A bishop before he was 30

He was intelligent, pious, and an energetic young priest.

He also had connections and the diocese needed a bishop very badly.

So, while still in his mid-twenties, he was made bishop.

It was not an easy diocese: polygamy, idolatry, and even slavery were popular in some circles.

The young bishop, on the other hand, was not popular: especially not among the powerful.

After several years, he escaped to Rome and became a Benedictine hermit.

Four years later, the Pope sent him back. He accomplished some things, but the enmity of the powerful proved deadly: his brothers were murdered and the young bishop fled again to Rome.

He then turned to evangelizing neighboring countries, meeting with considerable success in two of them, but once again running afoul of violent men in a third.

He cut down a tree sacred to pagans.

The pagans cut him down one thousand and ten years ago today near the Baltic sea, but the ministry of Adalbert, who had been born with the name of Vojtěch and was for a time bishop of Prague, would bear abundant fruit and the Christian faith would be embraced by all the lands in which he had preached the Gospel.