Sanctuary of St. Jadwiga, Trzebnica

Sanctuary of St. Jadwiga in Trzebnica, also Trebnitz or Trzebnica Abbey, is a convent for Cistercian nuns in Trzebnica, north of Wrocław, in Silesia, Poland, founded in 1203. It was abandoned for a few decades in the 19th century, and then was taken over by the Sisters of Mercy of St. Borromeo in 1889.

The abbey was established by the Silesian Piast duke Henry I the Bearded and his wife Saint Hedwig of Andechs (Polish: Święta Jadwiga Śląska), confirmed by Pope Innocent III. The legend of its foundation relates that once Duke Henry when out hunting fell into a swamp from which he could not extricate himself. In return for the rescue from this perilous position, he vowed to build the abbey. With Hedwig's consent, her brother Ekbert of Andechs, then Bishop of Bamberg, chose the first nuns that occupied the convent. The first abbess was Petrussa from Kitzingen Abbey; she was followed by Gertrude, the daughter of Hedwig. The abbey was richly endowed with lands by Duke Henry. When Hedwig became a widow in 1238, she went to live at Trzebnica and was buried there.

Up to 1515, the abbesses were first princesses of the Piast dynasty and afterwards members of the nobility. It is said that towards the end of the thirteenth century the nuns numbered 120. The abbey also became a mausoleum of many rulers of the fragmented Silesian Piasts. In 1672 there were 32 nuns and 6 lay sisters, in 1805 there were 23 nuns and 6 lay sisters. The abbey suffered from all kinds of misfortunes both in the Middle Ages and later: from famine in 1315, 1338, 1434, and 1617, from disastrous fires in 1413, 1432, 1464, 1486, 1505, 1595, and 1782. At the Protestant Reformation, most of the nuns were Poles, as were the majority until during the eighteenth century. The abbey of Trebnitz suffered so greatly during the Thirty Years War that the nuns fled across the border on the territory of the mostly unaffected Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as they did again in 1663 when the Turks threatened Silesia.

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