St. Adalbert

St. Adalbert was born around 956 at Libice in Bohemia, a son of the powerful Slavník family. Baptized Vojtěch, he was sent to Magdeburg for his education and there took the name of his teacher, Archbishop Adalbert. In 983, still in his twenties, he was chosen the second Bishop of Prague. He set about his office with zeal — preaching, caring for the poor, ransoming slaves, and working to root out pagan customs that persisted among his people. His reforming efforts met stubborn resistance from the nobility and much of the populace. Discouraged, Adalbert twice withdrew to Rome, where he entered the Benedictine monastery of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine Hill and embraced the humble life of a monk. Twice he was ordered back to his see, and after political violence destroyed his family at Libice, a return to Prague became impossible. Encouraged by his friend the young emperor Otto III and welcomed by Duke Bolesław I of Poland, he resolved to give himself to the missions. In 997 Adalbert traveled to the Baltic coast to preach the Gospel to the pagan Prussians. His mission was brief: regarded with suspicion as a foreign intruder, he was attacked by a band led by a pagan priest and killed on April 23, 997. Bolesław ransomed the martyr's body — according to tradition, for its weight in gold — and enshrined it at Gniezno, which soon became the primatial see of Poland and a great center of pilgrimage. Adalbert was canonized in 999 by Pope Sylvester II, one of the earliest papal canonizations. In the year 1000 Otto III came as a pilgrim to his tomb at Gniezno. Venerated as a patron of Bohemia, Poland, and the old Prussian lands, and as an apostle of the Slavic peoples, he is commemorated on April 23. Pilgrims today venerate his relics at Gniezno Cathedral, famed for its twelfth-century bronze doors depicting his life, while Prague Cathedral also claims relics of the saint from a medieval translation.