plays a role. She also collaborated on Mechthild von
Hackeborn’s work, the Liber specialis gratiae (Book of
Special Grace). Moreover, Gertrud functioned as a much
sought-after pastoral counselor both of her sisters and
of lay people. Gertrud died on November 17 at the age
of forty-fi ve or forty-six, but details of her death are not
known. Gertrud von Helfta has been venerated as a saint
fi rst by the Benedictine Order (since 1674) and since
1734 offi cially by the entire Roman Catholic Church.
She was also made the patron saint of the West Indies.
Presumably only a portion of Gertrud’s writings
has been preserved. Numerous prayer books that were
published in many languages since the sixteenth century
under the names of St. Gertrud and Mechthild (latest
English edition, Philadelphia 1955) are not authentic.
The Legatus divinae pietatis and her brief Exercitia
spiritualia, consisting of prayerful meditations based on
Scripture and the liturgy, are commonly listed as Gertrud
von Helfta’s works. The Legatus (The Herald of God’s
Loving-Kindness) consists of fi ve parts: Books 3–5,
roughly based on material provided by Gertrud, were
composed by a sister in the Helfta community; Book 1
constitutes Gertrud’s vita written after her death. Only
Book 2 was written by Gertrud’s own hand. Together
with the equally authentic Spiritual Exercises, these two
texts are unique jewels of medieval mysticism.
Gertrud’s work was composed in Latin. An early
fifteenth-century Middle High German translation,
ein botte der götlichen miltekeit (its oldest mansucript
is dated 1448) is a deliberately shortened version of
Books 3–5 of the Legatus. The manuscript tradition of
Gertrud von Helfta’s work is meager. Of the Legatus,
eight complete or partial fi fteenth-century manuscripts
are known. No manuscript is extant of the Spiritual
Exercises. Its survival was made possible by the fi rst
publication of Gertrud von Helfta’s Latin work in 1536
by the Carthusian Johannes Lanspergius of Cologne.
Since then, most early editors and translators found it
necessary to attach to Gertrud’s work an initial apologia
attesting to the orthodoxy of her writings.
To separate Gertrud von Helfta’s specifi c way of
thinking from the general mystical and intellectual
atmosphere of Helfta, interpretation must focus on the
Exercitia and her own Book 2 of the Legatus. Gertrud’s
“confessions” show her as profoundly humble. Yet si-
multaneously she sees all human beings invested with
regal dignity through Christ’s incarnation. Invisibly
stigmatized and mystically united to Christ through an
exchange of hearts, Gertrud encounters the divine as a
self-confi dent woman. Her distinctive characteristic is
her inner freedom (libertas cordis), which leaves her
little patience with petty ecclesiastical regulations. The
dominant tone of Gertrud von Helfta’s work is that of
intense joy, as best expressed in her mystical jubilus
(Exercitia). Her God-language is notable for its imagi-
native indusiveness. The theology of the Sacred Heart
is to be credited more to the general Helfta community
than to Gertrud.
See also Bernard of Clairvaux;
Hugh of Saint-VictorFurther Reading
Barratt, Alexandra. The Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness by
Gertrud the Great of Helfi a, Books One and Two. Kalamazoo,
Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the
Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1982, pp. 170–262.
Finnegan, Mary Jeremy. The Women of Helfta: Scholars and
Mystics. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Hart, Mother Columba, trans. The Exercises of St. Gertrude.
Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1956.
Hourlier, Jacques, et al. eds. Gertrude d’Helfta. Oeuvres spiri-
tuelles. Sources chrétiennes 127, 139, 143, 255, 331. Paris:
du Cerf, 1967–1986 [bilingual, Latin-French].
Lewis, Gertrud Jaron. Bibliographic zur deutschen Frauen-
mystik des Mittelalters. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1989,
pp.196–223 [comprehensive list of primary and secondary
sources].
Lewis, Gertrud Jaron, and Jack Lewis, trans. Gertrud the Great
of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian
Publications, 1989.
Shank, Lillian Thomas, and John A. Nichols. Medieval Religious
Women, 2. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1987,
pp. 239–273.
Winkworth, Margaret, trans. Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of
Divine Love. New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1993
[Books 1 and 2, and partially Book 3].
Gertrud Jaron LewisGIACOMINO DA VERONA
(13th century)
Giacomino da Verona was a notable fi gure in both Lom-
bard (northern Italian) and Franciscan literature. He is
known for two vernacular poems: one about paradise (in
1,108 verses) and the other about hell (in 1,348 verses).
The verse form is caesured alexandrine (7 + 7 syllables),
arranged in a sequence of monorhymed quatrains; how-
ever, the presence of shorter hemistichs often brings the
lines near the epic decasyllable of the jongleurs. There
are four manuscripts. The one in Venice (V, Marciana
Library) and the one in Seville (S, Colombina Library)
are closely related and provide the best reading of the
poems. They also feature, before each poem, a long title
(Latin in V and vernacular in S) in which paradise is
called a “heavenly Jerusalem” (De Jerusalem celesti)
and hell a “hellish Babylon” (De Babilonia infernali).
The other two manuscripts are found in Udine (U, Arci-
vescovile Library) and Oxford (O, Bodleian); the latter,
O, contains only the fi rst poem (Jerusalem). The two
poems were initially published only from V by Ozanam
(1850) and, more competently, by Mussafi a (1864) butGIACOMINO DA VERONA