Dorothea of Montau

Dorothea of ​​Montau (* February 6, 1347 in Great Montau, † June 25, 1394 in Marienwerderstraße ) is a Catholic saint. She is patron of the Teutonic Order and Prussia.

She came from a wealthy farming family. As a seven year old Dorothea was doused by her mother with boiling water. Already in childhood Dorothea began her lifelong asceticism. She led genuflections from ( Venien ) and refused during Lent dairy foods. Dorothea spent a life in constant mortification, that meant an ongoing abuse of one's body from supposedly religious grounds. These included Selbstverbrühungen, extreme fasting, wounding the feet, sleeping in the cold and other practices.

At the urging of her family, she married an armourer from Danzig. The couple had nine children, of whom only one daughter (later a nun in Kulm ) survived. Shortly after the wedding Dorothea of ​​Montau had the first religious visions. Their religious experiences designed Dorothea by permanent use of heat metaphors:

" ( ... ) Is of great lust was body and soul hinfließend, and the soul flowed very heated love and lust just as an ore which had melted, and became one in spirit with our dear Lord. "

After the death of her husband in 1389 or 1390 Dorothea moved to Werder Marie. There she met in Domdekan and German Chaplain John Marie Werder her future confessor and biographer. They gave away their wealth and remained voluntarily, as Reklusin, including the end of life in a cell, which was attached to the building complex of the Cathedral of Marie Werder.

The canonization took place in 1976, after the strenuous shortly after the death of the woman and the Teutonic Knights supported canonization in 1404 was canceled.

Dorothea's life was described by John Marienwerderstraße and the book printed in 1492 in Marienburg by Jakob Karweyse.

Günter Grass describes the life of Dorothea of ​​Montau from the perspective of her embittered husband in his novel Der Butt.