St. Gertrude the Great
Left at a monastery at four or five. Nobody ever recorded why.
Gertrude arrived at the monastery of Helfta in Germany when she was about five years old. There is no record of who left her there or what happened to her family. She simply appears in the history as a small child in a very serious place.
The nuns at Helfta were unusually well educated for the 1200s, and Gertrude turned out to be brilliant. She learned Latin, philosophy, and Scripture, and for years she was frankly more interested in books than in God, which she later wrote about with some embarrassment.
That changed at twenty five, and she spent the next thirty years writing. She is the only woman the Church calls the Great. The child nobody claimed ended up with a title nobody else has.
St. Gertrude the Great facts for kids
- The only female saint called the Great
- She came to the monastery around age five and never left
- Helfta was one of the most educated communities of women in medieval Europe
- She's strongly associated with prayer for the souls in purgatory
Feast day: November 16 · Patron of the West Indies and souls in purgatory
St. Gertrude, pray for everyone nobody is praying for.