Family and Background
Gertrude belonged to one of the leading families of the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia. Her father, Pepin of Landen, and her mother, Itta of Metz, were figures of high standing, and her brother Grimoald the Elder and sister Begga were prominent in the same generation; Begga married Ansegisel.
According to her vita, when Gertrude was about ten years old King Dagobert proposed that she marry the son of a duke of the Austrasians. She refused with an oath, declaring that she would take neither him nor any earthly spouse but Christ alone.
Abbess of Nivelles
The monastery at Nivelles was founded around 640 by Itta, with the encouragement of Bishop Amandus. Though it began as a community of nuns, it soon became a double monastery, with separate communities of men and women under the leadership of an abbess. Gertrude served as its first abbess.
As abbess she sent envoys to obtain relics of the saints and holy books from Rome, and she gathered men of good reputation to the house. She was known for welcoming foreign pilgrims, especially Irish monks, and for caring for the sick, the elderly, and the poor. Her vita records that she had committed much of scripture and sacred law to memory.
The Irish Monks
Among those who came to Nivelles were the Irish monks Foillan and Ultan, who stopped there on their way to Peronne. After Foillan was murdered while traveling, his body was discovered seventy-seven days later, on the anniversary of the death of his brother Fursey, and his remains were brought to Nivelles.
Tradition relates that Ultan foretold that Gertrude would die on 17 March, the feast of Saint Patrick. The same accounts record that she asked to be buried in an old veil left behind by a traveling pilgrim and in her own hair shirt, as a sign of humility.
Relics and Shrines
Gertrude was buried at Nivelles, where a church dedicated to her was built; the Collegiate Church of Saint Gertrude there became the principal site of her veneration. The church, completed in the eleventh century and later given Gothic additions, was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War and afterward restored to its eleventh- and thirteenth-century form.
An annual procession in her honor is held at Nivelles on the Sunday following Michaelmas.
