Waltrude

Saint Waltrude, known in French as Waudru and in Dutch as Waldetrudis or Waltrudis, was a seventh-century Frankish noblewoman, wife, mother, and monastic foundress whose memory is closely tied to the early Christian history of Hainaut. She was the daughter of Walbert, a count in Hainaut later venerated as a saint, and of Bertille (also called Bertilia), likewise honored as a saint. Her sister was Saint Aldegonde (Aldegundis), foundress of the monastery of Maubeuge. The family belonged to the Merovingian aristocracy of the Frankish kingdoms and is notable in hagiographical tradition for the number of its members who entered religious life. No contemporary record of her birth survives. Later tradition places her origins in Hainaut and often specifies Cousolre, in the early seventh century; an exact year of birth is not historically verified.

Waltrude married Madelgarius (also called Madelgar), a count of Hainaut. After a period of married life and secular office he withdrew from the world, took the monastic name Vincent, founded the abbey of Hautmont, and later settled at Soignies, where he is venerated as Saint Vincent of Soignies. The couple had four children, all of whom came to be honored as saints: Landric (Landry); Dentelin, who according to the tradition died in childhood; and two daughters, Aldetrude and Madelberta (Madelberte), who in time became abbesses of Maubeuge, the house founded by their aunt Aldegonde. After the children had been raised, Waltrude and her husband separated by mutual consent so that both might follow the religious life, a pattern well attested among aristocratic saints of the Merovingian age.

Waltrude then established a community of women at a site called Castrilocus or Châteaulieu, on a hill that later formed the nucleus of the city of Mons (Bergen) in Hainaut. The foundation is generally placed in the mid-seventh century. There she lived in prayer, austerity, and works of charity, and the house she founded attracted disciples and endowments. Medieval accounts present her as a model of the Christian matron who, having fulfilled the duties of marriage and motherhood, embraced consecrated life without abandoning care for the poor and for the church in her region. She is remembered as foundress and first abbess of the Mons community, which in later centuries developed into a chapter of canonesses attached to the great collegiate church that bears her name.

She died at her monastery on 9 April 688, the date that became her principal feast. Her cult took root quickly in Hainaut and especially at Mons, which regarded her as its foundress and patron. Her relics were enshrined in what became the Collegiate Church of Saint Waudru (Sainte-Waudru) in Mons, a major Gothic church and the continuing centre of her veneration. The annual procession of the Car d’Or, in which her reliquary is carried through the city, remains a central expression of that local cult. She was not the subject of a formal papal canonization of the later medieval or modern type; her sanctity was recognized by popular devotion and episcopal approval in the centuries after her death, as was customary for saints of the Merovingian period.