Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 1.djvu/463

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B. JUTTA 44* fiepresented (1) in a grey habit tied with a black cord or strap round the neck and waist and with long sleeves ; (2) sucking the wound in the Saviour's side, in allusion to one of her visions ; (X) in the same picture with B. Douothy (<i), who is often associated with her as patron of Prussia. Jutta was of the noble family of Sangerhausen in Saxony. She married young, and her husband died on a pil- grimage to Palestine. Sho had several children, all of whom embraced a re- ligious life, in various Orders. After the death of her husband, Jutta devoted herself for a time to the care of the sick, especially lepers, and was favoured with visions. At that time Poland was over- run by Tartars, Eutheni, and Lithua- nians. They burnt Cracow, Sendomiria, and other cities, and twice within ten months choked up the river Vistula with Christian corpses. Prussia was next devastated. The Crucifers with difficulty saved their lives and liberties by taking refuge in the fortresses they held against the barbarians ; while the natives who had but recently been baptized relapsed into paganism, joined the invaders, and massacred the priests and other Chris- tians who dwelt amongst them. The aid the Christians sent for from Germany was long in coming. It pleased Qod that Prussia and the adjacent province of Masovia should at this time receive a special protector and patron from Ger- many, in the person of St. Jutta. She came to Prussia in 12G0, to lead a soli- tary and austere life in its thick and dark forests, while Boleslaw the Chaste and St. CunegUxNd were reigning in Poland. She chose for her dwelling a ruined building, not far from Culm, near a great pond or marsh called Bielczna. The neighbours observed that she was some- times lifted up from the earth and sus- pended in the air while she prayed, and that when she went to the new church at Culm, she sometimes went through the wood a long way round, by the edge of the lake, and sometimes she walked straight across the water by a path which could still be seen after her death. She lived in great sanctity in the forest for four years, and died in 1264. Her friend and confessor, Henry, bishop of Culuza, wanted to bury her quietly according to her own inclination, but he could not prevent an immense concourse of people assembling from the surrounding country, so that such a multitude had never been seen in Culuza before. Thirteen priests were present at the funeral, a great number at that time, when none but missionaries had settled there, and most of those had been massacred by the barbarians. She was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity. Fifteen years afterwards, steps were taken for her canonization, in consequence of her great renown for sanctity and the numerous miracles wrought at her tomb. Papebroch gives these and other details from her Life by Schembek, a Jesuit, translated from Polish by another Jesuit priest, for the BoUandist collection. B. Matilda of Magdeburg had a great admiration for Jutta, and mentions her as a woman she had known to teach Christianity to the heathen, both by preaching and example. Matilda at one time wished to imitate her in this respect. AA.SS. Preger, Deutsche Mysiih, Papebroch mentions, only to contradict it, a legend that St. Jutta was the wife of the Count of Querfurt ; that she had seven children at a birth and doomed them all to death ; the count, however, preserved them, and one was afterwards Meingold or Meingard, master provincial of the Crucifers in Prussia; during his rule there, Jutta, as penance for the sin of contriving the death of her children, founded the cathedral of Chelmza or Culm, under Heidonricus, second bishop of that place. This is not Culm on the Vistula, but another town in the same province, farther from the Polish fron- tier. The cathedral was founded before Jutta was bom. B. Jutta (6), Oct. 31, V. Nun at Bethbuer. Her brother, a clerk, was displeased at her levity. Although guilty of no great offence, she was not so serious, pious, and modest as he wished to see her. He took up a stone and said,

  • ' This stone shall sooner split in my hand

than my sister shall be steady and & nun." It split. She was so impressed by the miracle that she changed her way^V^V