[1][4][6] Zdislava's husband was a man of violent temper[5] and treated her brutally, but by her patience and gentleness she secured in the end considerable freedom of action in her practices of devotion, her austerities and her many works of charity.

Zdislava had ecstasies and visions, received the Eucharist daily even though it was not a common practice at the time, and performed miracles; one account reports that she even raised the dead.

[1] According to one story, she gave their bed to a sick, fever-stricken refugee; Havel became indignant at her hospitality[8] and was prepared to eject the man, but found a figure of the crucified Christ there instead.

Eventually, he allowed her to have St. Lawrence priory built (a Dominican nunnery), donate money to another convent for men in Gabel, a nearby town, and join the Third Order of Saint Dominic.

[5][6][7] Hagiographer Alban Bulter claims, however, that "the alleged connection of [Zdislava] with the third order of St Dominic remains somewhat of a problem, for the first formal rule for Dominican tertiaries of which we have knowledge belongs to a later date".

[6] Shortly after founding St. Lawrence Priory, Zdislava fell terminally ill; she consoled her husband and children by telling them that she hoped to help them more from the next world than she had ever been able to do in this.