DOROTEA di MONTAU (Montoviensis), blessed. — Born at Montau (near Marienburg, Prussia) on 6 February 1347, she died at Marienwerder on 25 June 1394. At the age of nineteen she married Albrecht of Danzig, by whom she had nine children; in 1389 she went to Rome for the Jubilee of 1390, remaining there until Easter in the hospice of S. Maria della Consolazione. Having lost her husband and children (one daughter became a Benedictine nun), she moved to Marienwerder, where, on 2 May 1393, with the permission of the Chapter and of the Teutonic Order, she founded a hermitage beside the Cathedral. Here, as a « recluse », she led an exceptionally austere life, visited by illustrious personages and by the poor seeking comfort and counsel, and favored with mystical graces.
Her canonization process remained unfinished; but the people immediately venerated her as a wonderworker and heavenly protectress of the country of the Teutonic Order. Popular cult. Feast on 25 June; in some places, on 30 October.
The writings concerning the blessed woman, almost all by her confessor Giovanni, number ten; for their various editions, cf. BHL, I, pp. 350–51. The various Vitae, and certain other writings, in Acta SS. Octobris, XIII, Paris 1883, pp. 472–584. The Revelations (in Septillimum b. Dorotheae auctore Ioanne Marienwerder [ed. F. Hipler], Brussels 1885; the entire Latin section had already appeared in Analecta Bollandiana, 2 [1882], pp. 383–472; 3 [1883], pp. 113–40, 408–48; 4 [1885], pp. 207–51). This work, of great mystical value, bears the name septillimum because it treats of seven graces granted to D., which are aptly represented by the qualities of the lily.