Relic Of Saint Gertrude

Relic of Saint Gertrude
Gertrude, known as "the great", was born on the day of the Epiphany in 1256. Having lost both her parents, at the age of five she entered the Cistercian monastery of Helfta, a small village in Saxony, founded twenty-seven years earlier and recently moved to Helfta.
The leader of the spiritual current that is generated in this monastery is the Beguine Metilde of Magdeburg who, on the advice of the Dominican fathers, spent the last twelve years of her life there. The abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn is at the helm of the monastery and her sister, Metilde of Hackeborn, also lives there. The three women constituted in the heart of the 13th century a hive of incredible spiritual vitality, with a wide spread and multiple relationships with both the Dominican and Franciscan spiritual environments, as well as evidently Cistercian ones.