St Gertrude of Nivelles

St Gertrude was born around 626 into the leading Frankish family of her day, the daughter of Pepin of Landen and St Itta. When she was only about ten, the king offered her a politically advantageous marriage at her father's table. The girl refused firmly before king and court, saying that Christ alone would be her Bridegroom, and she kept that vow all her life. After her father's death, St Itta founded the monastery of Nivelles on the advice of St Amandus. Gertrude received monastic tonsure from her mother and became its first abbess. She governed with a wisdom beyond her years, loved learning, and welcomed traveling monks, especially the Irish missionaries, so that Nivelles became a haven of holiness. Worn out by fasting and vigils, she handed the abbey to her niece St Wulfetrude. She reposed on 17 March 659, at about thirty-three years of age, asking to be buried in a pilgrim's old veil and her hair shirt. Orthodox Christians of the West honor her as a saint of the undivided Church.

St Gertrude is a pre-schism Western saint. Orthodox Christians in Western Europe and America honor her on 17 March (see orthochristian.com's series on the Orthodox saints of the Low Countries; Wikipedia also cites Antiochian and Holy Trinity Orthodox calendars, not checked here), but she is not a major saint in the traditional Russian or Greek calendars. Her patronages of travelers and gardeners and her protection against rats, mice and plague are medieval Western traditions; protection against rats and mice dates from the early 15th century during the Black Death. Calling her 'patron of cats' is a modern popular attribution, apparently from the 1980s. It does not appear in older historical surveys, and the first major English-language source for it is a 1981 Metropolitan Museum catalogue. Present it as a gentle modern custom that grew out of the older rats-and-mice protection, not as an ancient Orthodox patronage.