In order to introduce clerical learning and morals into Silesia and Poland, it was necessary to rely upon Germans, as has often been the case in other countries, where a foreign element has been, for some time at least, synonymous with civilization. In England Italians chiefly, in a less degree Normans, and in one signal instance a Greek,[[12]] brought with them the knowledge of church architecture and chant, besides secular learning; Irish missionaries had before that helped on the Britons, and Saxons, later on, carried the same influence across the sea to heathen Germany, who in her turn became the evangelizer of the Slav nations. Still later, when Poland was as fervent a Catholic country as Germany, another Hedwige (the name had then grown to be a national one) converted the Lithuanians and became the mother of the Jagellon dynasty. Here, on the confines of Russia, the Latin Church stood face to face with the Greek, and the tide of progress and conversion was stayed. Then came the perpetual turmoils with the warlike Turks, till religion became rather an affair of the knight than of the missionary, until that wave of circumstances having passed away, and the Turks having sunk from the height of their military renown to the insignificance of a mongrel and undisciplined crowd, the battle between faith and scepticism—the modern form of heathenism—has shifted to a great degree to the arena of the mind. The Lepanto of our day is being fought out as obstinately on paper as that of three hundred years ago was on sea; of its nature it cannot be as short or as decisive, but it is nevertheless the counterpart—and the only worthy one—of that romantic and daring feat of arms. The struggle in the days of Hedwige was in some sense much narrower; but though her husband and son engaged in it rather as blind instruments than far-seeing directors, she, with the instincts of her sex and her habitual union with God, helped in it as a teacher and missionary. She proved her gift for it first upon her household, then, in the years of her retirement, upon her special charge—some young heathen girls, natives of Prussia, whom she taught herself and provided for in life. One of these, Catherine, to whom she was godmother, she married to her trusty chamberlain, Schavoine, and left them the estate of that name after her death. But notwithstanding her thirst for doing good and her high idea of her duty to her subjects, she thoroughly enjoyed the quiet of home-life, away from the court, and, whenever it was practicable, would spend some weeks at a time with her young husband and her children at Lähnhaus. It is here that her memory lives freshest at present; here that she tended her dovecot, which is brought to mind by the yearly market of doves, unique of its kind, still held at Lähn on Ash-Wednesday; here that she and her favorite doe crossed the Hedwigsteig, a rough, rocky pathway, to the Chapel of the Hermit and the image of the Blessed Virgin, which afterwards became a pilgrimage-shrine, where the neighboring peasants came to see her and unite in her prayers, so that the present village dates back to the huts of branches hastily put up around the spreading tree that formerly protected the image; here that she rested on the Hedwigstein, or moss-grown boulder, yet remaining, with her name attached to it; here that she built a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, and established some Benedictine monks; and here that in her later years she received the confidence of her friend, Baroness Jutta of Liebenthal, a pious widow, who founded the monastery of that name for Benedictine nuns and the education of young girls, and herself became its first abbess.
Duke Henry, when he came to be sovereign, did not forget his plans and promises, but helped her generously in the endowment of her hospitals, churches, and monasteries. Himself the son of a German princess, he had great faith in the influence for good, in morals, in agriculture, in learning, of his mother’s and his wife’s countrymen; and, according to the custom of the time, Hedwige was accompanied on her journey to Silesia, as a bride, by an escort of German knights, who were not to compose a separate court or household for her, but to settle in the country and make it their home. Such immigration, of course, had its sad as well as its good side; it led to jealousies that were neither unnatural nor inexcusable, although it also leavened the country with some useful and healthy habits. It was on this delicate question that her two sons quarrelled so violently as to make it the pretext of a civil war; Conrad, the youngest, being passionately attached to the old Polish customs and not discriminating between these and crying abuses, while Henry, the eldest, inherited his father’s love for the Germans. The old nobility formed a powerful party and rallied round Conrad, hailing him as their future national sovereign, although his father was still alive and his elder brother the acknowledged heir. Henry the Bearded had by that time retired from public life, and divided his possessions between his two sons, giving the eldest the city of Breslau and all Middle and Lower Silesia, while the youngest received the provinces of Leubus and Lausitz. The latter were less cultivated than the former, but this was chiefly due to that want of, or remoteness from, German influence and immigration; so that the father, knowing his sons’ opposite views on this subject, hoped to satisfy each by his partition. Conrad, however, resented the gift of a less civilized and extended territory, and took this pretext to make war on his brother, with the result already noted.
The retirement of Henry, the husband of Hedwige, which lasted for twenty years or more, was the result of a strange form of piety and self-renunciation not uncommon in the middle ages. The Duke and Duchess of Silesia had been married twenty-three years, and had had six children, three of whom died in infancy. A little after the birth of the youngest, in 1209, Hedwige, still in the bloom of her years (she was only thirty-five and her husband forty-one), and after many prayers and struggles, felt herself impelled to dedicate the rest of her life to God only, and, with her husband’s consent, to live separate from him. They had always loved each other tenderly, and Henry’s conduct, unlike that of many sovereigns of his and of later times, had been irreproachable; he looked upon his wife as a saint, and upon her wishes as commands; he had allowed her to guide his charities and public improvements, had followed her advice, had trusted to her to bring up his children exactly as she thought fit, which was more rigorously and less luxuriously than is often the case with royal children—in a word, had leant wholly upon her. To signify his full acquiescence in this half-monastic vow, he received the tonsure, and, contrary to the custom of his class at that time, let his beard grow, whence came his surname, the Bearded.
Hedwige retired to Trebnitz, where she lived in a separate house with her own women and the chamberlain Schavoine, who took his name from the estate which Henry gave her on their separation. Other grants of money were also made her, and her husband promised his countenance and help in any good work she should wish to do there or elsewhere throughout his possessions. They often met in after years, generally at festive ceremonies for the building or opening of churches, and once at the grave of their unhappy son Conrad; and Henry himself, though keeping up a court and moving from place to place, betook himself to prayers, study, and good works, having given over the government to his sons. In his old age he came forth again in the character of a sovereign and a leader, and, indeed, led a stormy, stirring life for a few years before his death.
Hedwige, in this proceeding of her retirement, had another object in view—that is, the example which she hoped her voluntary giving up of married life would be to the married priesthood of Poland and Silesia. Such was, to a great extent, the case, and the celibacy of the clergy, so long preached in vain, became in a few years the rule instead of the exception.
The Cistercian abbey of Trebnitz, now Hedwige’s home, was the first institution of its kind for women. It was begun in 1200 and finished eighteen years later, but was ready to be inhabited in 1202. It stood in a wooded region, three miles from Breslau. The legend of its foundation, as commemorated in an old rhyme or Volkslied (people’s song), refers it to a vow made by Henry, who, while out hunting, got entangled in a morass and could see no human means of rescue; but what is certain is that the royal couple had long planned and looked forward to a monastery for women, and the date of the laying of the first stone of Trebnitz corresponds with that of Henry’s accession to the throne. The building was intended to accommodate a thousand persons, and was built by the hands of convicts and prisoners, even those who were condemned to death, whose work on it was to be equivalent to the rest of their sentence. Hedwige’s pity for, and kindness to, captives, whether innocent or guilty, was a conspicuous trait of her character; and the undeserved physical hardships of prisoners in those times were enough to turn the sympathies of every kind-hearted person from justice towards the criminal. In the same way did the neglected sick, and especially the lepers, touch her heart; indeed, all the oldest hospitals in Silesia are due to her.
The neighboring Cistercian monks of Leubus cast the leaden plates for the roof and the smaller bells of the new monastery, in return for which Henry gave them two estates; and the duke himself with his foremost nobles inspected the progress of the work, and solemnly made the round of the land deeded to the institution, marking his own name on the boundary stones. Bishop Egbert of Bamberg, Hedwige’s brother (this was before his disgrace), procured a body of Cistercian nuns of his diocese as a beginning, and accompanied them himself on their journey to their new home. Hedwige’s great-uncle, Provost Popo of Bamberg, came too, and the meeting of these strangers with the high clergy of Silesia and Poland was, as the old chroniclers would have said, “a brave and pleasant sight.” The buildings were decorated with evergreens, and the pomp of jewelled garments, clerical and national costumes, armor, horses richly caparisoned, embroidered robes and canopies, was dazzling. It was the Sunday within the octave of the feast of the Epiphany—a sharp, bright winter’s day; the cavalcade from the court of Breslau, consisting of the duke and duchess and their retinue, escorted the nuns and the foreign ecclesiastics, while the bishops of Breslau and Posen, each with his chapter, and the Cistercian abbot under whose jurisdiction Trebnitz was placed, received the latter at the gate of the finished portion of the new church. Here the duke handed the Abbess Petrussa, Hedwige’s old friend and teacher, a deed of the property henceforth belonging to the order—a document which, like all following ones of the same kind, ended with a forcible denunciation of any future injury to the rights of the abbey. “Whoever injures this foundation, without giving full satisfaction therefor, shall be cut off from the church; and let his everlasting portion be with Judas, the Lord’s betrayer, who hanged himself, and with Dathan and Abiron whom the earth swallowed up alive.”
When the deed had been read, and the dedication of the building “to the honor of God and of the holy apostle Bartholomew” declared, the clergy, who held torches in their hands, threw them on the ground, as a sign of all secular claims on the possessions of the abbey being extinguished; and during this ceremony the solemn excommunication against all who should injure the monastery was read aloud once more. The men who had worked at the building, or in any way contributed to it, were freed from all feudal claims, from the obligation to fight, to furnish huntsmen, falcons, or horses for the ducal household, to work at the fields or at the public works, and received the immunities and protection usual to the vassals of a monastery.
Although Trebnitz was undoubtedly named after the neighboring village so called, a story grew up of the humorous mispronunciation of a Polish word, trzebanic, by the German abbess, when asked by Henry if “there was anything else she needed?” The word signifies “We need nothing more,” and has some likeness to the name of Trebnitz; but popular tales such as this abound everywhere. Among the later gifts to the monastery were three villages, bound to supply the nuns with honey, wax, and mead—the first for their “vesper-meal,” the second for their candles and torches, and the third for their “drink on holidays.” The object of the institution, which the original deed set forth as being the securing of “a place of refuge wherein the weaker sex may atone for its sins through the mercy of God,” was at once obtained, and other advantages also grew up around the women’s republic of Trebnitz. It was soon filled with young girls sent there to be educated; widows came either to enter the order or to live under its rule and protection as out-door members; women fled there to repent, and others to avoid temptation; and lastly came Gertrude, the duke’s daughter, to become a nun within its walls. Seven years after its festive opening Hedwige herself retired there and began the second half of her long life by caring for and educating the heathen maidens from Prussia. Trebnitz was her favorite home until her death, and the institution which was most identified with the holy Duchess of Silesia; but the list of great works she and her husband set on foot, each of them a starting-point of much hidden good, is a long one. The parish church of Bunzlau having, with most of the town itself, been burnt, she built a new one, dedicated to Our Lady. At Goldberg, a village near one of the royal summer palaces, she founded a Franciscan convent, intended to serve the purpose of a school for the neighborhood. Nimptsch, her place of refuge during the civil war between her two sons, was not forgotten; for while there she laid the first stone of a church, and almost at the same time began one dedicated to St. Andrew for the town of Herrnstadt. Her friends often remarked on her lavishness in building, and asked her whence she could expect to draw the means. She used to answer confidently: “I trust that the heavenly Architect who made the world, and my dear and faithful husband Henry, will not let me be shamed, so that I should be unable to finish what I have begun with good motives and to their honor. Do not be too anxious about my doings; all will end well with God’s help.” In Breslau, the capital, she built three hospitals—that of the Holy Ghost, that of St. Lazarus (this was for lepers), and that of St. Barbara. For many years Hedwige’s charity towards the sick had produced a rivalry among all good men, both nobles and burghers, to tend and care for some sick persons in their own houses or in rooms hired or built for the purpose; but her wish always was to found a public hospital. The duke gave her a suitable piece of land for the building and garden; the abbot of the Augustinians, Witoslaus, gave his lay brothers as sick-nurses and his choir-monks as overseers and confessors. Contributions flowed in from the rich members of the population, and the first hospital was finished in a very short time. The third contained what was an immense luxury in those days—a number of bath-rooms, open gratis to the poor on certain days, and rooms where they could be bled, as was the custom on the slightest illness. All those who came in contact with Hedwige caught her spirit of generosity, and rich men, lay and ecclesiastic, vied with her in founding churches and monasteries. Canon Nicholas of Breslau, the duke’s chancellor, obtained Henry’s leave to endow a Cistercian monastery with the estates which the duke had given him for his lifetime, and others followed his example.
These ceremonies were always solemn and the deed of gift publicly read, signed, witnessed, and sworn to. As much pomp hedged them in as was usual in a treaty of peace or the betrothal of sovereign princes; and, indeed, the foundation of churches, though a common occurrence, was looked upon as quite as important as any civil contract. In 1234 a terrible famine, fever, and pestilence decimated the land, and, among many other Silesian towns that possessed as yet no hospital, Neumarkt was in special distress. Hedwige hurried there and set on foot a temporary system of relief and nursing, but also entreated her husband to build a permanent hospital for incurables, where they might be cared for till their death. This he did, and attached to it a provostship, the church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and Pope Innocent IV. sent special blessings to the Bohemian Benedictine monks who were entrusted with the care of the sick. Four years later Henry built a church in Löwenberg and gave it to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; this was a month or two before his death. But these are only a few of the works of this generous couple. Many villages and remote places obtained benefits from them, travelling priests were cared for, young girls helped in their need and protected or dowered, many poor families housed and fed; and the famine of 1234 especially gave Hedwige an opportunity of justifying her title of “Mother of the poor.” She distributed unheard-of quantities of grain, bread, meat, and dried fruits to the people, who came for relief from long distances. She gave lavishly, with that apparent recklessness that marks the charities of saints, smilingly saying, “We must help the poor, that the Lord may have pity on our own needs and appease our own hunger.” She forgave all feudal dues for years on her own possessions, and looked after her employés so diligently that they complained that the “duchess left them nothing but the leavings of the peasants.” When she did not distribute her alms in person, the poor groaned and wept, and cared less for the charity than if it had been seasoned by her gracious presence. When Breslau was wholly burnt down in 1218, and three years’ distress fell upon the land, she did the same and relieved thousands. That year was marked by the death of the Abbess of Trebnitz, Petrussa, and the choice of Princess Gertrude as her successor, which coincided with the festival held to celebrate the entire finishing of the monastery and the dedication of the church. The religious ceremonies were followed by a banquet in the refectory and by games for the people in the courtyard. Henry was present and rejoiced with her; her son’s wife, Anna, daughter of King Ottokar of Bohemia, was there with her children, one of whom was to fill, but unworthily, the throne of Silesia. It was a family gathering as well as a religious feast; but if, as tradition says, Hedwige was then gifted with a more than ordinary insight into the future, she must have felt sad to think of the turmoil that was coming and that would part her more and more in spirit from her husband.