GERTRUDE: The name of several women honored as saints or blessed in the Roman Catholic Church.

1. Saint Gertrude the Great was born at Eisleben (18 m. w.n.w. of Halle) Jan. 6, 1256, and died at the Benedictine nunnery of Helpede, or Helfta, near Eisleben, in 1302 (according to others, about 1311). She entered this convent at the age of five and received a thorough education from its second

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abbess, St. Gertrude of Hackeborn (see below, 3). For twenty years her interest lay in secular subjects, until on Jan. 27, 1281, a vision of Christ changed the entire current of her thoughts, and she devoted herself henceforth to the exclusive study of the Bible and the Church Fathers. In Feb., 1290, she began to commit to writing the visions vouchsafed her. The German original of her four books of Insinuationes divince pietatis (or, more properly, Legatus divinte pietatis) is lost, and the work is preserved only in a Latin translation, first edited by the Carthusian Johann von Lansperg (Cologne, 1536) and frequently reprinted, both in Latin and in French, Flemish, Spanish, and German versions, especially after her canonization in 1677. Her biography, prefixed to the Insinuationes as the first book, seems to have been written some time after her death by one of the younger nuns at Helpede.

2. Saint (or Blessed) Gertrude, Abbess of Nivelles, was born about 625, and died, probably, Mar. 17, 659 (scarcely, as some think, in 664). She was the daughter of Pippin of Landen and Itta, or Iduberga, and when the latter founded the convent of Nivialla (the modern Nivelles near Brussels), about the middle of the seventh century, Gertrude, who had already refused the hand of a king (possibly Dagobert), entered it and succeeded her mother as abbess in 652. Her symbol is the lily, the emblem of virginity, and she is also frequently represented as surrounded by hosts of mice, since the expulsion of these creatures from the fields is recorded as one of her miracles.

3. Gertrude of Hackeborn, the sister of Matilda (q.v.), was born near Halberstadt (28 m. s.w. of Magdeburg) 1232, and died at the convent of Helpede in 1292. In 1251 she became abbess of the convent of Rodersdorf, but in 1258 went to Helpede, where she spent the remainder of her life.

4. Gertrude, the half legendary sister of Charlemagne, is said to have founded the convent of Karlaburg (or Saalburg) on the Main.

5. Gertrude, the daughter of the Thuringian landgrave Ludwig VI. and Saint Elizabeth, was born about 1226 and died in 1297. She was abbess of the Premonstratensian convent of Altenburg-on-theLahn.

6. Gertrude of Oosten, a pious Beguin at Delft, Holland, is said to have received the stigmata in 1340; she died in 1358.

(O. Zöckler.)

Bibliography: 1. Weisebrodt, Der heiiige Gertrud der Groseen "Gesaudter der goalichen Liebe," 2 vols., Freiburg,

1876; M. sintsel, Gertradis . . . Leben and Ofenbarungen, 2 vols., Regensburg, 1876; KL, v. 473-476. 2. The Vita, by a contemporary, is with a commentary in ASB, March, ii. 590-600, and ed. B. Krusch, in MGH, Script. rer. Merov., ii (1888), 447-464. Consult H. E. Bon- nell, Die Anfdnge des karolingiaden Hauees, pp. 149-153, Berlin, 1866; J. Friedrich, KD, ii. 341, 667-670; Hauck, KD, i. 307; for further literature, Potthast, Wegweiser, 1339-40, and KL, v. 479-480. 3. Revelationes Gertrud%anle ac Meehtildiance, vol. i., preface, Paris, 1875; KL, v. 477-479.