Erentrude

Saint Erentrude (also Ehrentraud or Erendrudis) was the first abbess of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg, in present-⁠day Austria. She was born toward the end of the seventh century, probably in present-⁠day Germany or Austria, of a Franconian-⁠Merovingian royal house, and was the niece of Saint Rupert of Salzburg (the hagiographer Alban Butler says she may have been his sister). She reposed on 30 June 718.

Little about her life is certain. She is said to have been educated at the convent of Saint Radegund in Poitiers, where she had entered as a nun. Rupert, after preaching and founding churches in Bavaria for several years, returned to Worms, where she was serving as abbess, to ask help from "devoted men and women". Erentrude left her homeland to help him begin religious communities in Salzburg; around 700 he built the convent of Nonnberg and installed her as its first abbess. She and her nuns served the poor, the needy and the sick, joining life in the cloister with works of charity.

Her fame for healing and intercession grew after her death, and legends about her multiplied over the centuries. The first sketch of her life was written at the beginning of the fourteenth century by Caesarius, a chaplain of Nonnberg, from the testimony of the oldest nuns and the people of the area. Nonnberg, the oldest Benedictine women's community in the region, still stands. She is commemorated on 30 June as a saint of the undivided Church, by the New Calendar.