Saint Adalbert
Bishop and Martyr
- Feast Day
- April 23
- Life
- 956–997
- Canonized
- 999
- Order
- Order of Saint Benedict
- Born
- Libice, Bohemia
Adalbert (in Czech, Vojtech) was born about 956 at Libice, son of the Slavnik prince of Bohemia. Educated at Magdeburg under Archbishop Adalbert, whose name he took at confirmation, he returned to Bohemia and was consecrated second Bishop of Prague on June 29, 983.
Twice he resigned his see and went into Benedictine life at the monastery of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine in Rome, frustrated by his clergy's resistance to ecclesiastical reform and by violent feuds among the Bohemian nobility, including the massacre of his own family at Libice in 995. With the encouragement of Pope Gregory V and Emperor Otto III, he undertook the evangelization of the still-pagan Prussians.
He arrived at the Baltic in 997 and, after a brief mission, was killed by pagan priests on April 23, 997, at Tenkitten on the Sambian peninsula. His body was ransomed by the Polish duke Boleslaw the Brave and enshrined at Gniezno, which became the seat of Poland's first metropolitan see, established in his honor at the Congress of Gniezno in 1000.
He was canonized by Pope Sylvester II in 999, the first Bohemian saint to be formally canonized. He is venerated as a principal patron of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the See of Gniezno, and is named in the litany of saints sung at the consecration of Polish bishops.
Saint Adalbert is the apostle of the Western Slavs and one of the patrons of Europe in the broader sense, honored as a bridge figure between the Latin Church and the newly converted peoples of Central Europe. Pope Saint John Paul II frequently invoked him at the millennial celebrations of his martyrdom in 1997 as a witness to the unity of Christian Europe and to the price paid for the gospel's first arrival in those lands.
Patronages
Poland · Bohemia · Hungary · Prussia
Catholic Churches Named After Saint Adalbert
20 parishes on Catholic Church Times share Saint Adalbert's name. Find their Mass times, confession schedules, and adoration hours:
- St. Adalbert — Dillonvale, OH
- Saint-Adalbert — Saint-Adalbert, QC
- St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church — Philadelphia, PA
- Saint Adalbert's Catholic Church — Toledo, OH
- Saint Adalbert's Polish Roman Catholic Church — New York, NY
- Sts. Adalbert & Hedwig — Toledo, OH
- St. Adalbert — Providence, RI
- Saint Adalbert Polish Catholic Church — Elizabeth, NY
- Szent Adalbert-templom — Homokmégy
- St. Adalbert
- St. Adalbert-Kirche — Berlin
- Sankt Adalbert
- Sankt Adalbert — Hannover
- Sankt Adalbert — Wahlstedt
- Duomo Sant'Adalberto
- Oratorio di Sant'Adalberto — Monteggio
- Szent Adalbert-templom
- Capela de Santo Adalberto
- Sv. Vojtěch - Adalbertus
- St Adalbertus — Spaarndam
Sources