Gertrude of Aldenberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gertrude of Aldenberg (born about 1227, died 13 August 1297) was abbess of the Premonstratensian convent of Altenberg, near Wetzlar, in the Diocese of Trier.

[edit] Life

She was the youngest of three daughters of Ludwig IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, and his wife Elizabeth of Hungary. Gertrude's father died on his way to Palestine shortly before she was born.

She was scarcely two years old, when her mother brought her to the convent of Aldenberg, where she afterwards became a nun. In 1248, being then only twenty-one years of old, she was elected Abbess of Aldenberg, over which she ruled forty-nine years.

With the inheritance which she received from her uncle, Dietrich I, Margrave of Meissen, she erected a church and a poorhouse. She took personal charge of the inmates of the poorhouse and a led a life of extreme mortification. When Pope Urban VI published a crusade against the Saracens, Gertrude and her nuns took the cross.

In 1270 she began to observe the feast of Corpus Christi in her convent, thus becoming one of the first to introduce it into Germany. Pope Clement VI permitted the ecclesiastical celebration of her feast to the convent of Aldenberg and granted some indulgences to those who visit her relics at that convent.

This article incorporates text from the entry Blessed Gertrude of Aldenberg in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.