Saint Hedwig

Religious

Feast Day

October 16

Life

1174–1243

Canonized

1267

Order

Cistercian (as a widow)

Born

Andechs, Bavaria

Hedwig (Polish: Jadwiga, German: Hedwig) was born about 1174 at Andechs in Bavaria, daughter of Berthold IV, count of Andechs, and aunt of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. At twelve she was given in marriage to Henry I (the Bearded), duke of Silesia, with whom she had seven children and lived devoutly for nearly forty years. The pair founded the Cistercian abbey of Trzebnica in 1202, the first women's monastery in Silesia, where Hedwig's daughter Gertrude later served as abbess.

Hedwig used her position to found hospitals (including a leprosarium at Neumarkt), churches and monasteries throughout Silesia, and personally cared for the sick and poor. After her husband's death in 1238 she retired to Trzebnica, took the religious habit (without making profession, in order to retain control of her property for her charities), and lived as a Cistercian under the abbess of the house she had founded. Her son Henry II the Pious died at the Battle of Liegnitz on 9 April 1241, defending Christian Europe against the Mongols of Batu Khan; Hedwig is recorded to have received the news with the words: It is the will of God; we ought to be content with what pleases him.

She died at Trzebnica on 15 October 1243. Pope Clement IV canonized her in 1267; her feast was extended to the universal Church in 1706. Her Optional Memorial is observed on 16 October. She is the patroness of Silesia and one of the patrons of Poland.