Gertrude

ON BLESSED GERTRUDE, DAUGHTER OF ST. ELIZABETH OF THURINGIA,

OF THE PREMONSTRATENSIAN ORDER,

ABBESS OF ALTENBERG IN GERMANY.

1297.

A COLLECTION

Concerning her deeds and cult.

Gertrude, daughter of St. Elizabeth, abbess of Altenberg in Germany (Bl.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

So illustrious both in blood and in virtues and sanctity do the writers of the Premonstratensian Order proclaim this their blessed Abbess and almost foundress of the convent of Altenberg, Into the deeds of so illustrious a Saint that it is almost incredible that no one has hitherto been found who should write and publish a commentary on her life, deeds and miracles; so that nothing at all concerning her has come into our hands except a very brief eulogy and three lessons from the Offices of the Order. Bolland had once noted a few things which had raised in me a hope of obtaining something from the abbey of Furnes in Flanders. For there had come to our Museum in the year 1657 Dom Peter Diederich, abbot of Rommersdorf, who said that the Father abbot of Altenberg had also written the life of Bl. Gertrude, which he promised he would send to Dom Peter de Waghenare, a religious of the same Order at Furnes, that he might reduce it into a better form. Waghenare afterward wrote to Bolland that he had composed her Life from the undigested materials which Diederich had sent, which also he offered. But it was not sent hither.

[2] I therefore held nothing more important than to have recourse to Furnes to the Canons of the Premonstratensian Order, was diligently but vainly inquired. a Latin letter being written to their Prelate on the 11th of May 1734; to which, when he replied nothing, I sent a French one, which he no more than the former deigned to answer. My petition was that he should depute one of his own to search into the manuscripts left by the aforesaid Dom Waghenare after his death, among which I certainly judged the Life to survive. In vain was labor spent by me, and I received nothing except a little book published by the same Waghenare on St. Norbert the Patriarch, etc., first brought hither in the month of October, which had already been in the Museum for eighty years, and was long since most well known to me, in which a few little lines occur which regard St. Gertrude, taken from the Natales of the Saints of the Premonstratensian Order by Jan Chrysostom van der Sterre, whence the rest took them; so that accordingly his words must here be set first in place of all.

[3] "On the 13th, or the Ides of August: In the convent of Virgins at Altenberg in the diocese of Trier, the birthday of blessed Gertrude, virgin of the Premonstratensian Order, Thou hast here a eulogy, daughter of St. Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse and Thuringia. Who, being from her very infancy offered to God in this place by her mother, afterward presided over it with great sanctity and religion: and, the oil of divine grace being gathered in the vessel of her conscience, and the lamp of good works being kindled and adorned, she went to meet Christ her spouse, a daughter not degenerate from her holy mother." And these are the same things which Waghenare handed down, nor wilt thou find more in Le Paige in the Library of the Premonstratensian Order, nor do I confess that I know others whom I could consult on the same matter; so that it is too plainly evident how sparingly and barely it is possible for me to speak of so memorable a Saint. And indeed this too is most wonderful, that in our common Martyrologies, however recent, nothing at all is found handed down concerning her cult.

[4] the bull of Clement VI and the Lessons. Bolland goes on: "Afterward he sent" (namely the praised Waghenare) "a bull of Clement VI given in the V year of his pontificate, which was of Christ 1348. But I fear," he says, "lest it be spurious, since in it he makes mention of Louis, illustrious king of the Romans, who was the Bavarian, already dead for thirteen months, and a persecutor, not a beloved son of the Pontiff." This seems able easily to be excused, because probably both that king and other nobles of those parts directed their suppliant prayers to Avignon some years before the supreme Pontiff dispatched his bull. Certainly there is no doubt that from that time the Saint enjoyed an ecclesiastical cult, at least in her own convent of Altenberg, and afterward in the rest of the Order, to whose greater solemnity there contributed not a little the diploma of Pope Benedict XIII given at Rome on the 11th day of July 1729, by which plenary Indulgences are granted in all churches, both of the Canons regular and of the Nuns of the Premonstratensian Order, wheresoever existing, on the very feast day of this holy Gertrude, and on the festivals of several Saints of the same Order. Since therefore so few things are supplied from elsewhere, it may be useful here to transcribe the Clementine diploma itself:

[5] "Clement, bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, to his beloved daughters in Christ, the Mistress and Convent of the monastery of Altenberg of the Premonstratensian Order in the diocese of Trier, greeting and Apostolic benediction. Although he from whose gift it comes that he is worthily and laudably served by his faithful, out of the abundance of his loving-kindness, which exceeds the merits and the vows of suppliants, renders to those who serve well far greater things than they can deserve: nevertheless, desiring to render to the Lord an acceptable people, and inviting the faithful of Christ to please him, and as it were with certain alluring gifts, namely by the invocation of the holy women beloved of God, with indulgences and remissions, that thereby they may be rendered more fit for divine grace. Desiring therefore that your church, both for reverence of the glorious virgin under whose honor (as ye assert) it is founded, and in which that blessed Gertrude, daughter of St. Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse, served God her Creator with wondrous praise of sanctity, and was buried and exalted; and also for the reverence and devotion which our most dear son in Christ Louis, illustrious king of the Romans, and other nobles of those parts have toward that Bl. Gertrude, once your mistress, may be frequented and solemnized with fitting honors; being inclined by your devout prayers and theirs, we grant and will that yearly on the day of St. Hippolytus ye perform and celebrate the birthday of Bl. Gertrude with a double Office in Masses and canonical Hours from the Common of virgins. Besides, to you and to all who celebrate her birthday, who also shall have reverently visited your church on the vigil and on her feast, and likewise on the festivals of the glorious Virgin Mary, and as often as at the sepulchre of the oft-named Bl. Gertrude they shall have recited five times the Our Father and Hail Mary, or shall have celebrated the canonical Hours of her, and shall at least be contrite, for each canonical Hour, trusting in the mercy of almighty God and in the authority of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, we mercifully relax forty days of the penances enjoined on them. Given at Avignon on the XV of the Calends of January, in the seventh year of our pontificate." Let there now follow the Lessons received here

FROM THE OFFICES OF THE SAINTS OF THE CANONICAL PREMONSTRATENSIAN ORDER

ON THE 13TH DAY OF AUGUST

OF BLESSED GERTRUDE, DAUGHTER OF ST. ELIZABETH,

GREATER DOUBLE, IN THE SECOND NOCTURN

LESSON IV.

Gertrude had for father Louis the Upright, Landgrave of Hesse and Thuringia, and for mother St. Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew, king of the Hungarians, by whom, according to the vow made by her and by her husband Louis while she was still carried in the womb, when a year and a half of her life was completed she was consigned to the divine service at Altenberg, which is a monastery of the Premonstratensian Order. Her mother, who died a little after at Marburg, she beheld at Altenberg appearing to her in her chamber. Further, as she grew in age, having professed the religious life, she grew also in virtues so much that, the first mistress of the monastery of Altenberg having gone to Christ after a holy rule of twenty-four years, she was deservedly substituted, an election going before, in the twenty-first year of her age. Irradiated by the splendor of her virtues, very many virgins, sprung of illustrious stock, giving their names to religion, submitted themselves to her direction.

LESSON V.

[7] Besides the church which, toward the Virgin Mother,

she was borne with the highest affection, and to the holy archangel Michael, on whose feast she had come into the world, she willed the monastery also to be sacred, she raised up also a guest-house, after the example of her holy mother, of which she herself bore singular care: being wont to repeat this maxim frequently: "The greater ye are, the more in all things humble yourselves." Whence also she performed the meanest services of the house, heaven approving this, when a ray of the sun took up the veil of her head washed by her, and, until it should dry, sustained it as though serving her. She had received also a peculiar gift of reconciling persons at variance among themselves, and once, not without a miracle, having confounded some of them who did not obey her in this matter by the obedience of a lion which, being called in the name of Jesus, had run to her and lain down on the ground, she bound them together with a most firm bond of peace. She tormented her body with scourges and fastings, and through the whole time of the Lenten observance until Palm Sunday she slept on straw; but in Holy Week on a bare board, being a most fervent emulator of the Passion of Christ.

LESSON VI.

[8] When Pope Urban was stirring up the Christians to take up arms against the enemies of the faith, with her own company of virgins and with very many matrons, the sacred cross being taken by the privilege of that same Pontiff, she was enrolled in the sacred warfare, of which in those parts she was the standard-bearer. The festival of the body of Christ, instituted by the same Pontiff, she took care to celebrate with the greatest piety. She shone also with the prophetic spirit. At length, being about to receive the reward of her labors, being seized by a deadly sickness, and the Sacraments of the Church being received, she went joyfully to her Spouse on the thirteenth day of August, in the year of Christ one thousand two hundred and ninety-seven, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-ninth of her rule; whom, shining with miracles, Pope Clement the sixth granted to be celebrated by the nuns of Altenberg with a yearly feast, indulgences also being given.

[9] The diploma itself we have already set forth. But from these lessons it is easy to gather St. Gertrude's age, since it is so distinctly expressed that she was elected Mistress or abbess in the 21st year of her age, but ruled altogether 49 years, and died in the year 1297, in the 70th of her age; whence she must have been born in the year 1227, and so was the third and last offspring of St. Elizabeth, after whose bringing forth she survived only four years, dying herself in the year 1231: whence again it follows, as is said in the first lesson, that our Saint while still very tender was consigned to the divine service. And to these things I have nothing solid at hand to add.