Saint Lidwina of Schiedam

Virgin and Mystic

Feast Day

April 14

Life

1380–1433

Canonized

1890

Born

Schiedam, County of Holland (modern Netherlands)

Lidwina was born on 18 April 1380 at Schiedam, in the county of Holland, the only daughter among nine children of a working family. As a girl of about fifteen she fell while ice-skating on the frozen canals and broke a rib; the injury would not heal, and from it developed an illness of extraordinary severity that left her progressively paralysed and bedridden for the remaining thirty-eight years of her life. Modern medical historians have noted that the long course of her disease bears many of the marks of multiple sclerosis, of which hers may be among the earliest recorded cases.

After years of anguish and rebellion against her suffering, Lidwina was helped by her confessor to unite her pain to the Passion of Christ and to offer it for the conversion of sinners and for the souls in purgatory. From that time her sickroom became a place of prayer and counsel; she was favoured with visions and, according to the early biographies, lived for long periods on almost no food beyond the Holy Eucharist. Pilgrims came to her cell from across the Low Countries.

The principal accounts of her life were written shortly after her death by John Brugman and by Thomas à Kempis, the author of The Imitation of Christ. She died at Schiedam on 14 April 1433. Her cultus, ancient and continuous, was formally confirmed by Pope Leo XIII, who granted her equipollent (equivalent) canonisation on 14 March 1890. Her feast is kept on 14 April.