St Hedwig: Life, Patronage, Prayer and Feast Day

St Hedwig (Jadwiga in Polish) was a Bavarian noblewoman who became Duchess of Silesia, the mother of seven children, and after her husband's death a widow who lived among the Cistercian nuns of Trebnitz, near Breslau, until she died in October 1243. She was canonized in 1267, and the 1962 calendar keeps her feast on 16 October, a feast of the third class, with a proper Collect recalling how God taught her to pass "from the pomp of the world to the humble following" of His Cross. Here is her life as Butler and the Roman Breviary tell it, what she is patron of, the prayers of her Mass in Latin and English, and the places in America and Europe that still bear her name.

Who was St Hedwig?

Hedwig was born about 1174 at Andechs, in Bavaria, the daughter of Berthold, Count of Andechs. Through her sister Gertrude, who became Queen of Hungary, she was the aunt of St Elizabeth of Hungary; the two women, aunt and niece, are among the Catholic saints of royal charity in the thirteenth century. As a very young girl she was placed in the monastery of Kitzingen in Franconia, and at twelve she was taken from it to be married to Henry, Duke of Silesia, who was then eighteen.

They had seven children. Only one of them, Gertrude, outlived her mother, and she became abbess of Trebnitz. When Henry succeeded his father in 1202, Hedwig persuaded him at once to found the great monastery of Cistercian nuns at Trebnitz (today Trzebnica, in Poland), three miles from Breslau (Wrocław). It was the first convent of women in Silesia, and the first of many religious houses the duke and duchess founded or supported: Augustinian canons, Cistercian monks, Dominican and Franciscan friars. Henry built the hospital of the Holy Ghost at Breslau; Hedwig founded a house for women lepers at Neumarkt, and both took a close personal interest in the sick they housed.

After the birth of their last child in 1209, Hedwig asked her husband to agree to a mutual vow of continence, and from then on they lived much of the time apart. Butler notes that Henry, for the thirty years he lived afterwards, never again wore gold, silver or purple, and let his beard grow, so that he is remembered as Henry the Bearded.

A duchess in a nun's dormitory

From 1209 Hedwig lived mostly near Trebnitz, often retiring into the monastery itself, where she slept in the dormitory and followed all the exercises of the community. The lessons of her Office in the Roman Breviary, speaking of her widowhood in the Cistercian habit, describe her assisting at the Divine Office and at Masses from sunrise until noon, speaking only of the things of God or of the good of souls, serving the poor on her knees, and washing and kissing the feet of lepers without shrinking from their sores.

She wore the same cloak and tunic summer and winter, with a hair shirt underneath. She went to church barefoot over ice and snow, carrying her shoes under her arm in case she met anyone. Butler keeps a story that shows her humour as much as her penance: an abbot gave her a new pair of shoes and made her promise to wear them. Meeting her later, still barefoot, he asked what had become of them; Hedwig drew them out from under her cloak, brand-new. "I always wear them there," she said.

Her charity was patient as well as generous. She once met a poor old woman who could not say the Our Father and was very slow at learning it. Hedwig taught her for ten weeks, and even had her sleep in her own room so that they could go over it together at every spare moment, until the woman could both repeat it and understand it.

A peacemaker among quarrelling princes

Her family gave her many crosses. In 1212 her husband divided his lands between their sons Henry and Conrad on terms that pleased neither; the brothers came to open war, and despite their mother's efforts a battle was fought in which Henry routed Conrad's army. Later, when Duke Henry was captured by Conrad of Masovia during his wars for the territory of Cracow and carried off to Płock, Hedwig followed him and brought the two dukes to terms without further fighting. Butler says that she "could never hear of bloodshed without doing all in her power to prevent it."

In 1238 her husband died. The nuns of Trebnitz wept; Hedwig alone had dry eyes, and comforted them: "Would you oppose the will of God? Our lives are His. Our will is whatever He is pleased to ordain, whether our own death or that of our friends." She then put on the Cistercian habit at Trebnitz, but she did not take the vows, so that she would remain free to use her own property for the relief of the poor.

How did St Hedwig die?

Her last great sorrow came with the Mongol invasion. In 1241 her son, Duke Henry II, led the Christian army against the Tartars near Legnica, at the place the Germans call Wahlstatt, and was killed in the battle. Butler records that she knew of his death three days before the messenger arrived: "I have lost my son," she told her companion Dermudis. "He has gone from me like a bird in flight, and I shall never see him again in this life." When the news came, it was the old woman who consoled the younger ones, Henry's widow Anne and his sister Gertrude. The Breviary says she gave thanks to God rather than tears to her son.

She died at Trebnitz in October 1243, after insisting on receiving Extreme Unction before anyone else would believe she was in danger. She was buried in the monastery church of Trebnitz, where her tomb is still venerated. Her biographer records that she had foretold her own death, and that God honoured her faith with miracles in her lifetime: a blind nun recovered her sight when Hedwig blessed her with the sign of the cross. The Breviary adds the miracle cited at her canonization: a boy who had drowned and been crushed by the wheels of a mill was restored to life when she was invoked.

When was St Hedwig canonized?

Pope Clement IV canonized Hedwig in 1267, only twenty-four years after her death. According to the lessons of her Office, he allowed her feast to be kept in Poland, where she was honoured as patroness, on 15 October, and Pope Innocent XI afterwards extended it to the whole Church.

The prayer to St Hedwig: the Collect of her Mass (Missal of 1962)

The Mass of St Hedwig is Cognovi, from the Common of holy women who were neither virgins nor martyrs, with a Collect proper to her. The Epistle is the praise of the valiant woman from the book of Proverbs, "Who shall find a valiant woman?... She hath opened her hand to the needy, and stretched out her hands to the poor" (Proverbs xxxi. 10, 20), and the Gospel is the parable of the treasure hidden in a field, for which a man "selleth all that he hath" (Matthew xiii. 44). Few saints fit those readings so exactly.

The Collect is unusual in that it is addressed to Our Lord himself, and it sums up her whole life in one line: the duchess who left the pomp of the world for the following of the Cross.

Collect, 16 October

Deus, qui beátam Hedwígem a sǽculi pompa ad húmilem tuæ Crucis sequélam toto corde transíre docuísti: concéde; ut ejus méritis et exémplo discámus peritúras mundi calcáre delícias, et in ampléxu tuæ Crucis ómnia nobis adversántia superáre: Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre, in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

O God, who didst teach blessed Hedwig to pass with her whole heart from the pomp of the world to the humble following of Thy Cross: grant that by her merits and example we may learn to trample underfoot the perishing delights of the world, and in the embrace of Thy Cross to overcome all things that stand against us: Who livest and reignest with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Secret

Accépta tibi sit, Dómine, sacrátæ plebis oblátio pro tuórum honóre Sanctórum: quorum se méritis de tribulatióne percepísse cognóscit auxílium. Per Dóminum nostrum.

May the offering of Thy consecrated people be acceptable to Thee, O Lord, in honour of Thy Saints, by whose merits it knows that it has received help in tribulation. Through our Lord.

Postcommunion

Satiásti, Dómine, famíliam tuam munéribus sacris: ejus, quǽsumus, semper interventióne nos réfove, cujus sollémnia celebrámus. Per Dóminum nostrum.

Thou hast filled Thy family, O Lord, with sacred gifts: ever refresh us, we beseech Thee, by the intercession of her whose feast we celebrate. Through our Lord.

These prayers are the most authentic "prayer to St Hedwig" there is, because they are the prayer of the Church on her day. You will find the whole Mass in its place in the Roman Missal of 1962, and her Office in the Breviary.

When is St Hedwig's Day?

St Hedwig's Day is 16 October. In the calendar of 1962 it is a feast of the third class, in white vestments, with Gloria and without Creed; you will find it in our traditional Catholic calendar of 1962. In the calendar of 1969 she kept the same date, as an optional memorial.

What is St Hedwig the patron saint of?

St Hedwig is above all the patroness of Silesia, the land she ruled with her husband and filled with monasteries and hospitals; the Breviary also records that she was venerated as patroness in Poland from the time of her canonization. Her life makes her a natural intercessor for wives and mothers in difficult families, for widows, and for all who care for the sick and the poor, though these are fitting devotions rather than formal patronages.

In the Portuguese-speaking world, popular devotion invokes her (Santa Edwiges) as the protector of the poor and of people in debt, a devotion that rests on her open-handed charity to the needy. It is a sincere popular custom rather than an ancient title of the Church, and the best way to honour it is the way she lived: by giving, and by praying with the Collect above that we may be detached from the "perishing delights of the world."

Why is St Hedwig important?

Because she shows how sanctity can be lived by a married woman with power, money and a difficult family. She did not leave her state of life to become holy: she used her rank to found monasteries and hospitals, her influence to make peace between her sons and her husband's enemies, and her fortune to serve the poor, while practising in secret the penances of a nun. She bore the loss of six of her seven children, of her husband and of her son on the battlefield without bitterness. And she belongs to a remarkable family of saints: her niece is St Elizabeth of Hungary, whose novena is prayed in November, and the Church of Silesia and Poland of her century also gave the Church St Hyacinth, apostle of the North.

St Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin and the churches of her name

Her name went wherever Silesians and Poles went. The Catholic cathedral of Berlin, St Hedwig's Cathedral, was begun in 1747 under Frederick the Great for the Catholics of the city, many of them immigrants from Silesia, and consecrated in 1773 under the name of the patroness of that land. In the United States, many parishes founded by Polish and Silesian immigrants bear her name, and the town of St Hedwig in Texas, settled in the 1850s by immigrants from Upper Silesia, was named after the patroness of their homeland.

Through the eyes of tradition

The name Jadwiga causes a frequent confusion. St Hedwig of Silesia, the widow of this page, died in 1243, was canonized in 1267, and has been in the universal calendar for centuries. St Hedwig (Jadwiga) of Poland, Queen of Poland, who died in 1399, is a different woman: she was canonized by Pope John Paul II at Kraków on 8 June 1997, and she is not in the calendar of 1962. When a Polish or an American Catholic speaks of "St Hedwig" on 16 October, it is the Duchess of Silesia who is meant.

Butler also notes that her medieval Latin life was written down toward the end of the thirteenth century, from memoirs left by a Cistercian; its details are the work of an admiring biographer. The core is sure: her foundations, her family, her widowhood at Trebnitz, her canonization within a generation of her death.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is St Hedwig?

St Hedwig of Silesia (about 1174-1243) was Duchess of Silesia, wife of Duke Henry the Bearded, mother of seven children and founder of the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, where she spent her widowhood in prayer and service of the poor. She was canonized in 1267.

What is St Hedwig known for?

For her charity to the poor and the sick, especially lepers; for her severe and hidden penance, such as walking barefoot in winter with her shoes under her arm; for making peace in her quarrelsome family; and for her faith on the death of her son at the battle of Legnica in 1241.

Where was St Hedwig born?

At Andechs, in Bavaria, about the year 1174, in the family of the Counts of Andechs. She came to Silesia at twelve when she married Duke Henry.

Who is buried at St Hedwig?

St Hedwig herself is buried at Trebnitz (Trzebnica), near Wrocław, in the church of the Cistercian convent she and her husband founded, where her tomb is still venerated.

Was St Hedwig a nun?

She lived as one for years, in the dormitory of Trebnitz and in its habit, but she never took religious vows, so that she could keep the use of her property for the poor. The Church honours her as a widow.

Is St Hedwig the same as Queen Jadwiga of Poland?

No. St Hedwig of Silesia died in 1243; Queen Jadwiga of Poland died in 1399 and was canonized in 1997. Both are called Jadwiga in Polish, which explains the confusion.

The Iter Fidei app carries the calendar of 1962 with every feast, the Roman Missal and the Breviary in Latin and English, so that you can pray the Mass and Office of St Hedwig on her day. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 16 October (St Hedwig, Widow). Roman Breviary (edition before 1960), 16 October, lessons of the second nocturn (in the Breviary of 1962 this third-class feast has a single, contracted lesson). Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 16 October, and Common of Holy Women, Cognovi. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, Proverbs xxxi. 10-31; Matthew xiii. 44.