HEDWIG, h6d'vig, SAINT: Duchess and patron saint of Silesia; b. at the castle of Andechs (22 m. s.w. of Munich) c. 1174; d. at Trebnitz (15 m. n.n.e. of Breslau), Silesia, Oct. 13 (15?), 1243. She was the daughter of Berthold, count of Andechs and duke of Meran (Dalmatia). Of her sisters, Gertrude became. the wife of Andrew, king of Hungary, and the mother of St. Elizabeth (q.v.), while Agnes was given in marriage to Philip Augustus of France, a marriage subsequently annulled by Pope Innocent III. At the age of twelve Hedwig was married to Henry I. of Silesia, who followed his father on the ducal throne in 1202. Henry, a mighty warrior, made his duchy independent and extended his boundaries by conquests in Upper Silesia, Poland, and the modern Galicia. Under the influence largely of his German wife he opened his territories to the Teutonic culture and fostered especially the spread of religious institutions. In 1203 nuns from Bamberg were transplanted to Trebnitz, in 1210 the Augustinian canons were established at Kamentz, and in 1222 a Cistercian foundation was begun at Heinrichau; the Franciscans were summoned by Hedwig to Goldberg and Krossen, and the Dominicans established themselves in Breslau and other places. Hedwig bore her husband six children, of whom the eldest son, Henry, succeeded his father in the duchy in 1238, and perished at Wahlstatt in battle against the Mongols in 1241. In 1209 Hedwig retired to the convent at Trebnitz, where she passed more than thirty years in rigorous asceticism and the practise of charity, departing only in 1227 to tend her husband in grievous illness, and again in 1229 when she secured the release of her husband from the hands of Conrad of Masovia. Hedwig was buried in the convent church at Trebnitz, which speedily became a popular place of devotion owing to the wide fame and love which her benefactions had brought her. She was canonized by Clement IV. in Mar., 1267, and the fifteenth of October was made her festival day. In 1268 her bones were translated to a chapel expressly erected near the convent church of Trebnitz, where her skull was shown for a long time as a venerated relic to Silesian and Polish pilgrims. The monastic chronicles of the life of St. Hedwig, while revealing the usual workings of the monkish imagination, nevertheless outline a life of extreme devotion and wide-spread charity. [To be distinguished from St. Hedwig is Hedwig (d. at Cracow, 1399), daughter of Louis, king of Hungary and Poland, who succeeded her father on the throne of Poland in 1384. In 1386 she married Jagello, grand duke of Lithuania, and had a prominent part in the conversion of that land.]

G. Kawerau.

Bibliography: The early anonymous life, written at the end of the thirteenth century, with commentary, is in ASH, Oct., viii. 198-270. Consult: A. Knoblich, .Lebenagesclsi" der Landespa&onin Schtesiena, der hziligen Redwig, Breslau, 1860; F. .X. Gbrlieh, Das Leben der heUigen Hedwig, ib. 1854; C. Grundhagen, B edtrdge zur Geschichte der Hedwigslegenden, ib. 1863; further literature in Potthast, Wegweiaer, pp. 1362-83.