Bl. Gertrude of Aldenberg- Crusader nun
Blessed Gertrude of Altenberg, daughter Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Abbess of the Premonstratensian convent of Aldenberg, near Wetzlar,
in the Diocese of Trier; born about 1227, died 13 August, 1297. She was
the youngest of three children of Louis VI, margrave of Thuringia, and
his wife St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Gertrude’s father died on his way to
the Holy Land shortly before she was born. She was scarcely two years
old, when St. Elizabeth 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, the 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 Urban VI published a crusade against
the Saracens, Gertrude and her nuns took the cross and obliged
themselves to contribute their share to the success of the crusade by
prayer and acts of mortification. 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. 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.
