The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

old church of St. George falling to decay, Saint Bathildes built
there the magnificent church of the Holy Cross, in which she was
buried. Gisela, sister to the emperor Charlemagne, abbess of this
house, rebuilt the great church, which some pretend to be the same
that is now standing. At present here are three churches together;
the first, which is small, the oldest, and only a choir, is called
the church of the Holy Cross, and is used by six monks who assist
the nuns; the lowest church is called St. George's, and is a
parochial church for the seculars who live within the jurisdiction
of the monastery: the great church which serves the nuns is
dedicated under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, and is said to
be the same that was built by the abbess Gisela, and much enlarged
and enriched by Hegilvich, abbess of this monastery, mother to the
empress Judith, whose husband, Louis le Débonnaire, caused the
remains of our saint to be translated into this new church, in 833,
and from this treasure it is more frequently called the church of
St. Bathlides, than our Lady's. Two rich silver 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.
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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,