SAINT HEDWIGE, the wife of Henry, Duke of Silesia, and the mother of his [six or seven?] children, led a humble, austere, and most holy life amidst all the pomp of royal state. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was the keynote of her life. Her valued privilege was to supply the bread and wine for the Sacred Mysteries, and she would attend each morning as many Masses as were celebrated. After the death of her husband she retired to the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, where she lived under obedience to her daughter Gertrude, who was abbess of the monastery, growing day by day in holiness, till God called her to himself in 1242.
