a banquet for King Dagobert and his nobles, and she was asked to marry the son of the Duke of Austrasia. ¹ The encyclopedia reports that "she indignantly replied that she would marry neither him nor any other man, but that Christ alone would be her bridegroom." ¹ The vicariate says more quietly that by twelve or thirteen she knew she wanted to give her life to God. ³

Pepin died in 639, by the encyclopedia's date, or 640, by Kerknet's. ¹² His widow, on the advice of the missionary bishop Saint Amandus, turned the family property at Nivelles into a monastery. ¹³ The vicariate adds a practical motive: an abbey put the estate beyond the reach of neighboring lords, and it let her daughter follow her vocation. ³ Nivelles was a double monastery, with monks and nuns in separate buildings under the rule of a woman. ¹²

On how Gertrude came to lead it the sources differ. The encyclopedia and the vicariate say Itta appointed her daughter the first abbess and lived under her as a nun, "assisting the young abbess by her advice." ¹³ Kerknet says Gertrude entered her mother's foundation and succeeded her as abbess at twenty. ² Either way she was very young. By the encyclopedia's account her mother stayed at her side until Itta died in 652. ¹

Nivelles drew pilgrims, among them two Irish monks, the brothers Follian and Ultan, on their way from Rome to Peronne, where their brother Saint Furseus was buried. ¹ Gertrude and her mother gave them land at Fosse for a monastery. Ultan became its superior, and Follian stayed at Nivelles to teach Scripture to the monks and nuns. ¹ The vicariate relates what happened later: Follian and his companions were ambushed and murdered on the road back to Fosse, and it was Gertrude, by a vision, who told the searchers where the bodies lay. ³

After her mother's death she reorganized the house so that she could read. She handed the internal running of the monastery to a few nuns and its outside business to capable monks, the encyclopedia says, "in order that she might gain more time for the study of Holy Scripture, which she almost knew by heart." ¹ Her mother's large property she spent on churches, monasteries and hospices. ¹ In the vicariate's telling the community's life was prayer, study of the Scriptures and charity to the poor, and she went about the abbey's lands on foot or by cart. ³

She did not spare herself. By thirty-two, the encyclopedia says, "continuous abstinence from food and sleep" had left her too weak to govern, and in December 658, after consulting her monks and nuns, she resigned and named her niece Wulfetrude abbess in her place. ¹

The day before she died she sent a monk to Ultan at Fosse to ask whether God had shown him the hour of her death. He answered that she would die the next day during Mass, and she did, on March 17, 659. ¹ She was buried in the abbey church of Saint Peter. ³ The encyclopedia says she was venerated as a saint at once, and that Agnes, the third abbess, built a church in her honor. ¹

The vicariate admits that little is known of her life. ³ What is known rests on unusually early evidence. Kerknet's article is about her first Life, a short text of 1,874 words written by an Irish priest-monk of Nivelles little more than ten years after she died. ² Bruno Krusch edited it in 1889 for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and the Leuven Latinist Andries Welkenhuysen produced a new edition in 1964, arguing that many of Krusch's corrections had smoothed away genuine Merovingian Latin. ²

Nivelles has not forgotten her. The abbey itself disappeared in the French Revolution, but the great collegiate church named for her, consecrated in 1046 in the presence of the emperor Henry III, still stands in the middle of the town. ²⁴ Every autumn, on the Sunday after September 29, between four and six thousand people walk the Tour Sainte-Gertrude, about seventeen kilometers around the old territory of Nivelles behind the cart that carries her relics, in imitation of the rounds she made on the abbey's lands. ³ In 2026 the town kept what CathoBel called a triple jubilee: the 750th Tour, 1,400 years since her birth, and 980 years since the church was consecrated. The jubilee year opened in February with the opening of her reliquary, which CathoBel said had last been done in 1982. ⁵

The Catholic Encyclopedia says: "She is also patron of travellers, and is invoked against fever, rats, and mice, particularly field-mice." ¹ The "also" follows its list of towns that honor her as patron, Geertruidenberg, Breda and Bergen-op-Zoom in North Brabant; the vicariate calls her the patron saint of Nivelles as well. ¹³

The patronage of travelers comes with a legend, and the encyclopedia labels it one. She is said to have sent some of her people to a distant country with a promise that no harm would come to them, and when a sea monster threatened their ship it disappeared when they called on her. ¹ In memory of it, medieval travelers drank a parting cup before setting out that the encyclopedia calls the "Sinte Geerts Minne." ¹ The vicariate gives a plainer account: she was known for helping sailors in danger and for her care of strangers, which is why so many chapels of Saint Gertrude stand in the ports of the Baltic. ³

The mice are harder to explain. Artists show her as an abbess with rats and mice at her feet or running up her cloak and staff. ¹ The vicariate points out that the writings on her life say nothing about rodents and can only suggest a lost story of a miracle that saved the crops. ³ Aleteia agrees that there are "no traceable stories that connect her to cats or even mice during her life," and says that she simply became, in the Middle Ages, a favorite saint to invoke against them. ⁶

That is the whole basis for her modern reputation as the patron saint of cats. Aleteia dates the association to "recent years," explains it by the obvious link between cats and mice, and calls her the "unofficial" cat saint of the Church. ⁶ None of the other sources consulted for this page mentions cats at all, so the page does not list them among her patronages. ¹²³

Saint Gertrude of Nivelles's feast day is March 17, the day she died in 659. ¹² Kerknet, the site of the Church in Flanders, notes that the date belongs to her as well as to Saint Patrick. ² At Nivelles itself CathoBel's 2022 report also refers to February 12 as a feast day of Saint Gertrude, without saying what it marks, and the town's largest celebration of her, the Tour, falls in the autumn. ³⁴

Gertrude had every advantage her century could give and used them to get time alone with a book. The detail in the encyclopedia that stays in the mind is administrative: she delegated the running of a large monastery so that she could study Scripture until she nearly had it by heart. ¹ An Irish monk stayed in the house to teach it. ¹

The same sources that praise her are honest that she ruined her health. She was too weak to govern at thirty-two and dead within a year or so, and the encyclopedia names the cause as her fasting and lack of sleep. ¹ It reports this without comment. A reader does not have to admire the pace in order to admire the love behind it.

Her patronage of travelers comes wrapped in a legend about a sea monster, but the sources tie it to something plainer in her life. She gave land to Irish monks who were passing through, and the vicariate says she was remembered for her care of strangers and of sailors in danger. ¹³

People who come to her because of cats have not come to the wrong saint, only by a recent road. ⁶ They will find a woman who read, spent her inheritance on churches and hospices, went about her abbey's fields on foot, and sent to ask a friend, the day before she died, whether he knew the hour. ¹³