Pilgrimage to Germany: the Aachen CathedralSome saints have played the role of building bridges between peoples and countries, passing into history under different names. A well-known example is St. Anthony of Padua (c. 1195-1231). Originally from Lisbon, he spent most of his life in Italy, where he is known as Antonio di Padova, while in Portugal he is called António de Lisboa. The same can be said of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231), so called because of her birthplace, but known in Germany as Elizabeth of Thuringia, since she married Landgrave Ludwig of Thuringia-Hesse.
The same is true of St. Hedwig (Hedwig), aunt of Elizabeth of Thuringia, since her mother, Gertrude, was her sister. In Bavaria, she is known as Hedwig of Andechs, after the village - at that time only a castle - on the shores of Lake Ammersee, where she was born in 1174, as the daughter of Count Berthold IV of Andechs. However, she generally went down in history as Hedwig of Silesia, where she lived most of her life. In Polish she is called Święta Jadwiga Śląska: due to the influence of her husband Henry I of Silesia, the originally Slavic region experienced a mixture of Polish and German population until the end of World War II.
Marriage to Henry I of Silesia
After spending her childhood in the abbey of Kitzingen, educated by Benedictine nuns of whom her aunt was the abbess, her father married her - as we have just said - to the future Count Henry I of Silesia and "princeps" of Poland. At the end of the 12th century, childhood ended early: Hedwig was 12 years old when she married and 13 when she gave birth to her first child; over the years, she had five more children. According to tradition, after 22 years of marriage, Hedwig and Henry took a vow of continence; however, this did not affect the happiness of their marriage. Contrary to the common belief about political marriages, many of them turned out to be happy; without going any further, so was that of her niece Elisabeth with Landgrave Ludwig of Thuringia.
In 1201, Henry I became Duke of Silesia and obtained the southern part of Greater Poland and the Duchy of Krakow, which is why he called himself "Duke of Silesia, Poland and Krakow" and why, in various medieval and modern chronicles, Hedwig usually appears as "Duchess of Poland".
While her husband was busy consolidating his possessions, Eduvigis strove to spread Christian ideas, devotedly cared for the poor and sick, founded women's monasteries and supported various religious orders in the establishment of branches. According to tradition, she always carried a statuette of the Virgin Mary with her to contemplate with devotion, even in the midst of adversities such as the destruction of her birthplace, the castle of Andechs. Her sister Gertrude - the mother of Elizabeth of Hungary or Thuringia - was the victim of an assassination attempt. In addition, she had to come to terms with the untimely death of her three sons and two of her daughters, for the only one of her six children to survive her will be a daughter, also named Gertrude. Eduvigis bears it with the consolation of faith and daily prayer, which eventually led her to the desire to lead a consecrated life.
Widowhood and religious life
After the death of her husband in 1238 and the loss of her first-born son, her father's successor as Duke of Silesia and princeps of Poland, in the battle of Liegnitz against the Mongols three years later, Eduvigis entered the Cistercian monastery of Trebnitz, which she herself had founded in 1202, the first female convent in Silesia. The monastery grew rapidly to house about a thousand nuns, pupils and servants. She died there on October 15, 1243, at the age of almost 70.
In addition to the foundation of Trebnitz, for which he is usually depicted with a church on his hand - as is usual in many images of saints of the Middle Ages - and so appears in the early 15th-century statue of the Niedernburg monastery, he also built hospitals and asylums, such as the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Wroclaw (Breslau, in German; Wrocław, in Polish) and a hospital for leprous women near Neumarkt.
Hedwig's reputation for holiness is due not only to the monastic life to which she withdrew during the last years of her life, but mainly to her service to the poor and her constant generosity towards them. According to the chronicles, in addition to building hospices and shelters, he also made a personal effort to help them; he even learned Polish to better serve them. Her modesty and sober dress make her conspicuously foreign to her status. Hedwig is not ashamed to wear used clothes, old shoes or even go barefoot: in some representations she carries her shoes in her hand, as an allusion to this circumstance. Hedwig does not want to distinguish herself from the poor because, as she tells her daughter Gertrude, the poor "are our masters".
Worship of St. Hedwig
These claims are based on the main source for her life story, the "Vita beate Hedwigis," written in Latin around 1300 by an unknown scholar, and which has been translated into German several times since the late 14th century. These claims are supported by the canonization document of Pope Clement IV, who canonized her on March 26, 1267; her feast day is celebrated on October 16.
Besides being the most important patroness of Silesia and Poland along with St. Adalbert and St. Stanislaus, her veneration spread westward, from Gdansk and Krakow to Vienna, Trent and Antwerp, favored by the Cistercian nuns and the Polish Piast dynasty.
In 1773, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, built the Cathedral of St. Hedwig in Berlin, now the seat of the Archdiocese of Berlin, primarily for the Catholic immigrants from Silesia. Thus, Hedwig also became the patron saint of Brandenburg and Berlin, in addition to her birthplace, Andechs in Bavaria. In this way, St. Hedwig builds a special bridge between the Germanic and Slavic worlds.
