Hazeka

Hazeka (also Haseka, d. 1261) was a saint and a recluse in what is today North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She was attached to a church in Schermbeck, enclosed in a cell near the city's Cistercian monastery, for 36 years, living off alms supplied by the monastery and cared for by her minstra (servant) Bertha, a devout woman from one of the Rhenish provinces. Hazeka wore a Cistercian habit and lived under the Cistercian rule. Historian Francesca M. Steele, who wrote biographies of Hazeka and other female recluses during the Middle Ages in Europe, stated that "Hazeka here passed her life in much simplicity and great patience, spending her days in prayer and work, most likely embroidery for the monastery".

Hazeka is best known for one miracle, which scholar Gabriela Signori calls "remarkably unremarkable": Cookbook author Jennifer McLagan, who relates the miracle, calls Hazeka "the patron saint of butter".

Greven relates a conflict between monasteries over the right to intern her body; she was eventually buried, after the bishop intervened, at the Cistercian monastery. After she was buried, she appeared to a widow in her sleep and promised that the widow's prayers to her would be answered. Hagiographer Agnes B.C. Dunbar reported that "miracles attended her burial". Greven predicted Hazeka's popular veneration; Steele stated that Hazeka was revered by many people. Hazeka's feast day is January 26.