Saint Waldetrude

Saint Waldetrude, known in France and Belgium as Waudru, was a Frankish noblewoman of the seventh century, a wife and mother, who in her mature years took the nun’s veil and founded a monastery on the hill of Castrilocus. Around it grew the city of Mons in present-day Belgium, which venerates her as its patroness. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on April 9.

What we know about her is modest. Her Life was written by an unknown monk only around the year 850, more than a century and a half after her death. It says only that she was born in the time of King Dagobert; the year of her birth is not known. Her parents were Waldebert and Bertilla, of the Frankish aristocracy, and the family most probably had its seat at Cousolre, today in France. Waldetrude’s younger sister was Saint Aldegundis, foundress of the monastery at Maubeuge.

Probably while still very young, she was given in marriage to Madelgar, a nobleman of Hainaut. Tradition attributes to them four children venerated as saints: Landric, Dentelin, who died as a small child, and Aldetrude and Madelberta, later abbesses of Maubeuge. The Roman Martyrology too calls Waldetrude the mother of four saints, although the oldest Lives do not mention the children.

According to her Life, a change took place in Waldetrude: what had pleased her until then lost its value for her. She longed to live for God and to help the poor, orphans, widows, prisoners, and travelers. She persuaded her husband that by mutual consent they should separate and give themselves to the service of God. Madelgar was the first to enter the monastery at Hautmont, where he took the name Vincent; later he founded the abbey at Soignies, and he too is venerated as a saint.

Around 656 she received the veil from the hands of Saint Aubert, bishop of Cambrai, and went to live in a small house with a chapel on the hill of Castrilocus. Her Life links the choice of this place with the advice of a hermit, Saint Ghislain. In time other women joined her, and so a small monastery arose, which she led. Aldegundis urged her sister to move to the larger community at Maubeuge, but Waldetrude remained on her hill. The Life does not hide her struggles: temptations, longing for her former life, and the pain that slander caused her, but it also speaks of the peace she found after many years.

She died on April 9. The sources do not give the year; tradition points to 686 or 688. Her veneration is attested from the ninth century, and the sick and pilgrims came to her tomb. She has been venerated as a saint since the early Middle Ages, long before canonization processes took shape.

The community she founded became in time a chapter of canonesses, and around it developed the city of Mons, the capital of the province of Hainaut. The saint’s relics rest in the collegiate church that bears her name, built from the middle of the fifteenth century. Every year on Trinity Sunday the reliquary is carried through the city on the Golden Carriage (Car d’Or). The custom grew out of the processions of supplication held during the great plague in the middle of the fourteenth century.