Baring-Gould’s sources: Gallican and Belgian Martyrologies. Regarded as patroness of Artois. Great difficulties stand in the way of giving her history accurately. It is uncertain whether she is to be identified with Gisela, the sister of Charlemagne, or not.] According to the Artesian tradition, enshrined in the lections of the Breviary of Artois, Isberga was a daughter of Pepin the Short, and sister of Charlemagne. But Eginhard says that Pepin had only one daughter, Gisela. Gisela is said, in the life of S. Drausinus, to have become abbess of Soissons. Eginhard simply says that Gisela was dedicated to a religous life from her childhood, and that she died shortly before he wrote, in her monastery. It is supposed that Gisela came to the hill on which she founded her monastery, and that it was called after her, Gisliberg, •S’. Isberga.
…the hill of Gisela, and this was in time contracted into Isberg, and the name of the monastery was given to the virgin abbess who founded it. The legend of S. Gisela, or Isberga, is as follows, as given in the “L£gendaire de La Morine.”
Gisela was the daughter of Pepin the Short and Queen Bertha, and had for her sponsor, by proxy, at the font, Pope Stephen IV., and from him received her name of Ghirla, the Teutonic for a wreath, a word surviving in our English garland. She was so called in honour of her sponsor Stephen, whose name in Greek signifies also a wreath. But the Franks [the Germanic people who ruled Gaul and gave France its name] altered the r into s in their vulgar dialect, and called her Ghisla or Gisela. Pepin had built a castle at Ybergh, or Aire, in Artois, and there Gisela made the acquaintance of S. Venantius, a hermit in the neighbourhood, who gave her wise advice, and directed her conscience.
Gisela was sought in marriage by' the Emperor of Constantinople, and afterwards by a son of one of the English kings, we are not told which. She refused all offers, and beseeching God to remove the occasion of these importunities, was afflicted with an eruption over her face which disfigured her. According to one story, the Anglo-Saxon ambassadors attributed this malady to the witchcraft of S. Venantius, and they attacked and murdered him in his hermitage, and flung his body into the Lys.1 The princess speedily recovered her beauty and health, and was again importuned to give her hand in marriage, this time to a Lombard prince. To escape further annoyance, she took the veil, and erected a nunnery on the hill of S. Peter at Aire, near her father’s palace, and there spent the rest of her days.
Near the church of S. Iberga, which contains her relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor], VOL. V. 3 See his life, October ioth. is a fountain called after her name, about five minutes walk on the “ Voyette de S. Ibergue,” or path of the saint, leading to Wastelau, where was the hermitage of S. Venantius. This path is now cut by the canal of Aire to La Bas£e. A little chapel overshadowed by elms stands above the well, which is walled round, and has in its side a niche containing an image of the saint. Before the chapel is a broad, turfy terrace, which is crowded with pilgrims on May 2 ist, and during the octave, when mass is said in the little chapel.
