Saint Bertha

Widow and Abbess
(died c. 725)

Saint Bertha was a noblewoman of Francia who, after the death of her husband, devoted herself entirely to God and founded a monastery at Blangy in Artois, in what is now northern France. She came from a devout Christian family and had been carefully educated in the faith from childhood. Her marriage was a happy one and she raised her five daughters in piety and virtue, two of whom later became nuns and saints in their own right.

After her husband's death, Bertha felt drawn to consecrate the remainder of her life entirely to God, and with the blessing of her family she founded a double monastery at Blangy, housing both monks and nuns, after the custom common in the early medieval Church in the regions influenced by Irish monasticism. She governed this community with wisdom and charity for many years, setting an example of prayer, austerity, and service that drew many souls to the religious life.

In her final years, seeking greater solitude and union with God, she entrusted the governance of the monastery to her daughter and withdrew to a small hermitage within the monastic enclosure, where she spent her remaining days in uninterrupted prayer and contemplation. She died in peace around the year 725, having built up a community that would long outlast her and serve the Church in northern France for many generations.

She was venerated as a saint from shortly after her death, and her relics were preserved in the monastery she had founded. Her memory has been kept alive particularly in the region of Artois, where she is remembered as a model of the Christian widow who found in the loss of her husband not a cause for despair but an occasion for a more complete gift of herself to God. Her feast is observed on July 4th in traditional martyrologies.