Stone & Incense Search
Start hereCurious, or no faithEvangelical, Pentecostal or ProtestantFrom another faithSomeone I love is CatholicBecoming CatholicI was Catholic once Today in the ChurchLibraryHard questionsVoices of the revivalTake the next stepAboutSources & methodSupport the site
The saints

St. Adalbert of Prague

A bishop twice run out of his city, who died a missionary on the shore of the Baltic.

Feast: 23 April · 956 to 997 · The Middle Ages · Prague, Bohemia, and the Baltic coast

Read the story 1 min read
Bronze statue of St. Adalbert as a bishop with a crosier, raising his hand, in Prague.

Arkadiy Etumyan, 2006. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Home / The saints / St. Adalbert of Prague

Prague, 980s

Adalbert was made bishop of Prague at twenty-seven.1

His reforms made powerful enemies, and he was forced out.1

He came back, and was driven out again for defending a woman who had been dragged from a church and killed.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church honors him in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary as a missionary martyr.

01St. Adalbert of Prague

The Baltic

He went to preach to the Prussians on the Baltic coast, and he and his companions were martyred there.1

His body was ransomed and buried at Gniezno in Poland.1

Live it this week

Defend someone who has no defender

Adalbert lost his see for defending a woman everyone else had abandoned. This week, stand up for one person being blamed or mocked, even if it costs you.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Adalbert of Prague”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.