Saint Gombert and Saint Bertha

When his parents saw that he was of marriageable age, they had him take a wife, named Berth e, who Berthe Wife of Gombert, founder and abbess of Val-d'Or, martyr. was equally illustrious by her birth and her virtues. The young prince had initially hesitated; but he heard a voice from heaven that said to him: "Gombert, do not fear to consent to your marriage with Berthe, because God wishes to draw a considerable good from it." Indeed, Berthe was the illustrious companion of his piety. As they had both resolved to live in perpetual virginity, they lived together as brother and sister: although outwardly, and with regard to the household and the regulation of their family, they rendered to each other all the duties of two faithful spouses.

Our Saint had a dispute with Sa int Réole, saint Réole Successor of Saint Nivard to the archbishopric of Reims. the successor of his brother to the archbishopric of Reims. Nivard had bequeathed all his property to his cathedral and to the abbeys of Haut-Villiers and Verzy; these goods consisted of his share of the patrimony, which had not yet been divided between him and Gombert. But, after a few conferences, the matter was happily concluded, the property in question having been divided between Saint Gombert, who received half, and the legatee churches, which received the other half; and it was not necessary to restore good relations between these two servants of God, because their lawsuit had been without bitterness and without any alteration of charity.

Saint Gombert and Saint Berthe, being thus peaceful possessors of their patrimonies, resolved to employ them entirely in the service of Jesus Christ and gave great alms from them on all sides. But their fervor increasing more and more, they separated from one another, so that, having no more commerce with creatures, they might give themselves entirely to God. The Saint first had a famous monastery buil t in Reims Site of the baptism of Clovis. Reims, near the Basée gate, formerly Basilicaire, in honor of the great apostle Saint Peter, and endowed it with great revenues to maintain there a good number of holy women, who long served God there with much edification. But, as he burned with zeal for the glory of his Master, he believed he had done nothing if, with his goods, he did not give his blood and his life for the name of Jesus Christ. He therefore joined some religious who were going to Ireland and visited the famo us mona Irlande Place of intellectual and spiritual formation for saints. steries of that island, from which came so many preachers of the Gospel; he himself built one there to teach the practice of the Rule of Saint Benedict, which had not yet replaced that of Sain Règle de Saint-Benoît Religious order occupying the monastery of Honnecourt. t Patrick and Saint Columbanus. He did not go there empty-handed; he brought much money, and he soon had a beautiful church and a magnificent monastery built, to which he gave almost all the goods he had inherited from his mother. So that in a short time one saw in this country, where until then one had seen only worshipers of the demon, a very flourishing community of servants of God, who, despite the powers of hell, planted there the cross of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion.

The pagan priests, irritated to see these foreigners abolishing the worship of their gods, rekindled the zeal of their followers and went, at the head of a troop of furious men, to attack the new monastery. Saint Gombert Frankish nobleman, founder of monasteries and martyr in Ireland. Gombert, after having exhorted his religious and the faithful to give their lives generously for Jesus Christ, withdrew into the church, and there, prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament, he thanked God for the martyrdom that awaited him. The idolaters entered full of rage, seized Gombert, loaded him with chains, and dragged him to the place of execution: there, having stripped him, they struck him with ropes, sticks, and whips. Finally, one of them cut off his head. It was April 29, towards the end of the 6th century.

Let us now return to B erthe, Berthe Wife of Gombert, founder and abbess of Val-d'Or, martyr. wife of the holy Martyr. She too desired to found some pious monastery in a solitude. As she did not know which location to choose, an Angel of light appeared to her and showed her, at the foot of a hill and at the entrance of a wood, a pleasant plain that seemed to be made expressly for her design; he even drew up the plan of the monastery and marked all the widths and heights of this edifice. The Saint, consoled by this vision, went to this place, named Val-d'Or, near Avenay , and she built an abbe Val-d'Or, près d'Avenay Site of the foundation of the abbey of Saint Bertha. y there, according to the plan that the Angel had given her, and assigned it a considerable income for the maintenance of the nuns whom she brought there from Reims; she placed herself among their number, and undertook its leadership by a heavenly order: the most holy Virgin commanded her to acquiesce to the desire of her daughters who had chosen her, against her will, as their abbess.

Her election was approved by miracles that she performed almost every moment: her history says that she gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the mute; and that often, through her prayers, she made death and hell tremble. Here is what the abbot Flodoard reports with specific details: « The town of Avenay, being extremely inconvenienced by a shortage of water, the nuns of the Val-d'Or abbey solicited their holy Mother to provide for this necessity through the virtue of her prayers; and as she was in prayer for this purpose, Saint Peter, patron of this monastery, appeared to her in the form of a venerable old man, who held two golden keys in his hands, warning her to buy, a small league from the abbey, a piece of land where there was a fountain, which she could easily have led into the town for the need of the inhabitants. The Saint, feeling strengthened by this vision, bought this land for a pound of silver, which would now amount to the price of fifty-five to sixty francs; trace its origin to Saint Bove and Saint Baudry, her brother. It was outside the town; but the wars that devastated France forced the nuns to withdraw into the interior: they established themselves in a place where, it is said, there had existed, from the time of Saint Remi, a community of women.

The holy bodies it contained were transported from the old convent to the new one.

The Abbey of Saint-Pierre les Dames is located near the ramparts, to the north.

Of the old buildings, only the gardens and two wings of the abbess's lodging remain. The church, a true monument, is destroyed.

The remains are occupied by the Ladies of the Congregation of Notre-Dame, of the rule of Saint Augustine, but revised by the blessed Pierre Fourrier. If it is true that nuns existed there from the time of Saint Remi, one sees that it is a truly blessed land. — Corf, honorary canon.

but the difficulty was to lead this water into Avenay and to change the ordinary bed of its stream, which took another course. Nevertheless, the Saint, trusting in the goodness of God, traced on the ground with a wand, like a small canal, through which the waters began to flow towards the town of Avenay, thus carving out a passage and a new bed that they have never left since. She gave from then on to this small river the name of Livre Livre River created miraculously by Saint Berthe. , because she had bought its source for a pound of silver ».

The holy abbess lived there with her daughters like angels on earth and like those virgins of the Gospel who awaited the arrival of the Bridegroom with impatience; she, in particular, was the humblest of the entire abbey; her hands commanded more than her mouth, and she established the laws of her monastery only through the example of her actions. Nothing was missing for her but the occasion of martyrdom to fulfill the desires of her heart. Finally, Our Lord, who anticipates the desires of His elect, granted her this favor through an incident that seems quite tragic. Some nephews of her husband, angry that she was using all her patrimony for charitable works, conspired with Moncie, t heir s Moncie Instigator of the murder of Saint Bertha, later repentant. ister or cousin, to put her to death. Having entered her monastery during a time of silence, when all the nuns had retired, and having secretly slipped into Berthe's cell, they cruelly massacred her without anyone in the house noticing. Thus she had the fulfillment of her wishes, and she was truly a martyr; for she was killed in hatred of virtue and because she gave all her wealth to God.

God did not leave this crime unpunished. Those who had been its authors were possessed by the demon, and perished miserably. It was not so for poor Moncie: God, treating her with more mercy, permitted Saint Berthe to appear to her a few days later. Returning good for evil, she warned her that, to obtain the remission of her crime, she must take care that the body of Saint Gombert, her husband, be transported to his native province, and deposited next to hers in the monastery of Val-d'Or in Avenay. She accepted this commission with great zeal, in the desire that her sin be forgiven. When the body of Saint Gombert was near that of Saint Berthe, this murderess cast forth a quantity of blood from her mouth and nose; but this did not surprise her, because the Saint had warned her of it in the vision she had had, and had given her this accident as a sign of the entire remission of her faults, in reward for the honor she would render to her husband and to her, after having committed such a great attack against them. Several miracles were performed at the tomb of these two holy Spouses: the possessed, the desperate, the sick, and all sorts of afflicted persons who came to visit it received the relief they desired. One hundred years after their death, their sepulcher was opened again, and the body of Saint Berthe was found as beautiful and as whole, and her wounds as fresh as on the day of her martyrdom. Blood even flowed from it when that of Saint Gombert was brought near. D. Marlot, Histoire du diocèse de Reims; local notes. 4TH MAY.