Blessed Dorothea of Montau

Blessed Dorothea of Montau was the wife of a craftsman of Gdańsk and the mother of nine children, and as a widow she lived in a cell beside the cathedral of Kwidzyn (Marienwerder), given over to unceasing prayer and penance. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on June 25, the day of her death.

She was born in 1347 at Mątowy Wielkie in the Vistula delta, into the prosperous farming family of Wilhelm and Agatha Swartz. According to the early lives, even as a child she secretly practiced severe mortifications. In August 1363, at the age of sixteen and on her parents’ advice, she married Adalbert of Gdańsk, a much older man and a well-to-do armorer, a good Christian but a difficult person to live with. They made their home in Gdańsk.

She bore nine children. Eight died in childhood, and the only one who survived, her daughter Gertrude, joined the Benedictine nuns at Chełmno. Dorothea diligently ran her household and at the same time strove for Christian perfection. At the age of thirty-one she had her first ecstasies. At first her husband reproached her for them, but from 1380, with his consent, they lived in continence and went together on pilgrimage to shrines, among them Aachen. Her model was Saint Bridget of Sweden, whose relics were carried through Gdańsk in 1374.

Adalbert died in February 1390, while Dorothea was on pilgrimage to Rome. On her confessor’s advice she went to Kwidzyn to place herself under the guidance of John of Marienwerder, a respected theologian and former professor in Prague, and in 1391 she settled there. With his approval, in 1393 she enclosed herself in a small cell beside the cathedral, intending to remain there for the rest of her life. She received Holy Communion daily, which at that time was exceptional. Many came to her for counsel and asked for her prayers.

She died in Kwidzyn on June 25, 1394, barely a year after enclosing herself in the cell. Her funeral rites, attended by great crowds, lasted a month, and her body was laid in the crypt of the cathedral. John of Marienwerder wrote her lives and revelations in Latin, among them the work called Septililium. Her spirituality is compared with that of Saint Bridget and Saint Catherine of Siena.

As early as 1395 the Holy See was asked to canonize her. In 1404 Boniface IX ordered a process to be held, which was completed in 1406, but the cause stalled, and when its chief promoters and the rulers of the land went over to Protestantism in 1525, it was broken off. Public veneration was restored in 1637 by the bishop of Chełmno, Jan Lipski. On January 9, 1976, Pope Paul VI confirmed the cult paid to her from time immemorial, which is equivalent to beatification. She is venerated as the patroness of Prussia.