Saint Gertrude the Great

Saint Gertrude the Great, also called Gertrude of Helfta, was a nun, a mystic, and one of the most important spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. From the age of five until her death she lived in the monastery of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony. The Church commemorates her on November 16.

She was born on January 6, 1256, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany. Nothing is known of her parents or of her birthplace. In 1261, as a five-year-old child, she was entrusted to the monastery of Helfta to be brought up there. The nuns lived by the Rule of Saint Benedict and by Cistercian customs; the Roman Martyrology calls the monastery Cistercian. The community was governed by Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, and the girl’s teacher was the abbess’s sister, Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn.

Gertrude was an outstanding student. She learned the liberal arts and was especially drawn to literature, music, singing, and the art of miniature painting. She had a strong and impulsive temperament. She herself later wrote that for years, though she bore the name and the habit of a nun, she lived negligently and was more absorbed in learning than in the things of God. In Advent of 1280 she was seized by unrest and a sense of emptiness. On the evening of January 27, 1281, at the hour of Compline, she had a vision of a young man who gave her his hand; in that hand she recognized the marks of the wounds of Christ.

She regarded this event as her conversion. She gave up secular studies for Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and theology; her biographer wrote that from a grammarian she became a theologian. From then on she lived by the liturgy and by a close friendship with Christ. She explained the truths of the faith simply and clearly, and many people sought her advice. More than once illness kept her from taking part in the prayer of the choir.

Little of her writing has survived. The most important works are The Herald of Divine Love, written in Latin partly by Gertrude herself and partly by her fellow sisters, and the Spiritual Exercises. The Heart of Jesus holds a large place in them. In the encyclical Dilexit nos Pope Francis recalled her account of a time of prayer when she rested her head on the Heart of Christ and listened to its beating. She then asked Saint John the Evangelist why he had not written about this in his Gospel, and she understood that this message had been kept for a time when the world would grow cold in the love of God.

She died at Helfta on November 17, 1301 or 1302, at the age of about forty-six; the year of her death cannot be established exactly. The place of her burial is not known.

Gertrude was never formally canonized. Her writings, printed in the sixteenth century, spread across Europe and reached America. During the pontificate of Innocent XI her name was entered in the Roman Martyrology (sources give the year 1677 or 1678), and in the following century Pope Clement XII extended her memorial to the whole Church. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to her on October 6, 2010, and recalled that she is the only German woman to bear the title “the Great.”