Saint Hedwig, Queen of Poland

Saint Hedwig, Queen of Poland, the daughter of the king of Hungary and Poland, took the Polish throne as a ten-year-old girl. Her marriage to Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, opened the way to the baptism of Lithuania. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on July 17, the day of her death; in Poland her memorial is kept on June 8, the anniversary of her canonization.

She was born in Hungary in 1374, the daughter of Louis of Anjou and Elizabeth of Bosnia. When she was four, her parents, following the custom of the time, betrothed her to William of Habsburg. After her father’s death her mother, at the request of the Polish nobles, destined the Polish crown for her. On October 16, 1384, Hedwig was crowned in Krakow as king of Poland.

The Polish lords chose as her husband Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, who promised to receive baptism together with his people. Hedwig broke off her childhood betrothal; according to the accounts, she made this decision after long prayer before the crucifix in Wawel Cathedral and consultations with the bishops. On February 15, 1386, Jagiełło was baptized with the name Władysław, and on February 18 he married Hedwig.

Together with her husband she spread the faith in Lithuania, and in 1387 she founded the bishopric of Vilnius. Jan Długosz called her the planter of the Catholic faith in Lithuania. For future priests from Lithuania she founded a college in Prague. During the Great Western Schism she remained faithful to the legitimate pope. In 1397, with the consent of Boniface IX, she established the faculty of theology in Krakow and helped to renew the university now called the Jagiellonian.

Her contemporaries called her the mother of the poor. She founded hospitals, among them in Biecz, Sandomierz, and Sącz. When royal knights took away the peasants’ belongings, she ordered the damage to be made good and then asked who would give them back their tears. She attended Mass even on weekdays and while traveling.

For years she waited for a child. In June 1399 she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Bonifacia, who died on July 13. Four days later, on July 17, 1399, Hedwig herself died in Krakow at the age of twenty-five. In her will she left her jewels for the renewal of the university, which Władysław Jagiełło reopened in 1400. She was buried in Wawel Cathedral; since 1987 her relics have rested beneath the crucifix before which she used to pray.

She was venerated as a saint from the moment of her death. As early as 1426 the primate Wojciech Jastrzębiec set up a commission to prepare her canonization, but wars and the partitions of Poland halted the efforts. In 1979 the Holy See permitted her liturgical memorial as a blessed, and in 1986 it confirmed that this title belongs to her fully. John Paul II canonized her on June 8, 1997, on the Błonia meadows in Krakow, saying that Krakow had not been mistaken in venerating her as a saint for centuries.