ver shrines are placed
over the iron rails of the chancel, in one of which rest the sacred
remains of St. Bathildes, in the other those of St. Bertilla, first
abbess of Chelles: these rails, which are of admirable workmanship,
were the present of an illustrious princess of the house of Bourbon,
Mary Adelaide of Orleans, abbess of this house in 1725, who not
thinking her sacrifice complete by having renounced the world, after
some years abdicated her abbacy, and died in the condition of humble
obedience, and of a private religious woman, near the shrines of SS.
Bathildes and Bertilla, and those of St. Genesius of Lyons, St.
Eligius and Radegondes of Chelles, called also little St. Bathildes.
The last-mentioned princess was god-daughter to our saint, and died
in her childhood, in this monastery, two or three days before her.
See Piganiol's Descr. de Paris, t. 1 and S. Chatelain's notes in
martyr. p. 464, and especially Le Boeuf, Hist. du Diocese de Paris,
t. 6, p. 32. This author gives (p. 43) the full relation of a
miracle approved by John Francis Gondy, archbishop of Paris,
mentioned in a few words by Mabillon and Baillet. Six nuns were
cured of inveterate distempers, attended with frequent fits of
convulsions, by touching the relics of Saint Bathildes, when her
shrine was opened on the 13th of July, in 1631.

ST. MARTINA, V.M.

SHE was a noble Roman virgin, who glorified God, suffering many torments
and a cruel death for his faith, in the capital city of the world, in
the third century. There stood a chapel consecrated to her memory in
Rome, which was frequented with great devotion in the time of St.
Gregory the Great. Her relics were discovered in a vault, in the ruins
of her old church, and translated with great pomp in the year 1634,
under the pope Urban VIII., who built a new church in her honor, and
composed himself the hymns used in her office in the Roman Breviary. The
city of Rome ranks her among its particular patrons. She is mentioned in
the Martyrologies of Ado, Usuard, &c. The history of the discovery of
her relics was published by Honoratus of Viterbo, an Oratorian. See
Bollandus.

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ST. ALDEGONDES, V. ABBESS.

SHE was daughter of Walbert, of the royal blood of France, and born in
Hainault about the year 630. She consecrated herself to God by a vow of
virginity, when very young, and resisted all solicitations to marr