Category:Saint Gertrude of Nivelles

Heraldry of the World Thumbnails > Themes > Religious images

Coats of arms showing St. Gertrude of Nivelles.

Saint Gertrude of Nivelles (626 – March 17, 659) was abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Nivelles, in present-day Belgium.

One day, when she was about ten years of age, her father invited Dagobert I and some noblemen to a banquet. When on this occasion she was asked to marry the son of the Duke of Austrasia she indignantly replied that she would marry neither him nor any other man, but that Jesus Christ alone would be her bridegroom.

She is the patron of travellers, and is invoked against fever, rats, and mice, particularly field-mice. St. Gertrude is generally represented as an abbess, with rats and mice at her feet or running up her cloak or pastoral staff.