Saint of the Day – 16 September – St Ludmila (c860-921) Martyr, Mother, Widow, apostle of the poor and ill. Ludmila was the grandmother of Saint Wenceslaus, who is widely referred to as Good King Wenceslaus. Born in c860 at Mielnik (in modern Poland) and died by strangulation by hired assassins at Tetin, (modern Czech Republic) on 15 September 921 by the orders of her daughter-in-law, due to her influence over Saint Wenceslaus, her Grandson. Patronages – against in-law problems, Catechists, converts, Duchesses, mothers, widows, Bohemia, Czech Republic, the City of Prague, Czech Republic. Also known as – Ludmilla. Saint Ludmila was Canonisd shortly after her death. As part of the process of Canonisation, in 925, St Wenceslaus translated her remains to St George’s Basilica, Prague.
Anyone who has been to Prague will certainly remember, among its countless and breath-taking monuments and statuess, shrines and displays, the enormous Wenceslas Square, strategically located between the Old Town and the New as a symbol of national destiny and Czech identity in modern history.
There, beneath the National Museum, stands the equestrian Monument of the Patron Saint, Saint Wenceslas (c905–935), the propagator of Christianity in Bohemia and murdered as a young man by his diabolical brother, Boleslav. His large Statue is surrounded by the four Bohemian Patron Saints: Adalbert and Agnes behind him, Prokop and, not coincidentally, Ludmila herself.
She was Wenceslas’ Grandmother, with a name which translates from Slavic means “beloved of the people” and the title, after her death of “mother of the poor” for her charitable works. She was born around 860 in Lusatia, a historical region located in Central Europe and divided today between Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Her father, Slavibor, was the Duke of Milsko and Ludmilla married Borisvoj, Duke of Bohemia,in 873, while still a teenager. The two were later Baptized by Saints Cyril and Methodius, Apostles of the Slavs in the 9th Century.
The couple were blessed with three sons and three daughters and were committed to their Christian education and, at the same time, to the spread of Christianity in that region.
Widowed in 894, Ludmila donated all her possessions to the poor and devoted herself to a life of piety, living with her eldest son, Vratislaus. When he died prematurely in 916, the nobles entrusted the Regency of the Duchy to his wife, Drahomira and the education of their firstborn grandson, Wenceslaus, to his Christian Grandmother. Drahomira, still essentially attached to paganism and jealous of her mother-in-law’s influence over the child, forced Ludmila to retreat to Tetin Castle. There, in 920, the poor widow was strangled with the widow’s veil she wore, likely on Drahomira’s orders.
Wenceslas, as soon as he came of age and became the Duke himself, had his Grandmother’s Relics, venerated and miracle-working, translated to the Basilica of the Ducal Castle in Prague. Unfortunately, this Basilica was transformed into a museum during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
AnaStpaul 