Saint Radim Gaudentius

Saint Radim Gaudentius was the half-brother and faithful companion of Saint Adalbert, a witness of his martyrdom, and later the first archbishop of Gniezno, that is, the first metropolitan in the Polish lands. The Church commemorates him on October 11.

He came from Bohemia. He was a son of Prince Slavník, lord of Libice, but of a different mother than Adalbert. His mother’s name is unknown. He was probably born between 960 and 970. In the late 980s the two brothers came to Rome and entered the Benedictine monastery of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine. There Radim took the name Gaudentius. The Latin name, like the Slavic one, means a joyful man. Later he was ordained a priest.

When nearly the whole Slavník family was massacred at Libice, the brothers never went back to Bohemia. They came to Poland, to the court of Duke Bolesław the Brave, and in 997 set out from there on a mission to the pagan Prussians. Radim was with his brother when he was killed on April 23, 997. The Roman Martyrology states that he was present at his martyrdom and was afterward imprisoned himself. It was most probably he who brought Bolesław the news of Adalbert’s death, and his testimony is one of the main sources of what we know about the martyr’s last days.

After his brother’s death he went to Rome and worked for his canonization. In 999 Adalbert was proclaimed a saint, and Radim received episcopal consecration. In a document signed in Rome on December 2, 999, he appears as archbishop of Saint Adalbert the martyr. In March 1000 he came to Gniezno together with Emperor Otto III, who was making a pilgrimage to the martyr’s tomb. There, at Adalbert’s relics, the emperor met Bolesław the Brave. During this congress the creation of the metropolitan see of Gniezno, established by Pope Sylvester II, was announced, with the new dioceses of Kraków, Wrocław, and Kołobrzeg under it. Radim became its first archbishop.

We know almost nothing of his later ministry, because the sources of the time are silent. The date of his death is also uncertain. The old catalogs of the archbishops of Gniezno give the year 1006, but historians question this date and propose various years in the early eleventh century. He was buried in Gniezno. In 1038 or 1039 the Bohemian duke Bretislaus I invaded Gniezno and carried off to Prague the relics of Saint Adalbert, and with them the remains of Radim.

In one of the scenes of the Gniezno Doors, cast in bronze in the twelfth century, Radim stands just behind Adalbert. In 2003 relics attributed to Radim were brought from Prague to Gniezno, to the parish dedicated to him. No process of beatification or canonization was ever held for him. In Poland, including the Archdiocese of Gniezno, he is traditionally called blessed, while the Roman Martyrology lists him among the saints.