Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/258

244 214 B. DOROTHY B. Dorothy ((>), Juno 25, Oct. 30. 1 tth century. Bom about 133G. + 1300. Patron saint of Prussia, and perhaps of Poland and Silesia. Compare Dorothy (2). Eepresented in an old woodcut in Lilienthars Life of her in a long cloak, holding in one hand a rosary, in the other a lantern, one arrow sticking in her heart and one in each arm. Some- times represented with three burning darts in her heart and four spears in her right side ; sometimes in the same picture with St. Jutta (5), of Sangherhausen in Saxony. She was bom at Montau, on the island of Marienburg, at the mouth of the Vistula, in Pomerania, about 133G. Her father was Wilhelm Swartz, a Dutchman. Her mother's name was Agatha. Dorothy was the seventh of nine children, and tho youngest of five daughters. She was pious from her earliest childhood, and this tendency decidedly inoreasod after she was scalded with boiling water at the age of seyen. She was a hard- working, useful girl, and when her elder sisters were married, she took care of the house, though scarcely ten years old. At seventeen she married Adalbert, an honest man of Dantzig, pious and well- to-do. They spent the first fourteen days of their married life in a strictly ascetic manner. They had seven sons, all of whom died in infancy, and lastly, they had one daughter. They had now been married twenty-six years, and Dorothy was forty-four years of age, so she resolved to have no more children, and took a vow of celibacy. Her daughter, who is variously called Elizabeth, Gertrude, and Agatha, be- came a Benedictine nun at Culm, and afterwards took the Cistercian habit at Oliva. . In 1382, when her daughter must have been nearly two years old, Dorothy and her husband made a pilgrimage to Aix-la-Chapelle, thence they went to visit a hermit in Yinsterwaldt, and re- turned home in winter. The next year they went again. Between their first and second pilgrimages to Aix the Lord took out her bodily heart and put in a new one. She suffered mental aliena- tions, in which she sat stupid, so that many thought she was insane. Their second journey was difficult, as there was war in the country they passed through. They went to Hamburg and Lauenburg, and were nearly drowned in the Elbe among the ice. Then they came home by sea to Dantzig. In October, 1380, Dorothy went with- out her husband to Home for the Jubilee of 1300. She stayed there until after Easter, 1300, and came home by Cologne. Meantime her husband died. In May, 1304, she obtained leave to build a cell in the church of Marieninsel, and there she was built up, her mother weeping, and all the people applauding. Here she lived for six or sixteen years, during which she wrought miracles and had visions, and converted sinners. Hwt. Beatee Dorotheae by T. Christ. Lilienthal, M.A., Dantzig, 1744. Many miracles were wrought at her tomb after her death, and her fame soon spread over Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, Livonia, and Lithuania. She was said to have had the stigmata, but she never showed them or mentioned them, so that there is no contemporary authority for the assertion. She is said by de Buck, AA,SS., Supplement, Oct 30, to have been a recluse at Kwidzyn, in Borussia Polonica. He says the first life of Dorothy is supposed to be written by John Marienwerder, her confessor. St. Dorothy (7), V. at Aries, in France, whore her tomb is venerated in the famous crypt of St. Honorat. Migne. B. Dorothy (8) Lissonia, Oct 30 or Sept. 11, V. O.S.F., at Milan. Sup- posed 1447. Stadler. B. Dorothy (0), March 23. loth century. At Unterwald, in Switzerland. Wife of the B. Nicolas de Eupe. They had ten children, and then he became a monk and she a nun. Stadler. B. Dorothy (10), or Dorotba, of Ferrara. Dec. 10. + 1507. O.S.D. Wife of Luca Perinati, led a holy ^^*» in the world, and after her husbai.^^. death became a nun in the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena, at Ferrara, called " Le Sanesi." When she had become a nun her piety increased.