Berthe de Marbais
Feast: 18 July (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Berthe de Marbais was a Cistercian abbess born into a noble Brabant family related to Joan of Constantinople, countess of Flanders. Widowed young from the lord of Molembais, she took up religious life at the abbey of Aywières, where she was a companion of Saint Lutgarde of Tongeren. In 1226 Countess Joan and her husband Ferrand chose her as the first abbess of the new Cistercian monastery of Notre-Dame at Marquette, near Lille.
She governed the community there for twenty years with wisdom and devotion to virtue, until she fell gravely ill while visiting the monastery of Sparmailles, near Bruges, and died on 18 July 1247; she was buried at Marquette. Although she was never formally canonised by the Holy See, her title of Blessed rests on immemorial veneration, which the bishop of Namur, Jean Dauvin, formally confirmed in 1619, fixing her liturgical memory on 18 July as it is kept in the Cistercian menologies.
The miracles
There was never a formal cause: she has been honoured as blessed since before the Church's formal processes began.
Why that counted as sanctity
Cistercian abbess of Marquette for twenty years, friend of St Lutgarde of Tongeren; venerated as blessed by immemorial veneration confirmed by the bishop of Namur in 1619; feast 18 July.
The cause
The cause continues. No postulation address is published here yet. Favours received through this person’s intercession, and offers of help, are best sent to the religious order or congregation they belonged to, or to the diocese where the cause was opened; either will pass them to the postulation.
- Santi, beati e testimoni (santiebeati.it) - Beata Berta di Marbais, by Enrico Quiri
- Wikidata Q116689294 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
Checked against the sources listed on 22 September 2026. Corrections welcome.