Agnes of Bohemia

ON BLESSED AGNES OF BOHEMIA, VIRGIN, OF THE ORDER OF ST. CLARE, PRAGUE,

IN THE YEAR 1282.

Preliminary Commentary.

Agnes of Bohemia, of the Order of St. Clare, Prague (Bl.)

§ I. The age and monastic life of Blessed Agnes.

[1] We present on this sixth of March two Virgins consecrated to God in the Seraphic Order, outstanding for the holiness of their lives and the power of their miracles: of these, the first is Blessed Agnes, daughter of the King of Bohemia, both born on earth and reborn in heaven at Prague; the other is Blessed Colette, born at Corbie in Picardy of a father who was a carpenter, Bl. Agnes and Bl. Colette of the same Order, dead on this day, and who put off mortal life at Ghent. The former, having received from the monastery of St. Damian five nuns sent by St. Clare, was the first to begin in transalpine and northern regions the most strict manner of living, which, though she petitioned the Supreme Pontiffs in certain arduous difficulties to have it adapted to the Bohemian nation, and obtained what she sought; yet she herself, as one most devoted to poverty, wished to retain nothing for contingent needs, even when the faculty was offered. The latter, on account of poverty even relaxed by the authority of Pope Urban, restored the same Order to the original rule of life of St. Clare, and was therefore considered its reformer. Very many monasteries of Clarisse Virgins were founded by the example of both, who lived most holily in imitation of them. We shall treat of Blessed Colette below; now we must treat of Blessed Agnes, who flourished about two centuries before her.

[2] Bl. Agnes born in the year 1205, Blessed Agnes is reported to have been born in the Year of Christ 1205, and having been imbued as a young girl with the most pious morals in monasteries, she never afterward deviated from the most holy way of life she had begun. After her father Přemysl Ottokar the King died, and her brother Wenceslaus was administering the kingdom, the marriage that her father had arranged for her with the Emperor Frederick II, after the death of her father, she rejected by imploring the patronage of the Supreme Pontiff, and at the encouragement of the Friars Minor, who had established a residence at Prague under King Přemysl, she turned her mind to the monastic life according to the institute of Blessed Clare, and distributed the patrimony left to her by her father for pious uses. The Acts below at number 25 record that she herself as Foundress completed the sacred buildings for the Franciscan Fathers at immense cost. from her patrimony she founds monasteries: Moreover, out of the impulse of piety and compassion (these are the words of Gregory IX, who then presided over the Church), she built and endowed a hospital for the work of the sick and the poor. Finally she built a monastery for herself and other nuns: for both of which Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, granted the site, and the Bishop of Prague with the Chapter of the Church added full liberty. These are confirmed by the Apostolic Letters of Gregory IX, which, published by Wadding in volume 1 of the Annals of the Minors under the year 1234, number 5, we here reproduce.

[3] Gregory... To our most dear daughter in Christ, Agnes, sister of our most dear son in Christ, the illustrious King of Bohemia, etc. Recently perceiving with joy the sincere fervor of your soul and the fragrance of your devotion, we were delighted in this, as in the odor of a full field which the Lord has blessed; beholding in the second Agnes a charity which many waters could not extinguish: for which we rise in praise and thanksgiving to the bestower of all good things, who mercifully inspired this desire in you, that, joined with the wise maidens, you might await his unforeseen coming, secure, with your lamp alight. For Agnes, imitating Agnes, you have in no way allowed yourself, though delicate and young, to be deceived by the blandishments of the world, worldly allurements rejected, or seduced by temporal power or glory: but accounting as nothing the favors of the world and the abundance of earthly things, you have compelled the flesh to serve the spirit, so that, having renounced all transitory things, you chose to serve the heavenly Spouse in the religion of the enclosed poor in purity of heart and body: dedicating yourself to him by solemn vow, and desiring to become the handmaid of him who, humbling the height of his divinity and taking the form of a servant, exalts the humble unto salvation. Whence our most illustrious son in Christ, the illustrious King of Bohemia, your brother, piously considering that you are strengthened from on high by the power of the Spirit, she clings to Christ. and enkindled by the ardor of charity in Christ, and restraining the affections of brotherly love, concurring with gracious kindness in your divinely inspired purpose, granted the ground for building a monastery with a hospital near Prague in honor of Blessed Francis, in which you have determined to enclose yourself with other Sisters, to the Roman Church; and he himself and our Venerable brother the Bishop of Prague, Diocesan of the place, with the consent of his Chapter, both donated both places to full liberty out of the impulse of piety; as is more fully contained in their letters transmitted to us. Since, therefore, the affection of a devout mind is to be embraced, and more assiduous human care ought to be applied to the new plantings of sacred religion, so that they may bring forth abundant flowers and fruits of holiness; we, inclining to the prayers of the said King, Bishop, and Chapter, take the aforesaid monastery and hospital into the right and property and guardianship of the Apostolic See... We further decree that the divine Office shall be celebrated there according to the manner of the Roman Church, except for the Psalter, which you may say according to the Gallican custom... Given at Spoleto, on the third day before the Kalends of September, in the eighth year of our Pontificate. So far the text. But four days later, in letters sent to the Bishop of Prague, he recommends that he not permit the said monastery to be molested by anyone. Those letters are presented by the said Wadding in the Pontifical Register, number 23. The eighth year of Gregory IX corresponds to the year 1234, because he was created on the twentieth day of March of the year 1227.

[4] Meanwhile Blessed Agnes accomplished what she had determined, the monastery having been built as far as possible. Albert of Stade in his Chronicle assigns the year 1236 with these words: she takes the habit of the Clarisse, in the year 1236. In the same year, on the day of Pentecost, the sister of the King of Bohemia, the Lady Agnes, at the encouragement of the Friars Minor, surrendered herself to the Order of the Poor Ladies of the Rule of Blessed Francis at Prague, having scorned on account of Christ the Emperor Frederick, who had previously sought her in marriage. The said Albert then flourished, having been created Abbot of Stade in the year 1232: and having resigned the Abbatial dignity, he entered the Order of St. Francis in the year 1240 and spent the rest of his life among the Friars Minor. Others relate that Blessed Agnes entered some years earlier, and on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary. The Pontiff had commanded

by letters sent to John, Minister of Saxony, and to Brother Thomas, Custos of Bohemia, that they should, by Apostolic authority, appoint Agnes as Abbess of that monastery, by the command of Gregory IX, she is made Abbess: and he wrote to her with this title: Gregory... To the Abbess of the monastery of St. Francis of Prague, of the Order of St. Damian. Since, having left the vanity of the world, you have exchanged human frailty for perpetual stability, and having been made from a Queen willingly the handmaid of God Almighty, you have entered the way of perfection in the holy religion to which you have devoted yourself forever, reckoning all your joy and comfort in the divine service, especially when the most holy body of Christ is offered at the altar: inclining to your supplications, we grant to your devotion by the authority of the present letters, that five times a year you may hear the solemnities of the Mass in the choir of the monastery and behold the Priest celebrating. Given on the second day before the Nones of April, in the eleventh year, that is, of Christ 1237. But in letters given on the fifth day before the Ides of April to the nuns of the same monastery, she arranges for moderation to be applied to the rule: he gives the Abbess the power, on account of the excessive cold of that region and the inclemency of the air, to dispense, concerning the obligation to fast on certain days on bread and water according to the Rule, and concerning the use of shoes and furs, on the advice of the Visitor, as she shall see fit. Again the following year, on the third day before the Nones of May, he granted that during Lent on Sundays and Thursdays they might eat twice and refresh themselves with dairy products. On every Easter, however, and on the solemnities of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the Apostles, and on the feast of the Nativity of the Lord, and also in time of manifest necessity, such as sickness, no one should be bound to fasting. Furthermore, when according to the Rule they are bound to fast on bread and water, let them have their meal in all things as on other Lenten days. Finally he grants permission to have two tunics, scapulars, and a cloak with furs, and shoes, and to use mattresses filled with hay or straw, as well as pillows.

[5] Meanwhile, most devoted to poverty, she admitted no revenues offered by her brother the King, and wished no rights to any possessions or any property of her own to remain for the Sisters: she rejects all possessions, which is especially clear from the letters of the same Pope Gregory to the Master and Brothers of the Hospital of Prague of St. Francis, which we add here. Our most dear daughter in Christ, he says, Agnes, the sister of the illustrious King of Bohemia, and the Convent of the enclosed handmaids of Christ of the monastery of St. Francis of Prague of the Order of St. Damian, have humbly entreated us, that we should take care to accept the free resignation of the Hospital of St. Francis of the same place, even the right to the hospital: which she had formerly ceded to them, together with its rights and appurtenances, and which the Apostolic See through them had granted to the aforesaid monastery. We therefore, having received the said resignation, concede that same hospital, which, being the right and property of Blessed Peter, we grant to you and your successors to be freely possessed in perpetuity, and we decree that it shall remain in perpetuity under the protection of the Apostolic See, etc. Given at the Lateran, on the fifth day before the Kalends of May, in the twelfth year, that is, of Christ 1238. In letters to Agnes and her convent, on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of May, he moreover grants that they cannot be compelled against their will to accept possessions.

[6] Two things in the course of time held Blessed Agnes perplexed: one, that the precept of obedience was expressed at the beginning of the formula of regular life, she seeks an explanation of the rule: the other, that in the same formula, in Apostolic letters, the Rule of Blessed Benedict was said to be given to them for observance. She therefore asked the Supreme Pontiff that those two clauses be removed. Innocent IV, in the first year of his Pontificate, that is, of Christ 1243, replied in a lengthy letter sent to her, that the Rule itself does not bind the Sisters of her Order to anything else than obedience, renunciation of property, and perpetual chastity. Furthermore, that the mention of the Rule of Blessed Benedict was added so that through it, as the principal among the approved rules, the religious institute might be rendered authentic: without, however, any necessity thereby imposed of observing it. We omit other letters sent to her by Gregory IX: in one, when she had asked for a certain form of the rule, condensed by herself, to be confirmed, the Pope dissuaded her with a mild and kind exhortation, adding another in which he invites her to the holy way of life and to lofty virtues. Both are presented by Wadding, numbers 12 and 13 of the year 1238.

§ II. Acts toward obtaining the Canonization. The Life as written. Her name inserted in the sacred calendars.

[7] she dies in the year 1282. That Blessed Agnes lived until the year 1282 we shall show below from the Life, and that she then died on the sixth of March, the twenty-fourth day of Lent and a Friday of the week. That she shone with very many miracles after death is indicated by the petition for her Canonization: concerning this, Francis Harold in his Epitome of the Annals of the Minors under the year 1328, number 16, has the following. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia and Poland, undertook a laudable cause this year, the Canonization is urged. to act urgently before Pope John for the canonization of Blessed Agnes, a Clarisse Virgin, daughter of Ottokar, King of Bohemia, and her grandmother, at this time most illustrious for many miracles, buried in the monastery of her Order that she had built at Prague: and to promote this cause she also enlisted as intercessors leading persons from the Clergy and people: from whose letters to the Pontiff on this matter, the author I follow, Wadding, here produces those which the Judges and Universities of the cities of Prague, Kutná Hora, Čáslav, and Kolín composed. So far from him, in which Blessed Agnes is called grandmother, because she was the great-aunt of Queen Elizabeth: whose great-grandfather was King Wenceslaus, the brother of Blessed Agnes. By her patronage, the Queen had been freed as a woman in labor from the danger of death, as also her son, still a small child, later the Roman Emperor Charles IV. These things are read below in the Acts of this Virgin.

[8] Moreover, from those things which were formerly done to obtain the Canonization of the same Blessed Agnes, we give the following, transmitted to us from a book entitled Chronicle of the Royal Court, from the library of the distinguished man Marquard Freher, Counselor of the Palatinate. There on page 63, under the Year of the Lord 1328, these things are found: For the Canonization, Queen Elizabeth acted in the year 1328. In this year, around the feast of Blessed Martin, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, inspired by the spirit of devotion, on account of the very many works of virtue which the Lord had deigned to display at various times around the body and sepulcher of the Venerable Virgin Agnes, buried at St. Francis in her own foundation at Prague, convoked the entire Clergy of Prague and the leading men of the people, and there set forth her devotion and intention regarding the Canonization of the said Virgin. She also obtained letters of intercession to the Lord Pope John for the same business, from both Prelates and citizens, which she dispatched to the Apostolic Lord together with her own letters. The tenor of the letters of the citizens was this.

[9] To the Most Holy Father in Christ and Lord, the Lord John, Letters of the citizens of Prague to the Roman Pontiff: Supreme Pontiff of the Sacrosanct Roman and Universal Church, Nicholas of Prague, Hermann of Kutná Hora, Henslinus of Čáslav, and Gotzlinus of Kolín, Judges, and the Universities and Communes of the same cities, with due reverence of subjection, kisses of the feet of the Blessed. A great joy of salvation, a great mystery of divine piety, has the Lord God of Gods hitherto declared in the kingdom of Bohemia, of which we are inhabitants. For he inspired this devotion and grace in certain Kings and kingdoms, and in certain other sons, inhabitants, and children of the same kingdom, that ascending by steps of virtue to the summit of perfection, they were advanced to such an eminence of holiness that, their merits demanding it before the Most High, their names being written in heaven, they were enrolled in the catalogue of Saints at the excellence of the heavenly host of Clerics: by whose worthy and God-pleasing intercessions, the inhabitants of the same kingdom have felt and feel the pious and efficacious aid of their help, and in tribulations and necessities a timely remedy. But because the immensity of divine bounty sets no limit to its munificence, nor does the generosity once bestowed produce weariness, to those whom he had already given that kingdom as Fathers and Patrons, he gave also a Virgin, innocent as a lamb, and by the appellation of her name, Agnes, who, the daughter of the Lord Přemysl, or Ottokar, former King of Bohemia, of happy memory, sprung from royal stock on both sides, so clothed the flower of her youth with the beauty of virtues, that from the very beginnings of her tender age she seemed to hasten toward the heavenly fatherland. Living at length in a most holy manner of life in the Order of St. Clare, she completed the course of her life in such a way that she consummated more happily what she had happily begun. Upon which laudable perfection of life the Lord conferred such grace and power, that in life and in death and after death she shone with such brilliance of miracles that the signs of her holiness were and are daily evidently manifest. This lamp, however, because of the variety of Lords who succeeded in the kingdom of Bohemia after the death of the Lord Wenceslaus of happy memory, King of Bohemia and Poland, was so hidden under a bushel in the same kingdom that the life and holiness of the Virgin did not come to the notice of the Apostolic See and of Your Holiness. But now, the stability of dominion having been granted in the kingdom itself by divine mercy, the Father of mercies has aroused the spirit of the Illustrious Lady, our Lady Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia and Poland, and has so kindled her heart in love and honor of that Virgin, who was indeed the grandmother of the said Lady Queen, that she would supplicate at the feet of Your Holiness, the holiness of the said Virgin having been set forth, and petition that Your Holiness's kindness would deign to place that venerable, holy, and God-pleasing treasure, long shining in heaven, upon the candlestick of public and universal recognition in the world, by enrolling that Virgin in the catalogue of the Saints. Which we also, prostrate at the knees of Your Holiness, implore by the urgency of our humility. So far the text. The Pontiff was then John XXI, called XXII, who reigned from the year 1316 to the year 1334.

[10] In order that the aforesaid petition might have a happy outcome, it appears that at the direction of Queen Elizabeth, the more illustrious Acts and miracles were sought from all quarters, and from these a double Life of Blessed Agnes was composed, one of which was written in Latin, the other in Bohemian: the former is given from an old codex unearthed from the Church of Prague, a copy of which exists in the Clementine College of the Society of Jesus in the possession of Father John Tanner: and we had intended to give this one alone, omitting the later Life, which, transcribed from two other old codices, was rendered into Latin by the learned George Crugerus, also of the Society of Jesus. But when we compared the two with each other, we found that illustrious circumstances of events were added together with various miracles, and since it has also been hitherto unpublished, we judged it too to be worthy of the press, and to be added to the former. Of these manuscript codices which Crugerus used, one is called the Crumlov codex, the other the Velislav: indeed the author of one is believed to have been a contemporary of Blessed Agnes, and the following words reported below at number 18 are to be understood of him: These things I have from an old manuscript of a contemporary author, which

I should briefly note concerning the extraordinary virtue of the royal maiden before the sacred convent. Moreover, as is clear from what has been said, in order that obscure points might be explained, the aforesaid Crugerus here and there interposed a few words. Commemoration in Martyrologies: Concerning the same Blessed Agnes, those who treat of the affairs and persons of the Order of Friars Minor, or the deeds of the Kings and Saints of Bohemia, commonly speak: and Arthur du Monstier in the Franciscan Martyrology, where he adorns her with this encomium, under this sixth of March, cites very many of them: At Prague in Bohemia, of Blessed Agnes the Virgin, daughter of the King of the Bohemians, who, having spurned royal pleasures, professed the monastic life, and shining with poverty, chastity, and signs, ran to Christ her Spouse. The same author has similar things in the Sacred Gynaeceum, and our Laherius in the Menology of Virgins. We here append two summaries, Two summaries of the Life. one from Bartholomew of Pisa, book 1 of the Conformities, fruit 8, part 2, and one from George Bartholdus Pontanus, book 4 of Bohemia Pia: whom the rest almost all copy, or from whom they excerpt even brief encomiums. In Pisanus we follow the edition of Marcos of Lisbon published in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French, and Valerius the Venetian Capuchin in his Italian treatise on St. Clare and the illustrious Clarisses, who retained the typographical error by which the city of Plangensis is read in place of Pragensis in Pisanus, and transcribed it as città di Plagena. Before these we set four letters of St. Clare to Blessed Agnes, which John Tanner, a Priest of our Society, transmitted in his Latin renderings.

§ III. The Clarisse monastery built, alienated, and restored. Bones found in the year 1643: are they Blessed Agnes's? More recent miracles.

[11] Acts transmitted from Prague. When I had prepared these Acts for the press with appended annotations and the part of the Preliminary Commentary so far given, and yet was not fully satisfied with my own work, I sent letters to Bohemia to the Reverend Father John Possmurnius, former Supreme Provincial of our Bohemian Province of the Society, then Rector of the Academic College at St. Clement's in Prague: whose outstanding kindness I had experienced at Rome in the year 1661. He committed this entire care to the industrious men of his college, the Reverend Fathers John Tanner and Tobias Hlawitius, who indicated the following concerning the monastery of the Clarisses itself and its changes, concerning the relics unearthed and the miracles, and concerning the effort expended to obtain the Canonization, and certain other matters.

[12] The first monastery of these nuns was built in a corner of the old city of Prague near the river Moldau, at a distance of about two streets from the Jewish quarter. The site and jurisdiction of the monastery: That outer part of the territory of the Old Town of Prague has a magistracy separate from the rest of the Old Town and its own laws: and the whole of it is still subject to the jurisdiction of the Abbess of this monastery. The church formerly under the name of the Savior. Both sets of Acts to be given below indicate that the church was built by Blessed Agnes under the name of the Savior. The authority of Daniel Veleslawinus is added by Tanner as witness, which is held in great esteem in Bohemian affairs. Hlawitius suggests the same is recorded in the Bohemian Historical Calendar: hence by later generations a painting placed on the high altar in the upper position represents the Savior himself. Meanwhile it has often been designated under the name of St. Francis. then of St. Francis, But these names being virtually abolished on account of the memory of Blessed Agnes, the title was imposed by the people, and the church is commonly called that of the Saint, Holy, or Blessed Agnes. There now stands in the same Old Town of Prague, on the other side, not far from the Jews, a church of the Savior, after Blessed Agnes, known by that name: a most recent work, begun around the year 1616 or the following years, which does not pertain here, except that the Reader should be advised that it is entirely distinct from the ancient Church of the Savior, even in its location.

[13] The nuns of this monastery of the Savior or of Blessed Agnes, as well as all the rest, when the Hussites prevailed, the nuns expelled under the Hussites, were forcibly removed and compelled to live together in one monastery of St. Anne, which was that of Virgins serving God in a holy manner according to the institute and rule of St. Dominic, crowded together, at least four hundred in number: which is recorded as having happened around the year 1420, when the Žižka wars were raging, around the year 1420. when the monastery of these Clarisses is said to have been largely destroyed, and to have remained vacant, with no nuns returning to it. Then, after a hundred and more years had elapsed, the monastery given to the Dominican Fathers, Emperor Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia, in the year 1555, donated it to the Reverend Fathers of the Order of Preachers in exchange for the ruins of the monastery of St. Clement at the Bridge, which he gave to our Society, where there is now an illustrious Academic College: in which both human and divine sciences are taught to our own members and to outsiders with great benefit to the entire kingdom. But afterward, under Ferdinand II, after the victory obtained at the White Mountain, the excellent parochial church of St. Giles was given to the Reverend Fathers of the Order of Preachers, and the monastery of Blessed Agnes restored to the Clarisse Virgins, was restored to the Franciscan Fathers, by whom the nuns were brought back there: but when all of these died of the plague in the year 1627, other Clarisses were substituted for them, who, from the town of Týnec, six miles distant from Prague, because those Virgins could not safely live outside during the military tempests, having left that monastery vacant, migrated here, and to this day live laudably there in the greatest poverty, nineteen in number.

[14] Blessed Agnes was buried in the chapel of the Virgin Mother of God, which was built on the right side of the church of the Savior itself, in which in the year 1643 a certain buried body was found, A body found in the year 1643, doubt whether it is Blessed Agnes's. and immediately it was assumed by the hope and belief of all, and the rumor spread by fame flying far and wide, that it was the sacred relics of Blessed Agnes, especially because, as soon as the bricks covering the sepulcher were removed, a very sweet odor was exhaled. The sepulcher was not moved, however, but was again closed up with doubled boards: until the Most Eminent Cardinal von Harrach, Archbishop of Prague, having been informed of this matter, gave his consent. Commissioners were immediately appointed by him to examine the whole matter more carefully, an examination instituted before the Commissioners: namely the Most Illustrious Lord Joseph, Baron von Zollego, at that time Supreme Prefect of the Archiepiscopal Court; the Most Reverend Lord Andreas Clemens Kocher von Kockenberg, Dean of the Metropolitan Church of Prague and Official of the Archiepiscopal Court; the Most Reverend Lord Nefestinus de Koberowicz, Dean of the Royal Chapel of All Saints in the castle of Prague, Archiepiscopal Secretary. These, on the sixth and tenth days of June of the said year 1643, employed the customary diligence in such examinations, and strictly under oath examined three kinds of persons as to what they had seen and observed around the body that was found: of these the first were six consecrated Virgins from the monastery of Blessed Agnes: Anna Clara Staniczska of Bystřice, Mother Abbess; Ludmilla, who now lives as Mother Abbess, Clara, Magdalena, Salome, Dorothea: then three Priests of the monastery of St. James of the Conventual Friars of St. Francis, the Reverend Father Master Stephen the Pole, Guardian, Father Didacus, Confessor of the said nuns, afterward Provincial, Father Master Honorius: finally, from the secular persons, Balthasar Dietrich, painter and citizen of the New Town of Prague, and Henry Ernest. I omit the ages of each, and in the case of the former, the year of the assumption of the monastic habit.

[15] These, therefore, since they were all present at the finding of the said body, were questioned. Why they had dug, what signs had preceded, the cause of the digging, and what they had found. The Mother Abbess replied, above the rest, that the cause of the digging she had arranged was that they had hoped to find a treasure for the extreme need of the monastery, since she had heard that flames had erupted at that place: which signs are customary indicators of hidden treasures. When this became known, the Father Guardian, because he too had heard that where flames erupt, treasures lie hidden, declared that he had given permission for the digging: which digging the Virgin Salome had very urgently pressed for the same reason. But two nuns, Clara, a septuagenarian, and Ludmilla, afterward Abbess, had seen the erupting flames: the former, in the evening while the Abbess Anna Clara was praying in the church; but she did not think they were real flames, but a certain illusion: the latter had seen at the time of Compline a light erupting like a burning torch. preceding signs, Other signs were added which had preceded the digging, namely that at the time of Matins a certain completely unknown nun had been seen, who both looked into the choir and observed the nuns at prayer, and afterward vanished. Furthermore, disorderly and horrible cackling laughter had been heard frequently and by many, and Dorothea was so terrified that she fell into a certain illness. Also that the Mother Abbess had ordered that some Canticle of the Holy Spirit be recited every day. Finally, that the horrible voice was reproduced in the presence of the Commissioners.

[16] When these things had been discussed, inquiry was made as to what noteworthy things had appeared around the sepulcher that was found, a wooden coffin found, and first almost all replied that the coffin in which the body was found had been wooden and indeed rotten, except for the middle boards around the head and feet: in it a Cross, then that next to the body there had appeared a black Cross lying against the thigh, a veil, bones: which, when it sustained touch, immediately dissolved into ashes. A veil was also shown, of the kind the nuns themselves customarily wear; but it vanished like a spider's web: a sweet odor spread: the cranium, moreover, the chin, and the teeth had attracted the notice of all, but what had especially moved them to astonishment was a desirable and sweet odor spread everywhere when the sepulcher was opened: so that Father Didacus, the Confessor, afterward Provincial, inquired whether anyone had aromatic substances on their person, but no one had anything. Also that the Virgin Ludmilla, afterward Mother Abbess, had been so overwhelmed by the odor that she was compelled to remove her habit, and said she could not endure so powerful, strong, and sweet an odor: and that the very bricks covering the sepulcher also gave off a pleasant odor: indeed the gloves with which Balthasar the painter had touched the coffin still breathed a grateful and sweet odor on the fourth day. And these are approximately the things which the above-named persons confessed and deposed under oath before the Lords Commissioners; but lest the reader be wearied, we have neglected to indicate separately how each one responded. When the examination was finished, the Lords Commissioners descended to the church, and (having inspected the sepulcher to see whether, the coffin displayed: as before, it was closed and duly guarded) they had the coffin displayed, the bones enclosed in a small chest, placed in the sacristy. and committed the care of the bones (which had been placed in a certain small white wooden chest and sealed with the seal of Thomas Javornický, the so-called Chancellist of the Archbishopric) to the three Franciscan Fathers named above and to their Provincial, and in their presence had it carried to the sacristy, where it remains in fact to this day.

[17] Afterward, on the thirteenth day of June, at seven o'clock in the morning, in order to investigate the truth of the matter, the Most Eminent Cardinal von Harrach descended to the said church and monastery of Blessed Agnes with almost his entire court, together with the aforesaid Lords Commissioners, The same examined before the Cardinal Archbishop: and having received the white chest in which we said the bones of the body that was found had been placed, he ordered the seal to be removed, and the chest to be opened by the Father Provincial. The nuns were also summoned and again ordered to respond to several questions. But since nothing new occurred to be added, they were dismissed from the sacristy. All the bones placed in the chest were carefully examined and shown also to two Capuchin Fathers. When these things were done, the chest was sealed with the Most Eminent's ring seal in the presence of all, and committed to the care of the said Father Provincial, and enclosed in a larger chest in the sacristy: to be preserved there until a further resolution should be reached. When this question was raised, an inquiry was made whether any records existed of an ancient translation of the bones of Blessed Agnes, since it was said by tradition that the flesh had been consumed not long after death, and the bones had been transferred to a new chest. An old booklet about the death of Blessed Agnes and the deposition of the bones had been preserved, an old booklet consistent with these findings. but it is believed to have perished during the Swedish war in the possession of a certain noblewoman. The aforesaid Javornický, Archiepiscopal Chancellist, afterward Secretary of the Venerable Consistory, and indeed Distinguished Orator at the Tables of the Kingdom, had seen it previously, and testifies that it agrees especially with the recent findings, particularly as regards the chest. The Reverend Father John Tanner in his letters to us writes that he has seen some of the said bones and sensed their fragrance, and is decidedly inclined to believe that they were bones from the body of Blessed Agnes.

[18] Another inquiry was made by command of the Most August Emperor Ferdinand III. For after His Sacred Imperial Majesty, By command of the Emperor Ferdinand III. having received full information about the body that was found, but being uncertain whether it should be considered that of Blessed Agnes or not, had deigned to resolve and most graciously to order that, with expenses furnished from the Chamber of the Kingdom of Bohemia, diligent search should be made a new excavation begun whether another body, and perhaps that of Blessed Agnes, might be hidden there; the Most Reverend Lords Commissioners appointed for this business were: the aforementioned Lord Andreas Clemens Kocher von Kockenberg, who had been present at the prior examination, Lord Francis Thomas Visenteiner, Father Ferdinand Veghuben, Provincial Minister of the Order of Conventuals, and Lord Adam Raab, deputized from the Chamber. These therefore set to work on the fourteenth day of October of the said year 1643, but neither on that day nor the next was anything accomplished that needs to be inserted into this account. Then on the sixteenth of October a sepulcher was found, made of squared white stones: a sepulcher found, whose length was three ells and three quarters, width one ell and a quarter: which, on account of the depth and narrowness of the trench, was extracted in parts, just as it had also been constructed. When this was done, the altar of the chapel was partly demolished and partly removed, and they searched for what might appear in the white marble rising under the altar in the form of a sepulcher. That white marble, moreover, was by its very form fashioned into a sepulcher, of a length of three ells with three quarters, width of two ells with a quarter, depth of one ell and a half without the upper stone; in which, among earth and stones, a rotten wooden chest of about one ell was found, fastened with a double iron clasp: whose upper part had collapsed from decay. When these things were seen, Lord Visenteiner immediately entered that sepulcher, and ejecting earth with his own hands for more than the space of one hour, fortunately found these things noted below. and in it various bones: A cranium, an arm bone, a leg bone, two jawbones with four teeth, a piece of the spine, and certain other small fragments. All of which, together with the rotten parts of the chest and certain iron fittings, were carefully deposited in a chest in the sacristy under the seals of two Commissioners until the following day, the seventeenth of October; when, after hearing Mass, the said Lords Commissioners examined and recorded what they had found the day before, and finally had it placed in the chest and the chest sealed. Thus far the principal things from the Acts of the Venerable Consistory, or of another person? and nearly in their contracted words. Father John Tanner suspects that this second body, found in the month of October, is that of some Empress or Queen buried or deceased in that church: since many such had lived there. But he adds that the most certain truth cannot be discovered unless God reveals it by some manifest miracle.

[19] Meanwhile, greater devotion of the people of Prague toward Blessed Agnes was aroused, which was also confirmed by some miracles: among which these three were indicated to us, A paralytic is healed, the first of which occurred in the year 1642, only one year before the said discovery. A certain Sister, a paralytic, was bedridden in the monastery, deprived of all use of her hands and feet. She, inwardly urged, asked to be carried to the place of the sepulcher of Blessed Agnes: she was carried there, and with the help of the Sisters cast herself upon the ground in the form of a Cross, also asking for the auxiliary prayers of her companions. They complied, and prayed for the health of the afflicted one. With scarcely any delay, the dislocated Virgin arose most firm, and she who before could not stand on her feet, now without any support returned to her duties with the rest, as if she had not been ill.

[20] The Virgin Ludmilla Catherine Kozlowska, afterward Mother Abbess, was in the year 1657 given up by the physicians in her illness. a dangerously ill person, But when she had offered a candle and the prayers of the virgins to the Blessed Virgin Agnes, she immediately improved.

[21] In the year 1663 (in which year these things were sent to us from Prague), on the twenty-first day of September, Elizabeth Rossleriana, a citizen of the New Town of Prague, brought to the monastery of St. Agnes a little daughter suffering from desperate dysentery, one suffering from dysentery. and asked that she be clothed in the monastic habit, dedicating the child to Blessed Agnes. The Virgins agreed to the petition, and the little daughter recovered the following day.

§ III. FOUR LETTERS OF ST. CLARE TO BLESSED AGNES.

I. To the Illustrious and Venerable Virgin Agnes, Daughter of the most powerful and ever invincible King of Bohemia, Clara, unworthy handmaid of Jesus Christ, and servant of the virgins dedicated to God in the monastery of St. Damian, offers her spiritual services, and with the most humble reverence beseeches eternal happiness and glory.

[22] Hearing the fame of your holy way of life and irreproachable life, which has reached not only us but has already pervaded almost the whole world, I greatly rejoice and exult in the Lord in hearing of your glory; She praises her for choosing Christ over the Emperor as Spouse, and not only I, but all those who do and desire to do the will and service of Jesus Christ. For it is known how, when you could have enjoyed above all others the honor and glory of this world, and could have married the most August Emperor, as befitted your and his Majesty, with your whole heart's affection and inmost desire you have rather chosen holy poverty and the mortification of the flesh; having chosen in marriage a far nobler Spouse, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He will always keep your incorrupt and unstained virginity inviolate, whom when you shall have loved, you will always remain chaste; when you shall have touched, you will become more chaste; when you shall have received, you have remained a virgin. His power is stronger than all power, his grace more gracious, his appearance more beautiful than all others, his love singular, exceeding all delights. For the embrace of this Spouse you have been chosen, who has adorned your breast with precious stones and your ears with priceless pearls, and has wholly encircled you with chrysolite; and has crowned you with a golden crown, engraved with the sign of holiness. Wherefore, most beloved Sister, and indeed Venerable Lady, for you are the Spouse and Mother and sister of my Lord Jesus Christ, and his extreme poverty, gloriously adorned with the standard of incorrupt virginity and holy poverty, be strengthened in the holy service which you have begun by the example of the poor Crucified Jesus with fervent desire; who for us all endured dire torments on the cross, and snatched us from the power of the Prince of darkness, by whom we were held captive through the sin of our first parent, reconciling us to God the Father. O blessed poverty, which bestows eternal good things on those who love and embrace her! O holy poverty, to which those who possess it are promised the kingdom of heaven and eternal glory, and a blessed life is bestowed without doubt! O lovable poverty, which the Lord Jesus Christ, who governed and governs heaven and earth, who spoke and all things were made, has singularly embraced! For he himself says: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man, that is Christ, has nowhere to lay his head, and bowing his head on the cross he gave up his spirit. Wherefore so great and so mighty a Lord, entering the womb of the most pure Virgin, willed to come into this world in every way needy and poor, so that men, who were poor and lacking in heavenly food, might become rich in him, and lords of the heavenly kingdom. Rejoice therefore and exult greatly, and be filled with spiritual joy; since you have chosen rather the contempt of this world than its honor, poverty rather than temporal riches, and have preferred treasures in heaven over earthly ones, which is the surest way to attain salvation because you are deemed worthy to be the sister, spouse, and mother of the most high Son of God, and of the glorious Virgin Mary. I am certain that you believe and know with the firmest faith that the kingdom of heaven is promised only to the poor, nor is it conferred by the Lord on any others but the poor; for while the things of this world are loved, the fruit of love is lost. We cannot serve God and mammon: for either we shall love the one and hate the other, or we shall serve one and despise the other. You also know that one clothed in garments cannot contend with one who is naked, nor can one adorned with garments fight with the world; for he who has in himself something by which he can be seized is more quickly dashed to the earth. To live splendidly in this world and to reign with Christ in the other is difficult: for a camel will pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore you have cast off your garments, that is, the riches of the world, so that having wrestled with its deceits you might vigorously conquer, and enter the heavenly kingdom by the narrow way. Happy indeed, and worthy of all praise, is the transaction: to leave earthly things for eternal ones, to merit heavenly things through worldly ones, to receive a hundredfold for one, and to possess a blessed life without end. and she adds courage for perseverance, Wherefore I have determined to beseech your Highness and Holiness with the most humble prayers, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, that you be strengthened in his holy service, and always grow from good to better, from virtue to virtue: so that he, whom you serve with your whole heart's affection, may deign to adorn you with the most abundant grace. I also ask you in the Lord, as much as I possibly can, that you deign to commend me, your servant, though most unworthy, and the other devout Sisters who are with me in the monastery, to the Lord in your holy prayers, so that aided by your prayers we may merit the mercy of Jesus Christ, and together with you be deemed worthy to enjoy the eternal vision. Farewell in the Lord, and pray for me. Alleluia.

II. To the Daughter of the King of Kings, the Virgin of Virgins, the most worthy Spouse of Jesus Christ, and therefore Queen Agnes, Clara, useless and unworthy handmaid of the poor virgins, greeting, and the happiness of always living in great poverty.

[23] I give thanks to the giver of grace, She congratulates her on her outstanding progress, from whom we believe every good gift and every perfect gift comes, who has adorned you with such virtues, and brought you to such perfection, that having become an imitator of the works of the perfect Father, you were worthy to become perfect, lest his eyes should see anything imperfect in you. This is that perfection by which the heavenly King will unite you to himself in eternal joys, where he sits in glory on a starry throne. You, who have despised the height of the earthly kingdom, and spurned the delights of an Imperial marriage, having become a lover of holy poverty, and in the spirit of great humility and fervent love have clung to the footsteps of Jesus, were found worthy to be joined to him in marriage.

And because I know you to be most abundantly filled with all virtues, I do not wish to burden you with many words, although perhaps nothing superfluous in those things from which some consolation might come may seem so to you. I insinuate but one thing, because it is necessary, and exhort you through the love of him to whom you have offered yourself as a sweet-smelling sacrifice, that you remember your vocation, that, like another Rachel, always looking to your beginning: hold what you hold, do what you do; and never stop, but with a swift course, a meek imitation, with a nimble foot, lest your step contract any dust from it, she commends obedience, secure and joyful, advance on the way of such great blessedness: trusting no one, assenting to no one, who would tear you from this purpose, and place an obstacle in your path as you run in the way: run in that perfection to which the Spirit of God has called you, that in it you may render your vows to the Most High, and more safely walk the way of the Lord's commandments, and follow the counsels of our Reverend Father, Brother Elias, Minister General of the entire Order, and place those counsels above all other counsels to be followed by you, and esteem them more precious than every other gift. But if anyone shall have said or suggested anything to you that is contrary to your perfection, that would obstruct the calling of God, even if you could be exalted and honored above all men, do not follow his counsels: but a poor virgin, embrace the poor Christ; behold him who was made contemptible for your sake, and follow him, having been made yourself also contemptible for him in this world.

Behold your Spouse, more beautiful in form than the sons of men, and the imitation of the suffering Christ. made for your salvation the most deformed among men, his whole body torn with scourges, and expiring on the cross in the greatest pains; behold him, O illustrious Queen, and burn with your whole affection in imitation of him: if you suffer with him, you will also be glorified; if you grieve with him, you will rejoice; if you die with him on the cross, you will obtain heavenly dwellings with him in the light of the Saints: your name will be written in the book of life, to be glorious for ages of ages: for the transitory things of this world you will receive eternal goods, and live blessed without end. Farewell, most beloved Sister and virgin, blessed because of your Spouse, and deign to commend me with my Sisters (who rejoice greatly in the good things communicated to you by God) in your holy prayers diligently to the Lord God.

III. To the Virgin Agnes, to be honored above all others in Christ Jesus, and beloved above all mortals as a Sister, Daughter of the most serene King of Bohemia, and now Sister and Spouse of the supreme King of heaven, Clara, humble and unworthy handmaid of God, and servant of the poor virgins, the saving joy of the author of salvation, and whatever is best and desirable.

[24] For your happy health, your state, and your constant progress in what was well begun, She testifies to her joy at her progress in which I understand you to persevere cheerfully in attaining the heavenly reward, I am filled with vehement joy in the Lord: because I recognize that while you imitate the poor and humble Jesus Christ, you supply the defects of me and my other Sisters in this precious imitation. Truly I can rejoice, and no one can rob me of such great joy: for what I desired under heaven, you already possess: since I see you, surrounded by the wondrous prudence and grace of God, overcoming that cunning enemy, pride and vanity, which destroy and lead into foolishness the hearts of men, and I behold you embracing the treasure hidden in the field of this world and in human hearts, by which such things are purchased from him by whom all things were created from nothing — the humility of virtue, faith, and poverty; and to use the words of the Apostle, I declare you an assistant of God himself, the sustainer and raiser up of the falling members of his ineffable body. Wherefore who would forbid me from rejoicing in such great goods? Rejoice, you too, most beloved, always in the Lord, and let no bitterness whatsoever seize you.

O Virgin most dear in Christ, the joy of Angels and crown of Sisters! Place your mind in the mirror of eternity, place your soul in the splendor of glory, place your heart in the figure of the divine substance, and transform yourself wholly through the contemplation of God into the image of his Deity; that you may experience she exhorts to the love of God what his friends experience, tasting the hidden sweetness which almighty God has kept from the beginning for his beloved, and for all those who, being in this deceptive world, which seduces its blind lovers, abandon it: love him with your whole being who offered himself wholly for the love of you, whose beauty the sun and moon admire, whose reward is in its magnitude and abundance without end; I mean this Most High Son of God, whom a Virgin bore, and after childbirth remained a Virgin: cling to his most sweet Mother, who bore such a Son whom the heavens could not contain, yet she herself carried him in the little chamber of her virginal womb, and reclined him in a virgin's bosom. Who would not be moved to indignation by the deceit of the enemy of the human race, who through quickly passing things and vain glory strives to reduce to nothing what is greater than heaven itself?

It is already established for me by the grace of God with certainty that the worthiest creature, the soul of the faithful human being, is greater than heaven; to be esteemed above all things. since heaven with all other creatures could not contain the Creator: but the one faithful soul alone is his dwelling and his seat, and this through charity, which the impious do not possess, the Truth saying: He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and we will come to him, and we will make our dwelling with him: just as the glorious Virgin of virgins carried the true God and man in her virginal womb, so you too, by imitating her in humility and poverty, can always carry the same Lord spiritually, containing him by whom all things are contained: whom then you and others who spurn the riches of this world will contain more fully. John 14:23 In this some Kings and Queens of this world are deceived, whose pride, though it ascends to heaven and whose head touches the firmament, in the end will perish like dung.

I come now to those things which you asked me to make known to you, namely what ^e feasts those are on which we are allowed to use a variety of foods. These I transcribe for your devotion, as our holy Father Francis admonished us particularly to celebrate them. She declares on which Feasts one need not fast. So then it is as follows: Apart from the weak and the sick (whom he admonished and commanded to be given whatever foods with all solicitude), it is not permitted for any of us who is healthy and strong in body to use other than Lenten foods, whether on a weekday or a feast day; but one must fast every day, with only Sundays excepted, as also the days of the Nativity of the Lord, on which one may eat twice a day; likewise Thursday at the customary times, such that whoever wishes need not fast, nor is anyone compelled to do so. But we who are well fast every day, except Sundays and all the days of the Nativity and the Resurrection, as the Rule of our holy Father Francis teaches us. Also on the days of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy Apostles we are not bound to fast, unless perhaps they should fall on a Friday; and as I said above, those of us who are well and strong always use Lenten foods; because, however, our body is not made of air, nor is our strength the strength of stone, but we are weak and subject to bodily infirmities, I most urgently beg you in the Lord to abstain from the excessive rigor of abstinence, which I have come to know you practice: that living and hoping in the Lord, you may offer him a reasonable service, and your holocaust may be seasoned with the salt of prudence. Farewell in the Lord as you yourself desire, and commend me and my Sisters to your holy Sisters.

IV. To the half of my soul and the singular sanctuary of my deepest love, the Most Serene Queen Agnes, my most beloved Mother and Daughter beloved above all others especially, Clara, unworthy handmaid of Christ and useless servant of his handmaids who dwell in the monastery of St. Damian, greeting, and with the other holy Virgins to sing a new song before the throne of God and the Lamb, and to follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

[25] O Mother and Daughter, Spouse of the King of all ages; How united to Christ do not wonder that I have not written to you with the frequency that your soul and mine would have wished, and do not persuade yourself in any way that the fire of love with which I burn toward you has been in any way diminished; for just as the bowels of your mother loved you, so do I love you: only this intervened: the scarcity of messengers and the great dangers of the roads. Now, however, having found an opportunity to write to your charity, I co-exult with you, and congratulate you in the joy of the Holy Spirit, O spouse of Christ: for just as the first holy Agnes was united to the immaculate Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, so has it been given to you, O happy one! to enjoy the heavenly union of that bond which astounds the hosts of heaven: the desire of which draws all to itself, the memory of which satisfies, the goodness of which fills with every sweetness, the fragrance of which raises the dead: whose glorious vision makes blessed all the citizens of the supracelestial Jerusalem, which is the splendor of glory, the light of eternal light, and the mirror without stain: inspect this mirror daily, O Queen and Spouse of Jesus Christ, and in it contemplate your face more often, so that you may adorn yourself within and without with the most varied flowers of virtues, in him, she should gaze as in a mirror, and clothe yourself with those garments which befit the daughter and spouse of the supreme King. O most beloved, in gazing upon this mirror it will be permitted for you to delight yourself with divine grace. Approach and see, first in this mirror, Jesus reclining in the manger, in the greatest poverty, wrapped in vile swaddling clothes. O admirable humility! And astonishing poverty! The King of Angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, placed in a manger. In the middle of this mirror, behold the blessed poverty of holy humility, on account of which he endured very many hardships for the redemption of the human race.

At the end of the mirror, behold at last the ineffable love by which he willed to suffer on the wood of the cross, and even to die an infamous death upon it. and excite love toward him: This mirror, placed on the wood of the cross, admonished those passing by, saying: O all you who pass by the way, attend and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow: let us respond to him who calls and groans, with one voice and one spirit: With memory I will remember you, and my spirit will be anxious within me. Burn with this fervor of love, O Queen, and at the same time remember the ineffable delights, riches, and eternal honors of the heavenly King, and sighing with immense desire from the depths of your love, cry out: Draw me after you, let us run in the fragrance of your ointments, O heavenly Spouse: I shall run and not cease, until you bring me into the wine cellar, until your left hand be under my head, and your right hand happily embrace me: kiss me with the kiss of your mouth.

Placed in this meditation, remember your poor Mother, and know that I have inseparably written the happy memory of you on the tablets of my heart, holding you most beloved of all. What more? and commends the memory of herself, Let the tongue of the body be silent in loving you, and let the tongue of the spirit speak, O blessed Daughter: for the love which I have toward you, the corporeal tongue cannot express. Wherefore receive graciously and kindly what I have written insufficiently, and at least perceive the maternal love with which I burn daily toward you and your daughters. Commend me diligently to your daughters, and our most worthy Sister Agnes, to your daughters in the Lord. Farewell, O most beloved, with your daughters unto the throne of the glory of the great God, and pray for us. These messengers sent from us, our most beloved brothers, Brother Amatus, beloved of God and men, and Brother Bonagura, I commend to your devotion as much as I possibly can.

SUMMARY OF THE LIFE

written by Pisanus.

Agnes of Bohemia, of the Order of St. Clare, Prague (Bl.)

[26] There was another most distinguished in this Order by birth and holiness, namely St. Agnes of Bohemia, daughter of ^a Ottokar, King of Bohemia, ^b married to the Emperor Frederick II, although she was not taken by him. Bl. Agnes, having rejected the Emperor's nuptials, For when this Agnes heard the fame of St. Clare, who was still alive, and this ^c from those who came from Rome and Assisi, inspired by the heavenly spirit, ^d sweetly addressing her father, she besought him to permit her to serve the heavenly Spouse and not an earthly one. But when her father delayed giving his assent out of fear of the Emperor, to whom she had been promised as a bride, the handmaid of God promised her father that he could safely give his assent, because Jesus Christ himself would help in this very matter. At length, having obtained her father's consent, the virgin of God, Agnes, assumes the habit of the Clarisses: sent for the Friars Minor, who were already in Mainz, who coming to her, and consecrating her to the Lord with many other Princesses and distinguished Ladies, imposed upon her the habit of the religious life, and instructed her to live according to the Rule given by the Apostolic See to St. Clare and her Sisters. And when her father King Ottokar wished to designate great revenues for her and her Sisters, she refused; but she wished, as long as she lived, to subsist on the alms which the Brothers acquired for them: and thus to ^e this day, in the city of Prague, where the said Agnes was a nun, those Sisters, although they are most noble and many in number, have no possessions or revenues, she admits no revenues: but live on alms alone, acquired for them by the Brothers. When the Spouse Frederick the Emperor heard of the worldly renunciation made by St. Agnes herself, he was somewhat troubled, but recognizing her as espoused to Christ, he was consoled, saying: That since she was married not to an earthly man but to the Lord God, it was pleasing and acceptable to him, because she had not scorned him for the sake of a man, but for the sake of God. When Blessed Clare heard the fame of this Blessed Agnes through the messengers whom Agnes herself had directed to St. Clare, she praised the Lord her God, she receives gifts sent by St. Clare, and sent certain things to the said St. Agnes, namely a Pater Noster, a veil, a bowl in which St. Clare used to eat, and a cup and certain other things: which were received with the greatest devotion by St. Agnes herself, through which God performed many signs through the merits of Blessed Clare. All of which things, adorned with gold and gems, are preserved in the said monastery. When her fame resounded through Germany, monasteries began to multiply, and many daughters of Dukes, Counts, Barons, and other nobles of Germany, forsaking the world, by the example of Blessed Clare and Agnes were united to the heavenly Spouse, serving him without reproach. This Agnes indeed, illustrious in life and signs, she dies, renowned for miracles. after she had gathered many Sisters in her monastery and had led a celibate life in the present, going to her Spouse Christ, was glorified by many signs through Christ himself: for to this day she shines with the greatest miracles. She freed the Emperor Charles the Fourth, of the Romans and King of Bohemia, ^f twice from the jaws of death, Charles IV Emperor solicits for the Canonization. and entrusted to his son King Wenceslaus that he should labor with all his might for her canonization; but he, occupied and hindered by other things, did not ^g fulfill this wish of his.

^a Indeed, of Přemysl Ottokar.

^b Only betrothed, as is also read below.

^c Rather from the Friars Minor, who were living at Prague.

^d Her brother Wenceslaus the King should be substituted for the father, who died in the year 1229; as is clear from other Acts in the following passages.

^e For one hundred years after the death of Blessed Agnes. Pisanus died in the year 1401.

^f Once as an infant, around the year 1317, which the other Acts also mention: perhaps a second time after those Acts were written. He became Emperor in the year 1355; he died in the year 1378, and Wenceslaus then succeeded him.

^g Namely, while these Acts were being written with that Emperor. His Imperial dignity was taken from him in the year 1400, and he lived thereafter until the year 1419.

ANOTHER SUMMARY

written by Bartholdus Pontanus.

Agnes of Bohemia, of the Order of St. Clare, Prague (Bl.)

[27] Blessed Agnes, daughter of Přemysl, King of Bohemia, whom her father understood in a dream would be a saint, Bl. Agnes, brought up in holiness, from the habit shown her of St. Clare, and who often in her cradle would fold her little arms in the manner of a Cross, and likewise her feet: she, trained in pious exercises, fasts, alms, prayers, and the offices of Christian piety in the monastery of Třebnice, repudiated the marriages of the Emperor Frederick and the King of England, because the Emperor's Legate was taught in a dream, when he saw her lay down one crown and put on another more glorious. From Pope Gregory the Ninth she obtains the habit of St. Francis, and many privileges both from him and from the Emperor. She founds a monastery in honor of St. Francis, which she dedicated to the Order of the Cross-bearers with the Red Star, she founds monasteries, so that the poor of every kind might be nourished there. Afterward she also liberally established a cloister for the nuns of St. Clare, where she served as the handmaid Martha, to whom St. Clare, having heard her fame, sent congratulations, sending the rules confirmed by Innocent IV, which Agnes also asked to have confirmed anew by Alexander IV. And when she was admonished by ^a Cardinal John, she wishes to retain nothing for herself: Legate of Gregory X, to keep something of her own for contingent necessities, she replied that she had left all things to the world: yet she donated one part to the Churches, another to the Sisters, and a third to the sick. When in need for the Sisters on a certain Friday, God miraculously supplied bread, she receives bread and small fish from God, as on another occasion, gudgeon fish. Otherwise she was much given to fasting and mortification of the flesh and to flagellations, likewise to rougher garments and more frequent prayers than the Sisters were accustomed to. She recalled the daughter of her brother the King from death by her prayers, she raises her niece from the dead: who, however, weary of human life, gradually returned whence she had been called. Hence she wonderfully meditated upon and venerated the Passion of Christ, and received Holy Communion separately; she visited the sick Sisters and supplied what was needed. ^b She obtained victory for Přemysl against the Emperor Rudolf by her prayers. She also saw by divine gift Angels and the flame of incense around Bridget of the Order of St. Clare, when the latter wished to die: she sees Angels: and she herself died on the sixth day of the month of March, at the hour which was that of Christ's death, with great brightness, fragrance, and the tears of all, she dies, renowned for miracles. and was buried in the church of the most blessed Virgin Mary, where she frequently prayed, displaying very remarkable miracles for the sick and the dead.

^a This is Cardinal John Caetano Orsini, a noble Roman, a man distinguished for the majesty of his morals; who, having been created Pontiff on the seventh day before the Kalends of December in the year 1277, in veneration of St. Nicholas (whose Basilica he had been Cardinal Deacon of) took that name, being the third of that appellation.

^b There is some error on the part of the author: it should be written that she obtained victory by her prayers for her brother Wenceslaus against Frederick, Duke of Austria, which she also predicted for him. But Přemysl, his son, was killed in an unhappy battle against Rudolf.

LIFE

From a manuscript codex of Prague.

Agnes of Bohemia, of the Order of St. Clare, Prague (Bl.)

BHL Number: 0154

From Latin manuscripts.

CHAPTER I.

Birth, education, and life led in the world.

[1] Proem. Intending to write the deeds of the Lady Agnes of Prague, my most flourishing fellow citizen and most faithful spouse of Christ the Best and Greatest, before I seek my starting point from the place where it is necessary, I rightly present to her this nuptial hymn for the convent of virgins.

Let us all recount the life of the radiant Virgin, the Patroness of our homeland, With songs, with sistrums, with cithers, and with lyres Along with ten-stringed instruments.

She, fleeing the earthly bedchamber, Married the eternal Spouse with modesty, Celebrating her nuptials before a great Company of heaven.

[2] ^a Agnes, the illustrious Virgin of Prague, Daughter of Přemysl Ottokar, the most warlike King of the Bohemians, Bl. Agnes, born in 1205 of a royal line, and of Constance, Sister of Andrew, King of Hungary, Father of St. Elizabeth; was brought into the light in the Year of the Virgin's Delivery one thousand two hundred and five, at Prague. The singular splendor of living which she put on when more mature, she declared by signs running ahead at the very threshold of her life. For her mother, while carrying her in the womb, saw in sleep, among her gold-embroidered garments, a certain grey, rough cloak with hempen cords, and wondering, with a preceding omen, she learned from a voice addressed to her that the child she was about to bear would wear this kind of garment. Not long after she gave birth to Agnes, whom she found more than once in her cradle lying with feet and hands arranged in the form of a Cross, and she conjectured not vainly that she would be a handmaid of the Cross. When she was three years old, and already betrothed to a certain distinguished Duke of Poland, her parents sent her with a governess of morals and a not unbecoming retinue to Poland. she lives in a monastery: She, dwelling in the monastery of Třebnice among sacred virgins for three years, was maturing in piety as in age. The most religious Princess Hedwig of the Poles

powerfully amplified her religious efforts with her own training, as long as her betrothed clung to life. For when he had been released from this life by human death, she too, freed from the yoke of the future marriage, flew back to Bohemia, already six years old, and in the monastery of Doxany, among chosen Virgins devoted to the service of Christ, she shaped her life and understanding, partly by their example and partly by the refining of the Scriptures, throughout the year's cycle, so that when restored to the Royal court of her parents, she commended herself greatly to all by the brightness of her soul and the innocence of her life. And now Bohemia could not contain her, who, her fame's splendor having crossed the Hercynian forests, had shone so brilliantly even in the palace of the Emperor Frederick, that his son, lest she, being marriageable, be snatched away by another suitor, was sought by an ambitious embassy. at nine years old she is betrothed to the son of the Emperor Frederick: And the Kings of Bohemia admitted the entreaties of so great a supplicant. Forthwith therefore the Royal Virgin, bound by betrothal agreements, was pledged to the Emperor's son: in which matrimonial proceeding they relate that the unusual thing happened that not one from the company of groomsmen or attendants could speak the Virgin's name, so that it might be attested that Agnes was being reserved, promised to some more excellent spouse.

[3] Already called the bride of the Emperor's son, she was conveyed to Austria, to the Duke of that place, taken away to Austria, surrounded by a retinue of select maidens, to be both polished by him and indulged with the amusements suited to a more tender life. But she, banishing far from her mind every enticement of frivolous pleasures, spent the entire course of that time in which we commemorate the Lord's coming in the flesh, not in the flesh nor in feasting (as was the custom of that nation) but on bread alone and wine, she fasts strictly in Advent and Lent: a maiden of nine years. Entering upon the Lenten fast shortly after, while the sons and daughters of the Duke of Austria were partaking of dairy foods, she observed the same hard rule I have described above: meanwhile most ardently imploring the Mother of God to deign to make her an imitator of her virginity: for which reason she honored with special veneration and attention of mind to understanding its mysteries the feast on which the Virgin received the saving message by the Angel's voice. she commends her virginity to the Mother of God: All these works, however, redolent of divine love, together with generous distributions to the needy, she performed so discreetly that, with only her governess knowing, and a few most trusted virgins aware of her deeds, she revealed her pursuits to no one, she returns to Bohemia: for the sake of cutting off human praise. Hence it happened that the wedding, appointed for a certain day, was postponed indefinitely, and a suitable opportunity for Agnes to return to Bohemia was offered by this delay.

[4] But neither at home was Agnes long free from nuptial cares. For no great interval of time having elapsed, she is sought by the King of England: both Imperial and British royal legates were present at Prague, demanding Agnes as wife for their lords. But Christ declared that she was to be reserved as a spouse for himself alone by a vision given to one of the Imperial party (though he interpreted it wrongly). He seemed to see a crown distinguished with the most brilliant gems being placed on Agnes's head, she is seen crowned from heaven twice in a dream: and this shortly being removed, and another of inexplicable beauty being placed upon her: which omen, referring to himself and his colleagues, he confidently claimed victory over his British competitors. But in truth the mystery of the vision pointed to this: that not a fleeting and momentary glory, but a heavenly and eternal one, awaited Agnes. And indeed all the thoughts and efforts of the royal virgin inclined to this, that she might be able to love a life greater than the human one. Wherefore, when her father died, and Wenceslaus, after the death of her father, the brother of Agnes, was governing the affairs of Bohemia, she had fenced herself with these rules: that, having changed her attire, attended by her most trusted companions, at dawn she would make her way through many churches, and piously venerate the relics of the Saints, in changed attire she visits churches: however much her feet, burned by the cruelty of the cold, might drip with blood. Returning home, as soon as she had revived herself with warmth, she would go down to the nearest sacred building, with her entire virgin retinue following and speaking only of God, and attending to numerous sacrifices, she would now offer prayers for her own errors, now present the appointed Psalms for the dead to Christ. she puts on a hair shirt: On the outside she shone with purple attire, within she was pressed by the roughness of a hair shirt: she sleeps on a hard bed: her bed was adorned for appearance with precious coverlets and hangings, but she never weighed it down, secretly supported on something harder.

[5] The ^b fifteenth year of her life was now passing, when the Emperor, roused by the remarkable fame of her piety, undertook to hasten the promised marriage of his son with Agnes, by dispatching to her brother Wenceslaus a distinguished college of ambassadors. lest she be forced to accept the Imperial marriage, Nor did Wenceslaus presume to derogate in any way from the decree of his father Ottokar by his own refusals: rather, lest the Bohemian name, tenacious of its promises, be stained with the mark of inconstancy, he told his sister that he would support her if she would not contrive delays in such a matter. Here Agnes, seeing snares again being set against her resolve of eternal virginity, she takes refuge with Pope Gregory IX: directing secret couriers to Rome to Gregory the Ninth, begged that he would deign to favor the cause of Christ rather than of men, and not pronounce as ratified that marriage which had never grown together by the consent of her own mind: that marriage could be counseled for her by her relatives, but she could not and should not be compelled to it against her will by Christian law. The Pontiff, moved by the speech of the perfect and wise virgin, readily subscribed to her wish, and by his letters encouraged her to the pursuit of perseverance in this storm of life: and indeed, as a true father, he heaped upon his daughter many spiritual consolations. she informs her brother the King of her mind: Exulting wonderfully at this kindness of the Supreme Priest, the virgin informed her brother King Wenceslaus of her liberty, and joyfully presented the Pontifical diploma, by which she could repel, as with a battering ram, the entreaties of all suitors of whatever kind. The King, troubled, hastened to signify to the Emperor that what his sister had accomplished by her own private counsel was done entirely without his knowledge, and that all fault should be shifted from the ignorant to the knowing party. The Emperor at first gnashed his teeth, she is praised by Frederick and was roused to vengeance with boiling anger: but the storm of his spirit being dispelled, having become more serene, he pronounced this sentence, worthy of a Christian Emperor, concerning Agnes: If Agnes had preferred any outstanding man to his son, then indeed he would have driven off so great an insult with avenging arms: but since she had preferred the Son of God, whose servant he considered it an honor to be, to his own son, no just cause for resentment was offered him. Wherefore he urged the Virgin by letter to be of good heart, and to honor Christ's sacred chamber purely and firmly: this persistent ardor of her virginity was very pleasing to him. Let her therefore take the bones of the Saints which he was sending her, which, as pledges of his benevolent favor toward her, she might enjoy. ^c

^a The things that should be annotated here, we shall say for the most part at the other Life.

^b Rather, at the death of her father she had already almost completed twenty-five years.

^c Not for his son, but for himself, then a widower, the Emperor was seeking her. For his son had in the year 1223 taken as wife Agnes, daughter of the Duke of Austria.

CHAPTER II.

The monastic life of Blessed Agnes.

[6] Now, the flesh of Agnes having been subdued in several conflicts, she immediately bore down heavily upon the world in this way. She learns the institute of St. Clare: For having summoned discalced men living according to the rule of St. Francis, she learned from them that the summit of the better life, which Blessed Clare, a sister of that same Saint, zealously pursued, consisted in voluntarily assumed destitution, she establishes a hospital, and in the contempt of bodily pleasures, and in the subjection of one's own judgment to the wishes of another. Wherefore she did not delay in distributing that precious feminine finery among the poor: she established a hospital at the imitation of St. Elizabeth, her kinswoman, endowed with perpetual revenues, under the name of St. Francis, near the Bridge: then she ordered other sacred buildings to be raised within the circuit of the walls of Old Prague to the same Saint. sacred buildings, For the Virgins of St. Clare also, wishing to confirm themselves through contempt of all things, a monastery of the Clarisses, she fashioned a very spacious building under the name of the Savior, piled high with every ornament of a temple: and into it she introduced five Virgins, companions of Blessed Clare, sent to her from Italy by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff. sent from Assisi, She herself, not much later, together with a choir of seven Bohemian virgins illustrious for their nobility, in the presence of seven Bishops and her brother the King and the Queen, and enters it with seven others: and an almost innumerable crowd of spectators of every age and rank, exchanged her golden garment for a grey one, her hair having first been shorn, and was consecrated to Christ. When this became known, very many girls of the highest distinction in Poland, trampling the world after the example of Agnes, began to find their way and eagerly hasten to this Order.

[7] What manner, moreover, and how perfect a rule of life Agnes wove throughout all her years in the monastery, out of humility, can be enumerated rather than explained. For she appeared so worthless to herself that she always wished to be below all; she so regarded others as superior to herself that she judged it most fair that anyone should be set over her. From this root it is no wonder if these fruits pleasing to God came forth: that Agnes always shunned every excellence of office, that she heated the rooms for the Sisters of the same institute, she performs the most menial tasks: that she sweated diligently in the least labors of the kitchen, that she cooked the more delicate foods herself, so that she might distribute them to men who had fallen ill throughout the monasteries, that she cleansed the chambers of her companions of filth, that she both mended the foul and discharge-soiled clothes of lepers and other squalid persons pressed by sickness, brought to her at her own command, and washed them herself so frequently that, the acrimony of the filth spreading to her hands, she was forced to carry them about both cut and chafed. she receives from St. Clare rules of living, approved by the Pontiffs: At which St. Clare, having heard, was exceedingly glad, and gave thanks to God, the author of such great works in Agnes, and encouraged Agnes by letter to endure in the progress she had begun toward heaven: she also transmitted to her from Assisi her own rules of living, ratified by the power of Innocent IV. Agnes eagerly received them, and to make them more firmly established and more commendable to her own Sisters, she strengthened them with the approval of Alexander IV, the Vicar of Christ.

[8] But we have received her as so devoted a lover of voluntarily assumed poverty a lover of poverty, that she could not be compelled by any arguments of the Cardinal Caetano, the Guardian of her Community, to bind herself to certain fixed and particular possessions on account of the difficulty of the times. The most precious gifts of her father and of Princes she assigned partly to Christ for the adornment of churches, partly to herself, and partly for the benefit of the poor afflicted by disease. When her brother died, having twice fallen into the extreme want of all things, she endures hardships with joy: while others were mourning, she herself, though in poor health, was carried away with the greatest delight of spirit, giving thanks to God that he had deemed her worthy of the experience of the poverty she had desired. Which, however, Christ soon mitigated with the purest bread and with gudgeon fish, on which she enjoyed eating when ill, deposited at her threshold and found by the door-keeper.

[9] She was so hostile to her body in the first period of her conversion that she sustained it with no cooked foods at all, she fasts strictly: only a single raw onion, or some cloves of garlic, and sometimes a few fruits. On all the fasts prescribed by the Church, and on all Wednesdays and Fridays,

ferial days, along with the four vigils of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, and that entire period from St. Martin's day to the Nativity of our Lord, she puts on a hair shirt: she sustained her life throughout her entire age on bread and water. To these penances she added a horrible hair shirt woven from horse-hair, with which, as though protected by a breastplate, she would lull the assaults of the flesh. This she bound so tightly to her body that the cord wore a kind of groove for itself in her very flesh, she chastises herself with scourges: into which it might sink. And also very often with scourges made of leather thongs she cruelly lashed herself.

[10] Besides the customary and communal prayers of her household, in her private oratory she strove toward God with such fervor of heart and mouth that her face was moistened with tears, fervent in prayer and by that radiance with which she was suffused while praying, she dazzled the eyes of the Sisters who turned to look at her. She was found in that place by the Virgin Benigna surrounded by a shining cloud: enveloped in a bright cloud, greater than the human condition. A male voice was heard, giving responses to her as she prayed. On the day when the Church celebrates the solemn Ascension of the Lord into heaven, while she was chanting psalms in the garden between the Virgins Benigna and Prisca, she is rapt into ecstasy: snatched from the midst of them, she was scarcely returned to them within the hour, and when asked about her absence, she indicated nothing except a becoming and gentle smile. While she was praying that verse over the fresh corpse of her deceased younger sister: "You who raised Lazarus," etc., a wondrous thing! the body began to receive life and to move, she raises her sister from the dead: and to chastise the Sister for having tried to cast her out of her joys. The Virgin ceased to pray, and the one restored to life hastened to die again. At the sight of these things, the demon gnashed his teeth with envy and began to unfold the snares of his malice. Wherefore, as she was coming out of the oratory, he overthrew her on the steps so that in falling he dislocated her arm from the shoulder, and caused her atrocious pain. Which injury she bore with so calm a spirit that, concealing the pain, she treated herself with secret remedies.

[11] from a revelation she learns she will be the last of her relatives to die: Once when ill and partaking of the Body of Christ, she learned from Christ hidden therein that she would not die before all her blood relatives had perished. When she had entrusted this under the seal of faithful silence to a certain man dedicated to God, it came to pass exactly as she had predicted. To Sophia, a noble Matron, wife of the Knight Conrad, who after childbirth was in danger of her life, she heals a sick woman with an apple, Agnes offered through the hand of the husband an apple she had longed for, by eating which she was immediately restored to firm health, and when her husband died, she became an imitator of Agnes and renounced the world. This apple, together with two others, Agnes had called forth by the sign of the Cross from a tree that had been barren of fruit. produced by the sign of the Cross: Nor is it surprising that she accomplished great things through the Cross, who for the worship of the Cross and of Christ who had been fastened to it, persisted groaning beneath it every Friday until the ninth hour. The Virgin Elizabeth, who had followed the same way of life as Agnes, she removes a headache: she cured of an inconsolable and intolerable pain by wrapping her own head-covering around her. At another time, the weakened Agnes, supported by the hands of the Lady Virgin, she puts the devil to flight with the sign of the Cross: beheld the devil, leaning against a piece of wood with a hideous face: at whose sight the Lady cried out in terror, but Agnes, opposing the sign of the Cross to him, put him to flight from the oratory. The same enemy afterward, in the form of an owl, striving to bar her entrance to the oratory with his tail, she rendered powerless with the same arms.

[12] Concerning her kindness and courtesy toward the afflicted and those destined for death, I think only this need be said, kind toward others, that she was accustomed to bestow benefits on all in such a way as if she had given birth to them all: and to admonish the Sisters who had transgressed in such a way that after the admonition, if perchance she had gone somewhat beyond measure in this task, she would not disdain to seek pardon from them, prostrate at their feet. even those who transgress: A certain Virgin, from among the excellent apples presented to Agnes, diverted one to herself, captivated by its appearance; soon, her conscience laboring from the fault, she returned the apple and completed the number. To whom Agnes cheerfully gave two excellent apples, declaring that it was better to eat ten according to the rules than one with the bond of voluntary poverty loosened; thus Agnes is shown to have been present to those who were absent.

[13] On a certain day, while Agnes was processing in a company of Virgins preceded by the Cross, King Ottokar ^b her father was presented to her in a vision, in a vision she perceives that King Ottokar has died, as if wounded, supported on either side by two warriors: when she had recounted this to the same Virgins, and supposed it to be a mockery of demons, she at length discovered that that vision had truly been a manifestation from God. For on that very day her father, who had fought in battle against the Emperor Rudolf, had perished by the treachery of certain men. When a Virgin, entreating God with the most secret and most fervent pleas, was imploring that God would grant her something, Agnes with a rather severe countenance ordered her to desist from such a petition, affirming that the thing was unworthy of God to bestow. Nor was it surprising that she should know the hidden counsels and aspirations of one person, she perceives the thoughts of others, who clearly perceived, God illuminating her understanding, both the punishments and the merits of all her companion virgins. And indeed it has been noted that nothing was ever predicted by her and their merits and punishments, which did not come to pass exactly as she had declared. It is remarkable that a certain woman who had while living detracted from the fame of Agnes, after death could not be freed from torments by any other means, another woman detained in torments after death, unless she were granted pardon for the crime committed by Agnes. But Bridget, another sacred virgin, who had in good conduct honored Agnes while mortal, was seen by Agnes to be borne up to heaven among the ranks of Angels, freed from the body. another seen being carried up to heaven.

^a Monasteries: so Philo the Jew calls it οἴκημα ἱερόν ὃ καλεῖται σεμνεῖον καὶ μοναστήριον, a sacred house, which is called Semnium and monasterium: σέμνος means chaste, religious.

^b Indeed, not her father, but her nephew Přemysl Ottokar, of the same name as his father. His death is established from the other Life and from all the historians of that age.

CHAPTER III.

The illness, death, and burial of Blessed Agnes. Miracles after death.

[14] Having begun the strict Lenten fast, When the great fast of forty days was approaching, during which she, as if to fast with Christ in the wilderness, withdrew not only from external people but even from her own Sisters. During that time she did not cease to pray to God, that he would mercifully grant her pardon for her lapses and faults. While she was doing this, she shortly began to fall ill, and as the illness increased, she felt that her life was coming to an end: ill, she receives the last Sacraments: then, breathing heavily, she soon made herself a partaker of the Body of Christ, and was anointed with holy oil. When this was reported to the Virgin Catherine, who for ten years had been unable to stand on her feet, she, cut to the heart with immense grief, asked to be carried into the sight of the dying virgin. while dying, she heals a lame woman with the sign of the Cross: Having been carried there, she implored Agnes with the most earnest prayers to vanquish her ailment with the divine sign of the Cross. Agnes, out of a sense of lowliness, hesitated, and turned her speech to softening the other's heart. Catherine, sensing that the virgin was about to depart and that she would be left in her affliction, seized Agnes's hand and impressed the heavenly sign upon her own feet, and quickly, saved, she sprang up on firm footing. Agnes, however, grew worse and gradually wasted away in body, yet nevertheless, even then, did not cease to redouble her dense prayers, she exhorts the Sisters: to console her companions, to raise them to the hope of divine aid, and earnestly to commend to them the love of God and neighbor, the love of poverty, and submission to the Roman See, and to fix these things deeply in their hearts, and this throughout that entire evening and the night that followed.

[15] Around the ninth hour, however, she seemed to shine with greater brilliance, shining with light, she dies, and to gleam far and wide with the most radiant rays, and at the beginning of the sacrifice that had been commenced, she departed this life, in the year of the world's Savior one thousand two hundred and eighty-first, ^a on the sixth day of March, having run her course in the monastery for forty-six years in a holy and religious manner. To see her body, which was neither rigid nor discolored, throngs of every age and rank came in multitudes for many days, and they counted themselves thrice blessed who could touch the members worthy of heaven with their rings, or necklaces, or belts. At length the body was enclosed in a wooden sarcophagus, enclosed in a sarcophagus, which, bound with solid iron plates and nails, protected it lest it be dismembered and torn apart. Meanwhile the Lady Scholastica of Šternberk, a lover of Agnes and beloved by Agnes, arriving, earnestly prayed, even presenting a Pontifical diploma, which opened of its own accord, that she not be deprived of the last sight of her dearest virgin. While the virgins of that place were deliberating whether they should satisfy her requests, the divine goodness did not deliberate, and so loosened the iron joints of the sarcophagus that Scholastica could freely venerate the desired treasure with her eyes. she is buried in the chapel of the Virgin Mother of God: She was buried in the chapel of the Holy Virgin, not by Bishop Tobias, nor by the nearest Priests of that rank, who declined the proffered duty, but by a certain, as she had forewarned, barefoot friar called Bonagratia. a sweet odor is breathed forth: From her sacred bones, the virgins dwelling there perceived not infrequently that divine fragrances were spread, which Agnes revealed happened because of the presence of the Blessed spirits visiting her body, to a certain Sister who had fallen asleep in prayers at her sepulcher.

[16] Margaret, her great-granddaughter, is healed, Judith, Queen of Bohemia, wife of King Wenceslaus, placed her little daughter Margaret, of desperate health, on the sepulcher of Agnes, with the sacred vestment, and received her back in good health. Queen Elizabeth, wife of John, King of Bohemia, called upon once and again at night to seek the prayers of Agnes, her fellow citizen, to avert the present misfortune that threatened her, obeyed, and sought a certain Agnes living in the monastery of St. Francis, and when Blessed Agnes appears to the Queen, whom she waited for before the doors when she had learned from the door-keeper that she was present. Meanwhile Agnes, of heavenly aspect, presented herself to the Queen through the lattice of the place, and inquired what she wished to be done through her. And when she heard that prayers were being sought, she withdrew as if displeased. The Queen, however, more earnestly pressing on her knees, called upon the virgin who had turned away. Who, turning toward her as if now softened by her words, promised that she would do what was asked. And shortly after word was brought to the Queen, her son: that her only son in the castle of Loket, who in everyone's judgment was about to die, had revived. Sensing that this was accomplished with God through the agency of Agnes, she adorned her dwelling with splendid gifts. The same Queen, worn out by extreme weakness after childbirth, had lost consciousness, and by the judgment of the physicians devoted to certain death, she recognized herself as healed by the implored help of Agnes.

[17] an infant, doubtful whether he lived: The boy Martin, son of the Prague citizen Margaret, doubtful whether he was alive or dead, was committed by the midwife to the sepulcher of Agnes, and was brought back in good health. The sacred Virgin Dominica, who had been taken for dead, a dead nun. was covered by a Sister with the cloak of Agnes, at whose touch she reported that a new light had dawned for her, which both dissolved her in laughter and freed her from pain.

[18] The Sisters were commending to God by their prayers the soul of the Virgin Varacia, who was struggling with death. But she, a dying woman is freed: having conceived a vow of three sacrifices in the name of Agnes, rose up perfectly healthy; but soon, having relapsed into sickness while praying, she would have

perished, had she not hastened by her own diligence to fulfill the vow that had been suspended through the negligence of the Priest. another from fever, Then the Sisters treated Ludmilla, struggling at the extremity with a fever, by pouring over her wine in which the bones of Agnes had been washed. To Pribico, a man of servile condition, another in a fall, who had fallen in the church as if lifeless, they poured into his mouth the water in which they had moistened some hairs of Agnes, and they soon saw him restored to his senses. A girl called ^b Mala had fallen out of the boat which she was driving on the Elbe, and, having swallowed not only water but also enveloped in sand, was perishing. another in danger of drowning: But she was snatched from destruction by raftsmen who happened to come upon her. For she was borne toward Agnes (retaining some of her hairs in her possession) with half-dead sighs.

[19] another from a dangerous illness, Christine also, having vainly tried human help in a pernicious illness, as soon as she had bound herself by a vow to Christ under the name of Agnes, recovered, and as one bound by her vow, dedicated herself to Christ. A woman of Prague, for many days almost driven out of her mind by the pain of labor, a woman in labor, when she had girded herself with the belt that had touched the body of Agnes, escaped the shipwreck of death. another from pain of the thigh, Dobroslava, a woman of Slaný, long tormented by a dire pain of the thigh, having drunk the wine in which the bones of Agnes had been soaked, both suppressed and relieved that part of her body. from an abscess, The nobleman Tasa, besieged by an abscess in the throat, having drunk the water which had washed the hair of Agnes, and having applied it to the afflicted part, lifted that unwelcome siege of his throat, and discharged the vow which he had taken on that account, together with not a few gifts to the poor. The Abbot Hinco, afflicted with the same but graver disease, from frenzy while thrusting out his tongue with a horrible appearance, having sucked the wine in which they had dipped the bones of Agnes, was freed from that malady.

[20] Wenceslaus, a secretary of a certain Knight, bore all the passages of his throat so obstructed by viscous humors, from an abscess in the throat: that he could scarcely draw breath, much less swallow food. And when he had been dipped and anointed with water tinged with the hair of Agnes, he first uttered a bleating sound, similar to the cry of a sheep, then a clear voice praising God. from fever, It is certain that Constantia, who had succeeded the Holy Agnes in the office of governing the convent, was, after offering her prayer at her sepulcher, snatched both from a burning and from a long-lasting fever. Agnes Gizica, a virgin of the same monastery, having been brought by the assistance of another Sister to the sarcophagus of Agnes, from weakness of the elbow. immediately received her former strength in her powerless and stiff elbow. The Lady Scholastica of Žerotín, burdened with an incurable abscess on her side, from an abscess on the side, when during the embrace in which she clasped the dead Blessed Agnes, she had pressed her own afflicted side to her side, rapidly recovered.

[21] from a flow of blood, The story is known to all concerning Maladata, wife of a nobleman of Litomyšl, that she was relieved of a flow of blood by a vow made to Agnes. The sacred Virgin Domca, about to hang a cauldron on a hook, she fell into the fire, fell into the flames of the hearth, and having invoked Agnes in her fall, rose up whole from the fire. This also was accounted a miracle, that the seat of Agnes, when the house in which it was preserved burned down, was not touched, only marked by the flames on one side. When the flooding Moldau had burst into the church where the Holy Agnes is interred, she fell into the water. the Virgin Elizabeth was hastening to take up the bones of the sacred virgin, and handling the matter in haste, she fell into the deeper waters. But rescued by the Virgin Zdinica, she appeared completely dry, by the benefit of Agnes.

[22] The Virgin Judith, moved by an immense love of Agnes, had pulled off a nail from her foot, so that she might have some memento of the virgin she loved, to console herself. But an immense quantity of blood erupting from that wound, Blood flowing from the nail heals diseases. so soaked the virgin's veil, with which she was laboring to dry it, that it could no longer absorb more. Then the virgin, fixed to the ground, sought pardon for her offense, and the blood was stanched.

[23] From that blood thereafter the health of many was abundantly restored. And for us, O Virgin, who bear you in our eyes and have consecrated this labor of ours to you, will there be no reward? You know what we ask, you know what we most need: Epilogue. receive from your Spouse and give: unless you give, may it not be said that you are more a lover of strangers than of your own citizens.

^a Indeed in the year 1282, as was said above.

^b In the other Life, the name Parva Small is given to her.

ANOTHER LIFE

Composed from Bohemian manuscripts by George Crugerus of the Society of Jesus.

Agnes of Bohemia, of the Order of St. Clare, Prague (Bl.)

From Bohemian manuscripts.

§ I. The year and day of birth, parents and relatives of Blessed Agnes.

[1] The year one thousand two hundred and five was turning when Agnes, a royal infant, Bl. Agnes, daughter of the King of Bohemia, first saw the light of heaven at Prague; that no one else should be marked by the name of a Saint than Agnes, the day following her birth brought about. For since she had come forth into the world on the eve of that feast, the Bishop ^a Daniel rightly on that account named the royal infant Agnes at the sacred font. Her parents, moreover, nature had bestowed upon her: ^b Přemysl II (who is also ^c Ottokar I, the Third King of Bohemia) and ^d Constance, the daughter of Béla III, King of Hungary; but however distinguished both were with the royal scepter, the most holy virgin surpassed them both by her modest contempt of royal things, for she afterward shone more brilliantly in the religious cloak of St. Clare than if she had glittered as a Princess and Heroine in purple and gems.

[2] Moreover, Agnes had brothers as well as sisters from the same parents; to whom fortune, not entirely adverse, bestowed particular favors. For ^e Wenceslaus, the first among Kings, ruled as the Fourth King of Bohemia, distinguished by both his piety toward sacred things and his military success; ^f Přemysl III, another brother, the Margraviate of Moravia sustained him respectably as a Prince for some time, she had a King and a Margrave as brothers, until death led the celibate man to the grave in his first years of manhood.

[3] The first sister, ^g Borislava, Ulrich, the first Duke of Carinthia, took as his consort in marriage; from which union Ulrich II and Philip I, the last lords of Styria and ^h of Pordenone, were begotten. sisters: Borislava married to the Duke of Carinthia The latter, first ^i Provost of the Vyšehrad Chapter at Prague, then ^k Archbishop of Salzburg, and finally ^l Patriarch of Aquileia, lived; but Ulrich II, even though he had taken a wife, since he had no heir, transferred his hereditary lands to ^m Ottokar III, the Fifth King of Bohemia, his cousin, partly by sale and partly by liberal donation. ^n Anna, the second of the sisters, was married to Henry II, the Duke of Wrocław, celebrated for his integrity; but she ^o lost him, though after several children, at ^p Legnica, when the Tartar inflicted a memorable defeat on the Christians there around the Year of the Lord 1241: and Anna, married to the Duke of Wrocław: she herself received the last wound common to humanity at Wrocław in the Year of the Lord 1265. And so she found her rest there, at St. Clare's in the convent of sacred virgins of the same institute, which she herself had once raised from the foundations.

[4] Not only through these royal marriages of brothers and sisters did Agnes become famous, but she also counted among her foremost distinctions her kinswomen or relatives most illustrious for the fame of their holiness. ^q Hedwig, the mother-in-law of Henry the Valiant, the husband of her sister Anna, her kinswomen Blessed Hedwig and St. Elizabeth. Silesia still remembers what kind of Duchess she was in virtue. ^r Likewise Elizabeth, the daughter of Andrew, the brother of Constance, Agnes's mother: what prodigies did not make her famous in Hesse? And hence it should perhaps not seem surprising that from so close a blood of holy women, some drops of virtue also flowed down to Agnes, and thus the examples of her kinswomen contributed greatly to her rare holiness.

^a Daniel, Bishop of Prague. When Henry, who was both Bishop and Duke, died in the year 1197, Daniel the Second of that name succeeded him, and lived until the year 1214, when upon his death Andrew, previously Provost of the same Church, was elected.

^b Přemysl, King of Bohemia When Henry, Duke and Bishop, died, his brother obtained the Duchy, whom Přemysl, son of King Vladislaus II, drove out by force of arms, and in the third place among the Kings of Bohemia was crowned by Bishop Daniel in the year 1200.

^c Called Ottokar, He is said to have been called Ottokar or Ottischgar, because he adhered to Otto, Duke of Saxony, elected Emperor, against Philip, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, assumed by others after the death of his brother Henry VI: and thus in the German language Ottogaris means, as it were, wholly devoted to Otto.

^d Having repudiated Adela, daughter of the Margrave of Meissen, he married Constance, daughter of Béla, King of Hungary, in the year 1202. So says Hagecius, Queen Constance who adds that the prior divorce had been lawfully made by Pontifical authority. Dubravius, book 15: He contracted marriage with Constance, daughter of Béla, King of Pannonia, with the assent of the Roman Pontiff. In the other Life, Constance is called the sister of Andrew, King of Hungary, namely the one then reigning, after her father Béla, when his brother Emeric in the year 1200, and his son Ladislaus the following year, had departed from life and kingdom. It is surprising that Thomas Jordan, writing on Dubravius, Wadding under the year 1234 number 4, and Arthur in the Franciscan Martyrology, should raise doubt and have recourse to Constance, widow of King Emeric, then married to the Emperor. See below under letter r.

^e It is recorded by Hagecius that Wenceslaus was born in the year 1206: whom, elected King by the will of his Father, the Emperor Frederick II confirmed by a diploma signed in the year 1216, on the seventh day before the Kalends of August, Indiction 4, in the fourth year of the Roman Empire. See Goldast in the Appendix of Documents of Bohemia, page 23. Then in the year 1228, the Kings Ottokar and Wenceslaus of Bohemia attested that they should be consecrated and crowned by the Archbishop of Mainz. Ibid., page 26.

^f This Margrave of Moravia Přemysl, together with his mother Queen Constance of Bohemia, founded the Cistercian convent of nuns in Moravia, named Porta Coeli, commonly Tišnov, in the diocese of Olomouc: Přemysl, Duke of Moravia. where at the high altar the marble tomb of the said Queen Constance appears. The foundation charter was published by Gaspar Jongelinus in the Catalogue of Abbeys of the Cistercian Order in the Margraviate of Moravia, page 47, signed at Znojmo in the year 1234 on the day before the Kalends of November. Constance died in the year 1240, under which year Hagecius mentions this foundation and the building of another monastery. These things needed to be confirmed against the errors of Dubravius and Aeneas Silvius and others, who make this Přemysl either the son of King Wenceslaus, who in the charter is called his brother, or at least say he lived after the death of Wenceslaus and became his successor in the kingdom.

^g Born the eldest of all the children in the year 1203.

^h Pordenone Pordenone, a city of Friuli: that the Archdukes of Austria afterward wrote themselves Lords of it, we noted on January 14 in the Life of Blessed Odoric of Pordenone, also of the Order of Friars Minor, page 983.

^i Vyšehrad is a royal castle at the end of the New Town of Prague, where the Moldau approaches the city, Vyšehrad said to have been built in the year 683, and afterward adorned with thirteen churches: but the Provost of the chief church was exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishops.

^k Philip, Archbishop of Salzburg. Hundius

in his Metropolis of Salzburg places Philip as the thirty-fifth Archbishop, created in the year 1249, where he asserts that his father (but calls him Bernard), Duke of Carinthia, died in the year 1256, and that his son Ulrich succeeded him.

^l When Gregory de Montelongo, Patriarch of Aquileia, died in the year 1259, Patriarch of Aquileia. Philip occupied the See and endured many difficulties both in this and in the preceding See.

^m When Wenceslaus the father died on the twenty-third of October in the year 1253, Přemysl Ottokar succeeded him as King of Bohemia, to whom Ulrich, Duke of Carinthia, was a cousin, Přemysl III, King since the latter's mother Borislava was Wenceslaus's sister.

^n Anna was born between Borislava and Blessed Agnes, in the year 1204.

^o This Henry is surnamed below the Valiant, son and heir of Henry the Bearded, Duke who died in the year 1238, and of St. Hedwig.

^p Legnica, in others Lignicia, a ducal city of Lower Silesia. Concerning the slaughter inflicted on Christians there by the Tartars on the said year 1241, the ninth of April, in the week after the Octave of Easter, and concerning the courageous spirit of Duke Henry fighting to his last breath, The Tartars invade Silesia. one should read Matthias of Miechów, book 3 of the Chronicle of the Kingdom of Poland, chapter 39. His body was buried by his wife Anna in the church of St. James, which he, with the attached convent, had built for the Friars Minor around the year 1236.

^q She was not only the mother-in-law of Anna, the sister of Blessed Agnes, but also the designated mother-in-law of Agnes herself; as will be said below.

^r St. Elizabeth was the cousin, or rather the cousin-german, of Blessed Agnes. Pope Gregory IX, in a letter of commendation concerning the praises of St. Elizabeth to Queen Beatrice of Castile, addressing St. Elizabeth thus says concerning Blessed Agnes: St. Elizabeth, cousin of Blessed Agnes. You have also intoxicated with the cup of this vessel Agnes, the handmaid of Christ, a virgin, daughter of the King of Bohemia, your Sister, in whose tender age we experience the signs of heavenly conduct in harsh matters, so that fleeing the offered heights of the Imperial summit as if they were venomous reptiles, and naked seizing the triumphal standard of the Cross, she now proceeds to meet her Spouse with lighted lamps, accompanied by a choir of sacred Virgins. The full letter is presented by Wadding under the year 1235, number 14. But because he had seen "Sister" written, when she was only her cousin or cousin-german, he thought that Constance, the mother of Blessed Agnes, was not the sister but the daughter of Andrew, the father of St. Elizabeth; and then Elizabeth would have been the aunt of Blessed Agnes. But because this Virgin was born two years before Blessed Elizabeth, perhaps she should be established as even older than her own mother, since Andrew, after Gertrude, the mother of St. Elizabeth, had two more wives after the prior ones had died.

§ II. Signs of the future holiness of Blessed Agnes before birth or in infancy itself.

[5] It is not by chance or from any quarter that heaven selects great souls for itself, for before they are enclosed in bodies, the heavenly powers reveal for whom they are destined, lest anyone extend an impudent hand toward delights, a robber of the divine, and then perhaps lead away such dainties further from God by an innocent or at least imprudent diversion. According to this observed law, therefore, similar things happened regarding Agnes, not yet born, or while still merely an infant in her cradle. First of all, her mother Constance saw in her sleep, while carrying the holy burden in her womb, in her royal wardrobe, among the purple and garments adorned with gold and gems, a certain grey cloak of entirely rough workmanship with hempen cords being mixed in, and set apart in the first place, as if it were an august garment. While she hung in suspense at this unusual garment, and wondered at every aspect of its form and color in this new attire; By a portent, the future Clarisse is indicated before birth: a voice from heaven, with clear speech, explained the mystery, solemnly predicting that the child whom she was already carrying in her womb would one day wear this kind of garment. The vision, and its voiced explanation from heaven, was afterward confirmed by the event itself around the Year of the Lord 1234, when Agnes, the daughter of Constance, gloriously cast aside all purple and other royal and indeed imperial garments below the ^a habit of St. Clare, and in that cloak, as a vestal virgin, however modestly, yet solemnly, triumphed over the feminine world, namely the golden and gem-adorned trappings of feminine beauty.

[6] Born, moreover, and placed as an infant in her cradle according to custom, although she did not yet know what she was doing, yet by her very posture and the arrangement of her hands and feet, the infant lies with hands and feet crossed. she most beautifully signified whose Spouse she wished to be, and under whose guidance she would run the course of her life. For when either her mother or her nurses allowed her hands to be free and her little feet unbound, the royal infant usually formed her virginal limbs in the manner of a Cross, with hands crossed and little feet bent, and thus most sweetly rested, as if already at that time lulled to sleep by the love of the Crucified. That posture turned the pious suspicion of most into an omen: nor did Agnes disappoint the sacred auguries, since, as long as she lived, she did nothing more than prove, in imitation of Jesus, tested by love of us in every way in the torment of the cross, her own fortitude in adversities and her contempt of injuries, to an extraordinary and astonishing degree of virtue.

^a St. Clare was shorn and consecrated as a sacred Virgin by St. Francis in the year 1212, that is, seven years and more after this vision was shown to Constance. Moreover, this vision, and what is handed down about the crossed hands and feet, are also noted in Pontanus's Bohemia Pia and commonly by others.

§ III. The holy education of Blessed Agnes in the monasteries of Třebnice and Doxany.

[7] The anxious love of Princes courts heirs even in their infancy: hence to secure unions of this kind in a timely manner, even before ages suitable for marriage, such anxious inquiries are earnestly conducted: scarcely any cares of Kings are greater than to establish, before the mature age of children, harmony with future spouses, and to induce love; both of which, then stabilized by a solemn marriage, would labor with childbirth for the quasi-perpetual possession of crown and scepter, and would be strengthened by frequent offspring. Who therefore would wonder that similar hunters, intent on the royal girl, though not yet in time for marriage, had flown to Bohemia, and had sought for the ^a son of the Princes of Silesia the most beautiful little Agnes in union? At three years old, betrothed to a Prince of Poland, The royal girl had not yet been born more than three years, when her royal parents sent her, betrothed to ^b Boleslaus, Prince of Silesia, with a governess of morals and a distinguished retinue of noble virgins and the rest of the household, to the parents and relatives of the groom in Silesia. They, according to the holy custom of those times, enclosed her among sacred virgins at Třebnice in a famous convent, two leagues from Wrocław. Meanwhile they were not at all afraid she lives in the Třebnice monastery, that the royal virgin, however remote from the torches of the Bridegroom Prince, would turn aside to the nearby loves of Christ. For most pious Princes either frequently wished many of their daughters to die in the service of Christ as virgins without posterity, or else sought Christian wives for the marriage bed from no other source than those who had preserved their virginal flower in a monastery. In the convent of Třebnice, therefore, the little virgin Agnes, among the sacred virgins, most sweetly drank the milk of Christ, by which indeed she herself, once also sacred, would one day nourish a hundred companions to the Savior: and she was most tenderly learning that piety through the continuous exercise of virtue, by whose example she would not only inflame the nuns for forty-nine years, but also the citizens and all subjects for fully seventy years and more, into the love of God and the Saints in a preeminent way. Moreover, this education lasted three years, under Blessed Hedwig: in which this also happily contributed to Agnes's happiness, that the most religious Princess Hedwig, and although a royal widow, yet the leader in virtue of the sacred virgins, took more particular care of this little nursling; whose holy endeavors were especially encouraged by the most holy woman for two reasons: because as the mother of Henry, through his marriage with her sister Anna, she was more closely bound to Agnes's parents, and because Hedwig herself of her own accord wonderfully inclined toward Christian piety and virtues worthy of heaven.

[8] But indeed Christ had selected Agnes as his Spouse from eternity; after the death of her betrothed, she returns, hence Boleslaus the Prince never attained to the love anticipated by hope. For the three years at Třebnice having passed, lest the betrothed should one day divert the insufficiently innocent delights of God to himself, before his time yet in time he was removed from the number of the living to the immortals by death. On this account the virgin Agnes, now ^c six years old, was recalled by her parents to Bohemia; nor did she begin her growth in virtue anywhere in her homeland other than where she had laid the foundations. She emigrated indeed from the Cistercian convent of virgins at Třebnice when she left Silesia; but returning to Bohemia, she entered a convent once more, but the Norbertine one at ^d Doxany, and there among the choicest heroines of Christ drawn from the Bohemian nobility, she dwells in the Doxany monastery: by the reading of Sacred Scripture on one hand and by examples of heroic virtues especially on the other, she advanced from her seventh to her ninth year in such a way that, brought thence into the court of her parents, she greatly commended herself everywhere to Přemysl and Constance, her grandparents, by the rare innocence of her life; and also drew her inferiors into veneration, not so much by the title of royal dignity as by the prerogative of Christian virtue, extraordinarily outstanding beyond the usual custom.

^a Henry the Bearded and St. Hedwig were Dukes of Silesia and Wrocław, Boleslaus assigned as Agnes's betrothed. who had three sons: Conrad, Henry, and Boleslaus. Conrad, to whom the daughter of the Duke of Saxony had been betrothed, was killed in a hunting accident from a fall from his horse in the year 1213. That this third Boleslaus died before this event is recorded by Długosz in book 6 of the History of Poland, page 550. We have already said that Anna, the sister of Blessed Agnes, was married to Henry. Joachim Cureus treats of these three sons in part 1 of his Silesia, page 59, and Jacob Schickfusius in book 2 of the Princes of Silesia, chapter 3, and they assert that Boleslaus died while still a young bachelor. The same are treated in the Acts of St. Hedwig, October 15.

^b Třebnice, commonly Trebnitz, of the Cistercian Order, founded in the year 1203 by Henry the Bearded and St. Hedwig: Třebnice monastery. whose foundation was sufficient for maintaining one hundred persons, as Miechowiensis records in book 3, chapter 30, where he describes at greater length the possessions donated, adding that the nuns were brought from the monastery at Bamberg, and that the first Abbess was the German virgin Petrussa, the second Gertrude, the daughter of Henry and St. Hedwig. There, after the death of her husband, St. Hedwig spent the rest of her life, and full of pious and good works, died on the fifteenth of October in the year 1243.

^c Around the year 1212, when Boleslaus, the future betrothed, died.

^d Doxany monastery. Henry, Bishop of Prague, who died in the year 1197, had chosen the Doxany monastery for his burial. He died at Cheb, having previously buried his mother there. Hagecius records that it was devastated in the year 1278. The town of Doxany itself is situated in the territory of Litoměřice, where the river Ohře empties into the Elbe.

§ IV. Blessed Agnes is sought by the Emperor Frederick II as a bride for his son Henry, but the attempt fails.

[9] This rare and unusual virtue in a royal virgin, as we have said, not only illuminated the innermost recesses of our Hercynian forests,

but its brilliant rays penetrated even the ^a Imperial court of the Emperor Frederick II: hence he more ambitiously sought Agnes for his son, with a thoroughly solemn legation, professing that in Prague, at the court of Přemysl, King of Bohemia, there were to be found delights She is betrothed to Henry, son of the Emperor Frederick II, by which the Roman majesty could be uniquely honored on earth. Wherefore, as was fitting, the parents of Agnes recognized their good fortune, and neither omitted anything by which they might most effectively persuade their daughter to love a mortal spouse. But what was Agnes to do, she who was otherwise serious, and always outstandingly dutiful toward her parents? She resisted nowhere, broke the suitor's hopes with no word, and confirmed with prudent consent the efforts of her family in all things: and so she allowed herself in the meantime to be bound by betrothal ceremony to the great Emperor's great son, the will on both sides being formally obligated for future love. But then this extraordinary thing happened, not without wonder, that when the Imperial groomsmen and attendants were celebrating the nuptial act for Frederick's son, none of them inserted the name of Agnes in its proper place; her name not written in the nuptial tablets: so that when it was most needed, they could remember neither her name nor that of Henry the betrothed: this mutilated and defective result in so distinguished an action made it clearly apparent what outcome the ceremony would have, who would court Agnes as bride instead of Henry, and how, when the human loves were eluded, a suitor from heaven would most chastely love the virgin.

[10] After the ceremonies, Agnes, designated as the bride of the Emperor's son, was led into Austria, taken to Austria, which was greatly indebted to the Emperor Frederick on account of the great prerogatives granted to the Princes of that province, accompanied by a retinue of virgins selected from the nobility, so that she might be instructed there meanwhile in German customs, and be entertained with amusements suited to a more tender age. But all those dainties of adolescence were in vain: the royal maiden treated nothing less than the enticements of the flesh of that kind, and spent that entire time especially which we distinguish by the famous name of the Lord's Advent, she fasts strictly in Advent with a memorable abstinence to which she had become accustomed in the convents, not yet more than nine years old Agnes, with nothing more than a small allowance of bread within the day and a small measure of wine, beyond and apart from all other mitigations of hunger and thirst whatever. When Lent followed shortly thereafter, however much the Dukes of Austria, the free Princes, and in Lent. were duly eating dairy products by permission, she nevertheless, mindful of the strict piety among the Bohemians (which she had seen to be in force not only in the monasteries but also in her father's court) solemnly continued those forty hunger-days not only without the permissible, indeed also without the indulgence sometimes necessary for youth; but again, insolently excluding all food, she admitted nothing except bread and a small amount of wine.

[11] But before the more distinguished feasts, on which we annually celebrate the benefit of the Incarnate Deity and the designation of the admirable Mother and likewise Virgin, that she might preserve her virginity, that is, especially on the vigil of the feast, Agnes burned with the desire of preserving her virginity: and so at the very solemnity itself, the light which had shortly before arisen from heaven illuminating her most chaste soul more and more, certain at last, although already betrothed, of marrying no man at all, she implored Mary, she implores the help of the Mother of God: the Leader of heroines of this kind and the champion of vowed chastity, among the most ardent sacred rites, and begged heavenly aid, that all things might be thrown into confusion lest human love plunder so great a treasure. And that the heavenly powers might thereafter wholly second this vow, she toiled anxiously day by day, partly through her own prayers, partly through generous distributions to the needy, partly also through others. Moreover, no one knew of her efforts to preserve her virginity except the Prefect of the court and some virgins: of whom the former, with outstanding piety toward God, and the latter, with a similar resolution of life, wonderfully encouraged their Lady Agnes in her purpose. Nor did Agnes fall short of the hope having returned to Bohemia which she had seriously conceived of heavenly assistance being sent. For the invoked Princess of Virgins, Mary, was present in time, together with the other heavenly beings, who prevented the nuptial celebration with unusual favor: whence the marriage, already previously postponed for whatever reasons I know not, was delayed. she is freed. Hence the opportunity for the most joyful virgin to return to Bohemia was offered by this postponement.

^a Frederick II, summoned from Sicily against the Emperor Otto of Saxony in the year 1210, leaving there his wife, the daughter of the King of Aragon, Frederick II, Emperor. and his small son Henry, came to Rome. So writes Conrad, elected Abbot of Ursberg in the year 1215.

^b Henry was taken by his father Frederick as associate in the Empire, and was crowned at Aachen in the year 1221, and in the year 1223 took as his wife Agnes, the daughter of Duke Leopold of Austria. So says the Urspergensis. This therefore is the reason that, the Bohemian Blessed Agnes having been set aside, unless it is said that she was not sufficiently distinguished from Agnes of Austria, Henry, the son. and the things that pertain to the father the Emperor, as will soon be said, are partly transferred to the son: in the other Life the matter is dealt with erroneously concerning this son alone.

§ V. Blessed Agnes is betrothed to Frederick the Emperor himself, in preference to King Henry of England.

[12] In place of one, two far more powerful assailants of the royal maiden's chastity came forward, dispatched on behalf partly of the ^a Emperor and partly of the ^b King of Britain, and solemnly honored the metropolis of Bohemia, Prague, with a distinguished retinue of magnates of both nations. Their arguments and truly royal gifts fought most powerfully before Přemysl and Constance, the parents of Agnes, to storm the modesty of the royal virgin. She is sought by the Emperor himself and the son of the King of England. The Briton turned the aversion of the Emperor's son's mind chiefly to his own advantage; saying that this royal bride was destined not for the Emperor but for King Henry, from heaven no less: and that he was soliciting Agnes's love not with an empty name or an elective majesty alone, but that the most powerful King of England, for the princess born queen, was freely and generously offering the scepter and crown of Britain as hereditary gifts. The Emperor Frederick, for his part, easily outweighed, as it seemed to him, the royal earnest money with the Imperial majesty: adding moreover that, if the bride and her parents were wise, they would not hesitate to prefer, over Britannia, She is given to the Emperor. a single portion of Europe, the Empire of the world and the diadem of rule over the globe. But since Agnes was little moved on either side, however specious these were, her parents were certainly moved greatly and inclined toward the Emperor as son-in-law; to whom also a heavenly vision seen in sleep, one of the envoys designated the royal bride for the Emperor, as by divine counsel, but wrongly. He had seen in a dream a crown, not uncommon in its competition of gems and gold with art and price, or indeed frequently worn on the heads of Kings and Emperors: this, having fallen from heaven, occupied the head of Agnes with a becoming placement. But this coronation was altogether brief She is seen in a dream crowned twice from heaven, and nearly momentary: thereupon, the former being removed, another, far more distinguished beyond all rivalry, adorned the same head with a majesty unfolded for an altogether longer time. Hence the vain augur drew from a dream, though not a vain one, a false omen for Frederick II over Henry III. That is, the first crown was supposed to indicate the ambition of the Britons, who, after trying everything, would by no art, at no price, be able to obtain Agnes for their sovereign. The more august one, moreover, lingering on the royal head even longer at the end — whom would it indicate, if not the Emperor Augustus? And so he would soon return to Frederick with the most happy tidings and the betrothal documents, a blessed groomsman.

[13] These dreams, thus cast about, and the additional commentaries of the Emperor's Legates on the matter, finally brought the marriage to the hoped-for conclusion: She is betrothed to the Emperor against her will: but by a better outcome this rashness was afterward corrected by heaven, favoring not the Emperor but God with the virgin. For that first crown, whether of Henry III or Frederick II, signified the marriage with kingdom and empire, which the more august second crown — that of Christ the Spouse, of course — confounded without any opposition; when it removed the head of the sacred virgin from every human adornment, and reserved it for the honor of the divine diadem alone in perpetuity. And indeed Agnes, when her parents by their authority were forcing her to promise her love to a mortal man, mindful of course of her own vow or resolution, was in no way moved by betrothal gifts or the enticements of the future marriage chamber. Moreover, she openly shrank from her betrothed, though he was even an Emperor, as a rival of the deity, because she now wished to please no other than Christ, the most beautiful of the sons of men.

[14] Meanwhile her father ^c Přemysl was removed from life around the Year of the Lord 1230, subject also to the common fate: whether his daughter felt grief from his fatal departure, or rather joy as the Spouse of Christ, I would not easily say: she is bereaved of her father. nature had doubtless compelled Agnes moderately to grief, though within the bounds of virtue; but the memory of a removed obstacle — the paternal authority previously exercised in arranging the marriage — poured in a fullness of joy. Nor would Přemysl perhaps — indeed without doubt he would not easily — have ever relaxed his daughter's power to preserve her virginity without marriage, had not death, with its customary infamy of parsimony, cut short his life in a just though natural sense.

^a Frederick the Emperor, after the death of his wife from Aragon, took a second wife, called Iola or Yolande, daughter of Brienne, King of Jerusalem, in the year 1222 or the following. Frederick, betrothed of Blessed Agnes. She afterward died in childbed after giving birth to a boy; some assign the year 1227. The Emperor remained a widower until the year 1235, then married Isabella, sister of Henry III, King of England, the betrothal having been made on the day of Pentecost, the sixth day before the Kalends of June. So says the Westminster chronicler.

^b He was Henry III, King of England, who in the same year 1235 contracted marriage on the twenty-third of November with Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence. Henry III, King of England. That both these marriages, of the Emperor and the King, were rejected by Agnes, is also written by Pontanus in Bohemia Pia, Wadding, and others.

^c It is read in the sepulchral inscription that Přemysl, King of Bohemia, died on the tenth of December. King Přemysl dies. Hagecius in his Chronicle places the year at 1230. But because Wenceslaus his son counts the Year of Christ 1234, with Indiction 7, as the sixth year of his reign, and indeed on the twelfth day before the Kalends of April, he seems to have succeeded his father in the year 1228. The complete letters were published by Wadding in volume 1 of the Annals of the Minors in the Pontifical Register, number 24. But the investiture of the kingdom was granted to him by the Emperor Frederick in the year 1231, Indiction 4. The diploma is found in the cited Goldast, page 24. Whether in Wenceslaus's letters it should be the fourth year in place of the sixth, let the Bohemians investigate.

§ VI. Virtues of Blessed Agnes up to the year of her age of about 31, in the secular state.

[15] After the death of Přemysl, his son Wenceslaus, already previously crowned, happily took up the royal scepter as the Fourth King among the Bohemians: whose Sister, the aforesaid Agnes, was meanwhile making most beautiful preludes to the life she had designated for herself, and was greatly accustoming herself by sacred exercises to a virgin's Christian solitude. She puts on a hair shirt and iron hooks. She, the daughter and now also the Sister of a King, shone with gold and gems on every side, and with that splendid allurement she usually detained curious onlookers, indeed even hunters for a Queen, when she appeared in public: but

beneath the purple (who would believe it) iron hooks and rough hairs lay hidden. And so while outwardly she refreshed the eyes of others with her attire, the maiden, most nobly reared among royal delights, was inwardly torturing her concealed little body from ambush. Likewise her bed was adorned daily with precious coverlets and hangings brought also from elsewhere, altogether worthy of magnificence in appearance: she sleeps on a hard bed: there lay pillows stuffed with the softness of swans, the linen displayed the whitest snowy gleam, and the coverlets, covered with silken fabric and mostly interwoven with gold and silver thread, displayed nothing that lacked value, nothing that lacked even Phrygian artistry: but beneath these extravagantly eye-catching delights of royal comfort, there lay hidden in concealment and by design the diversions of uncomfortable pleasure; here on pointed stones, there on rather hard fragments, without anyone's knowledge, Agnes was ineptly but throughout the entire night disturbed.

[16] She who thus treated her whole body, and indeed most skillfully, how would she indulge it through food or drink? she conceals her fasting: Among the royal banquets she was usually hungry, and among the exquisite wines she was thirsty, even after she had drunk: so sparingly did she admit water even in extreme necessity. Moreover, on Friday, the day on which Christ our Savior expired amid torments for us, and on the seventh day, celebrated for the worship of the Mother of God, and on other Vigils, Agnes ate almost nothing, as if forbidding herself food and drink, and in short, continuing the abstinence begun in childhood at Třebnice and Doxany among the sacred virgins. Nor did her brother Wenceslaus find these so austere pursuits of an unusual virtue at court troublesome, because the virgin maiden, intent on this one thing daily, that she might piously deceive people, however much amid sumptuous feasts she merely looked at the dishes, and indeed even when she ate, scarcely tasted: so successfully did she, with the most beautiful artifice of virtue, elude perhaps bold eyes, or eyes mostly not attentive, as if she had lunched or dined most lavishly.

[17] But as hostile as she was to her body, so great was her friendship with God himself. She would descend to her knees for whole hours; now here and now there, wherever the ardor of her soul had pressed her down, she would become a suppliant to God: now she would implore divine mercy for her own lapses and faults and indeed non-faults; at other times she would beg all blessings for her brother the King and the related Princes and the whole kingdom, she pours forth many prayers: and entreat each of the heavenly Saints to be propitious to each; moreover, she especially wished well to the dead: and so for the good of souls, not only did she herself more frequently pray the prayers and Psalms decreed by the Church, but she also procured through others, and especially through men consecrated to God, the same duties, and above all, sacrifices. These pious transactions with the heavenly Spouse Agnes had not only at home and within the private walls of her palace; but she especially exercised her piety in the sacred buildings themselves and at the relics of the Saints: so that, by the example of the Lady, the subjects themselves might more easily and effectively be publicly drawn to studies of this kind. Hence on many days, in the midst of a numerous retinue of noble virgins, she would usually go on foot in the morning to many churches, and indeed with such modesty of countenance and of her entire body she hears sacred services: that, had we seen the sacred virgins walking, we would have been held in suspense by the sweet spectacle of virtue. If any conversation happened to occur on the way, all of it was taken up into the praises of God and the memory of heavenly things: then she would stand by not one or two Priests offering sacrifice at the altar, but for the most part from dawn until noon, amid continuous sacred services, she would hold her ground even on the bare floor, without royal cushions, with great example; and with the same devotion from noon again, she would most piously continue Vespers and sacred rites of that kind until night.

[18] But Agnes was not the only one, nor the first, to undertake such exaggerated pursuits of piety: many heroines of royal blood shone with a similar prerogative of virtue, and even now many later women have merited equal fame by their sacred exercises. What I shall now append, however, was practiced in Bohemia before Agnes by none except the Martyr Wenceslaus; in changed attire she visits churches: and after her we know it has not yet been reproduced by anyone in salutary imitation. At that age, born a Queen of Bohemia, and indeed already betrothed to the aforesaid Emperor Frederick, and about to become shortly the Empress of the world, having laid aside the purple and dressed in nothing but a citizen's clothes, attended by a few most trusted virgins, in the still uncertain light and before the sun had fully risen, with heaven still dark, she would traverse many churches, and falling prostrate at the shrines of the Saints everywhere, after she had sufficiently and more than sufficiently venerated their sacred relics, at last when the day was now brightening, she would return home in secret, the fame of her unusual deed being suppressed by the still somewhat dark day and the unusual attire. But at what cost do we think this early morning pilgrimage through the sacred buildings and to the relics of the Saints stood for her? The stones, often very often moistened with royal blood, confessed that it had cost Agnes much, walking barefoot in the bitterest winter: but she, deterred by neither this immense burning of the cold nor the sharp wounding of the stones, suppressed the pain with a heroic spirit. But when she had returned home, having wiped away the blood in secret, and revived herself with a little warmth, she would descend again to the nearest sacred building, but now as Queen in attire and retinue, and would repeat with the same devotion the things I described above, with piety not concealed but public. These things I have from an old manuscript of a contemporary writer, which I should briefly note concerning the extraordinary virtue of the royal maiden before the sacred convent; it will not be surprising, I believe, if greater things follow after these preludes, in a more mature and indeed sacred age. For such beginnings are usually matched by the final gifts of divine grace, both in virtue and in miracles: heaven will make Agnes outstanding in both, as we shall see, and we shall endeavor to do the same: as we shall shortly commemorate in nearly ten paragraphs, on both sides, both the heroic life and the illustrious privileges from heaven, in the style at our disposal.

§ VII. Having rejected the Emperor Frederick II, Blessed Agnes dedicates herself to Christ her Spouse in the Order of St. Francis.

[19] Against the bonds of the Emperor, The twenty-eighth year of Agnes's life was now at last turning, and the year of Christ 1233, when the Emperor Frederick II, most eagerly wished the virgin, now nubile and at last mature for marriage, to be brought to him; moreover, the fame of her rare virtue, widely and eminently spread through Germany, especially hastened the sight of the so often sought bride. And so the choicest magnates from the Empire were selected to solemnly maintain the Majesty of the Roman Emperor at Prague, before Wenceslaus the King, Agnes's brother, for the purpose of taking away the wife from Bohemia. Without delay, Frederick's envoys were dispatched with great pomp and a distinguished retinue of noble men and women. When these arrived at Prague, having first presented the salutation of the Roman Emperor, they did everything to take away Agnes, pledged according to the promises of her father Přemysl, to the Empire: so the groom willed it, so all rights commanded on behalf of the Emperor. The legation having been received with due honor, and the assent of her brother the King, King Wenceslaus did nothing less than to impede the agreed marriage: indeed he pressed the more eagerly, because henceforth, as the Emperor's father-in-law or at least kinsman, he would be heard with great glory. But the virgin already shrank from a rival of God, from whom, because of his unchaste life, the most chaste Agnes could otherwise recoil. For Frederick, with grievous injury to Christian virtue, had made himself a love life during his widowhood that was utterly promiscuous; and although he had at home more than one prostitute of his honor, he still infamously went roaming abroad. But by what way could the prey, fleeing so powerful a hunter already clinging to her in Prague itself, escape, and especially when her brother was also pushing his sister into the nets of marriage? But where human industry failed, divine providence came to the rescue. For those very envoys of the Emperor Frederick, while they were carefully preparing everything for the journey, so that the Emperor's bride might be magnificently led away, had suggested to Agnes the occasion for somewhat delaying the departure in secret. The wise virgin therefore meanwhile advised through her agents ^a Gregory IX, the Supreme Pontiff of that time, of her heroic counsel, she implores the help of Pope Gregory IX: and asked in every way that he would at last prevent by his authority the marriage that was nearly completed: for she, however much her parents' wishes had preferred the Emperor as son-in-law, had always hitherto preferred God as Spouse over any man: moreover, her brother Wenceslaus was pressing, and approved some sort of propriety in his father's agreements; that she herself, unwilling and even forced, could have her modesty overwhelmed, but would never consent to marriage a second time, having already once pledged her nuptials to God.

[20] a Papal Nuncio being sent, Far from weakening the heroic character of the most dear virgin by any subterfuge, the excellent Pontiff rather strengthened it against all the schemes of the flesh, having praised it and endowed it with wonderful graces and paternal indults. Wherefore Gregory IX dispatched a Papal Nuncio to Bohemia outside the ordinary course, and committed to him above all in his instructions that in a timely manner, while nevertheless prudently avoiding the indignation of the Emperor and the Kings, if possible, he should by every means divert Agnes from the marriage with Frederick; so that the virginity of the unwilling virgin, who preferred Christ alone and therefore in this matter freely dissented from her parents as far as she could, might be nobly safeguarded.

When this man arrived in Bohemia and had approached the Queen and set forth everything in order and on behalf of Agnes, the intention was and by a declaration to her brother that the sister should at last approach her brother as a supplicant, and having shown the Pontiff's diploma, should ask nothing else by all the blood between them than that he not attack her through marriage with the Emperor: for it had long since been resolved for her to marry none but Christ, and she had already seriously thought of carrying her flesh to the grave none other than a complete virgin. Let him beware, therefore, lest, if he continued to compel his sister, besides offending the Roman Pontiff, he should also offend a more august rival, by the vindications of modesty appropriated by heaven. Greatly and unexpectedly shaken by this serious declaration of Agnes, Wenceslaus hesitated, not knowing how he might both keep his sister a Virgin and extricate the Emperor, already bound by solemn promises, from the marriage; at last, as the matter stood, he informed Frederick in time through his agents, and wisely distanced himself, entirely innocent, from all intercession in the marriage. she is freed,

[21] The Emperor ^b gnashed his teeth at first, and was vehemently indignant that his delights were being snatched from him, and so more sharply investigated everything, and with an iron spirit against those who stood in the way, planned and clearly devised some sort of vengeance. first from the angry Emperor, But since innocence fought on all sides for Wenceslaus, Agnes's brother, and the Emperor's victory was broken from no other quarter than from a virgin, who sinned against Frederick only in this: that she preferred God to man, as was right; at length, as his anger subsided and his love yielded to such great rivalry with the Deity, he magnanimously, with a sentence altogether worthy of a Christian Prince, though pronounced against himself, at last liberally absolved Agnes from the marriage confirmed even by solemn documents, and magnificently condemned — if it was condemnation — then reconciled, a virgin going to preserve her virginity, which the Emperor himself so extravagantly praised by Imperial letters.

Now the formula of the Imperial decree was of this kind: If Agnes, having spurned the Emperor, had perversely sought the love of any other man, the written formula concluded, and had burned with desire for any mortal husband other than himself, Frederick, then indeed he would not have been undeserving in repelling so outstanding an insult with avenging arms against both parties. But since she shunned not so much his own pleasures as, being betrothed to Christ, preferred immortal ones, there remained for him in the end no occasion for justly taking offense at her most excellent endeavors. Therefore let her continue, as she had begun, to burn with love of Christ, and not pollute the flames of so great a lover with the flames of another. He, who until now had been troublesome by reason of his father's agreements, would henceforth be also a defender of her virginity consecrated to the Godhead.

[22] Words so solemn, and moreover magnificent gifts, but especially from sacred Relics, confirmed this. For Frederick added that she, now virtually a sacred virgin, should take She is given sacred Relics. from the sacred treasury of relics, gifts undoubtedly preferred to gold and gems, and enjoy these as pledges by which the Emperor wished the very best for her who was once his bride, but now more worthily the bride of Christ. Freed from this last and indeed most troublesome snare of the flesh, Agnes, now entirely free from the world, began thenceforth to deliberate seriously about a sacred convent, where she might be the sole delight of Christ, and in turn be most chastely loved by the most beautiful of men.

^a Gregory IX was elected on March 20 of the year 1227, sat for 14 years, and died on August 22, 1241.

^b That she spurned Emperor Frederick on account of Christ, who had sought her in marriage, is written by Albert of Stade, cited above. That she fled the offered heights of Imperial dignity was written by Gregory IX, as we have reported above. The same is written by Dubravius, Bartholomew of Pisa, and many others passim.

SECTION VIII. Blessed Agnes, freed from mortal cares, dedicates herself as a bride of Christ, authorized by the rule of Saint Clare.

[23] It happened most opportunely that soon after, Clare, the illustrious offspring of Francis, She inquires into the manner of life of Saint Clare. and the sole wonder of her sex, was teaching tender young virgins at Assisi in Umbria by her own example to do those things that we admire in many men but very few of us actually imitate. This most austere manner of life, and the extreme poverty that she introduced into her Order, although it could very well have diverted the royal virgin from the institute of Clare, by a singular call of God choosing this bride for Himself, most sweetly drew her to this very thing from all the delights of the world and the usual softness of persons of that rank. Therefore, partly from Bohemian nobles who had once traveled to Rome for religious purposes and subsequently on occasion had visited Francis and Clare at Assisi, and partly also, more intimately, from the very religious men of the Franciscan institute, after she had thoroughly examined everything and had first engaged in mature deliberation with herself, she finally, with this same austerity, began a life of truly rare example with great eagerness (while her brother the King interposed no obstacle whatever to her most holy endeavors; indeed, together with his sisters and kinswomen, nephews and nieces, he warmly praised the extraordinary nature of the deed). Moreover, she distributes her garments among the poor, lest she not seem to have left all things and distributed them among the poor according to Christ's precept, she distributed everywhere among those in need of food and clothing her costly and truly royal feminine wardrobe, with which human majesty had until now adorned her unwilling and groaning self — or rather had tormented rather than adorned her.

[24] But since this was, as it were, a daily liberality, so that it might endure for ages, she erected a magnificent hospital at the foot ^a of the bridge of Prague, in Old Prague. ^b In this hospital, with perpetual endowments, the health especially lost by the sick, she erects a hospital, or even the well-being of fortune destroyed by whatever misfortune, was, as it were, restored in full through daily sustenance with the affliction halved, or at least was assisted in some part. This place thenceforth — whether considered as a hospital or likewise as a church — received the surname of Saint Francis, because a woman of the Franciscan institute had built the sacred edifice at princely expense. ^c Moreover, men signed with the Cross by the Foundress herself, some of whom undertook the administration of the work and others the care of the sick, first proved their service admirably in Bohemia; and shortly afterward at Wroclaw, at the Hospital of Saint Matthias, the second hospital, built with equal opulence for the poor by Anna, wife of Henry the Pious ^d and Agnes's sister, they administered with similar praise. And from both places, ^e spreading through the surrounding regions, as her sister did at Wroclaw by her example, they served the afflicted with great commendation of mercy not only in Bohemia and Silesia, but also in Poland and Moravia. The Prague Hospital, as it had been the beginning of the sacred Order, so likewise retained the primacy of the dignity of the Mastership over those placed under it. ^f Moreover, that noble hospital for the sick, or rich receptacle for the poor, was completed around the year of the Lord 1236.

[25] Shortly afterward, other sacred buildings, begun two or three years earlier, for Franciscan inhabitants of both sexes, extending to the very bank of the Moldau, she builds monasteries for Franciscans yet within the enclosure of the walls of Old Prague, the sacred Foundress erected as a magnificent building at enormous expense. To the church of Saint Francis, ^g the men authorized by the laws of the same Founder, after they had come from Mainz, were the very first to become celebrated in Bohemia for their fame of holiness, the roughness of their garments, and the bareness of their feet. Close by, at the sacred church of the Savior, the Poor Clare virgins, contiguous to the Franciscan religious men, conspicuous for equal austerity of life and no less fame of holiness, and for the Poor Clares, shortly afterward took up their abode with Agnes as their leader. Indeed, although the men's monastery was being furnished on every side with royal magnificence, with the help of her brother the King, Wenceslas her brother, having voluntarily joined in the partnership of this most pious work, had moreover wondrously adorned the convent with buildings and laid out gardens, so that the noble virgins, otherwise extremely poor for Christ's sake, might have somewhere to dwell comfortably and might somewhat interrupt their sacred exercises with a diversion in the garden, lest the weaker sex be enervated sooner than usual by unaccustomed rigor. Moreover, Agnes the Foundress had most magnificently enriched the sacred church of the Savior with sacred gifts and ecclesiastical furnishings for the altars; for so much had the daughter of a King acquired by inheritance, and consequently her suitors — who were either Kings or outright Emperors — had heaped upon the royal Virgin these riches of golden and bejeweled liberality. The example of Princes of this sort was wonderfully effective in stirring the hearts of their subjects. And so everyone, whether from the nobles or from the citizens, was eager to help both constructions with their own resources. But the Princes, eager above all for God's glory beyond their own, at last by a stern edict sufficiently and more than sufficiently restrained this kind of liberality among both parties, as though it might prejudice the royal magnificence. and the workers refusing wages. But who could drive from the buildings the daily laborers, without whom the Princes simply could not exist, if those workers continued to be generous? For after they had done everything, they wished to accept no payment at all; and when they feared trouble from the overseers and were even compelled to accept payment, by hastily finishing the prescribed work, they most dexterously escaped payment by fleeing at the beginning of evening. Hence it was easy for Wenceslas and Agnes to bring even enormous structures to excellent completion in a short time, with such workers, and to furnish the most sacred buildings for hundreds of persons through such pious labor of their subjects.

[26] She enters the monastery. Now the year from Christ's death celebrated as the one thousand two hundred and fiftieth completed both buildings of the Franciscan Order. But already before, under the year 1234, there were sacred inhabitants on both sides. Franciscan men summoned from Mainz inhabited the men's monastery; while five sacred virgins from Italy, the first companions of Blessed Clare, sent by the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, first inhabited the convent. These Agnes soon after magnificently inducted together with seven Bohemian virgins, all of illustrious blood and sprung from an ancient stock of nobles. This number thenceforth, and indeed of purely noble virgins, despite such great austerity of life and unaccustomed contempt of wealth and pleasure, nevertheless grew to such an extent that, besides several royal daughters or granddaughters, with a hundred noble virgins following, the full number of one hundred was either reached or even surpassed while Agnes was still living for some years yet. So effective was the previous example of the royal virgin in so unusual an order for moving even tender virgins to the most austere undertakings, and I know not what obligation of following they, the noble subjects, thought they incurred when their Lady preceded them with such great virtue toward the religious life.

[27] The year of Christ 1235 was then turning when Agnes, with those seven most illustrious virgins, by a great example, she is inducted before the King, Queen, and nobles, was beginning her extraordinary life with a solemn ceremony. For this most beautiful spectacle (unless the old records deceive us), the day of March 25, notable for the Annunciation ^h of the Incarnation of the Godhead, had been chosen, so that on the very day on which the sacred nuptials of Mary with the Heavenly Spouse were celebrated, they might be betrothed under the most auspicious omen. Would you like to know the order and arrangement of the procession? Her brother the King and Queen Cunegunde, daughter of Emperor Philip, were present, elevated on the royal throne and, in a rare spectacle, crowned with the very crown of Bohemia. Together with the King and Queen sat the related Princes and kinsmen, Dukes from Carinthia and Silesia; the last place, but standing at the sides and below the royal thrones and the benches of the Princes, was occupied in great number by the nobles, especially those who were distinguished by public dignity in the kingdom. Then other Barons, then innumerable Knights, of old and entirely pure Czech blood of those times; and finally every kind of attendant above and below packed the sides of the nobles on every side. Then all around citizens, and finally a great crowd of common people, pouring in from every direction, pressed upon the sacred precinct of the church of the Savior.

[28] The ninth hour before noon had already sounded when several Dukes who were relatives or otherwise kinsmen led Agnes — all golden and bejeweled, clad in royal purple, like a bride (and she was, because she was being betrothed to Christ) — and then the seven illustrious heroines from her family or from the leading nobles, to the principal altar, amid the resounding blare of trumpets and the symphony of most sweet music. There, before the Apostolic Nuncio, who served as Pro-Pontiff in this ceremony, surrounded by — besides ^i John XXI of Prague — seven Bishops of other churches, she is vested by the Apostolic Nuncio and Bishops, with the seven other Virgins, she herself first offered her hair to be cut while kneeling; then she removed her golden garment, and finally fitted to her royal body the grey mantle that had been cast upon it, and kissing it most sweetly with tears, and covered with the sacred veil by the ^k Pro-Pontiff, she proceeded with wondrous joy, because at last, after so many unsuccessfully attempted marriages with the world, these final nuptials with Christ had happily succeeded. In entirely the same rite and order the other virgins completed all things; nor was anything singular left to the Lady in her rejoicing — so much had hatred of the flesh seized them all for many years already, and they had long been yearning with the Queen for equal nuptials with the most chaste Lamb. When Agnes was marvelously praised together with her companions, Cajetan, as is customary, by his authority publicly granted a plenary Indulgence to the now sacred virgins, to complete the work. after the sermon John, the Bishop of Prague, also added a brief but elegant commendation of this most beautiful deed in the Bohemian language, by which he moved the King and Queen, the related and kindred Princes, amid the solemn festivities (who would have thought it?) she communicates at the Sacred rite to abundant tears. Then at the altar, with the seven Bishops assisting in magnificent procession,

the Pro-Pontiff celebrated; from whose communion shortly afterward Agnes and those seven virgins were refreshed with the sacred Body of Christ according to custom. And this extraordinary festival held spectators of every kind until the second hour past noon, which was at last solemnly concluded amid congratulations and festive applause, the blare of trumpets, and musical harmonies. From the church they then went to a banquet in the convent, prepared as well as permitted: which the King and Queen on one side, together with the related and kindred Dukes of Agnes, and additionally the kinsmen from among the nobles of those seven virgins, she is entertained at a royal banquet with the others, and on the other side the Papal Legate, and eight Bishops besides Agnes and the heroines recently betrothed to Christ, graced. The second and third tables were occupied by foreign and domestic Prelates, then nobles and leading Knights, either distinguished by public offices in the kingdom or connected to the nuns by illustrious lineage, admitted with a singular prerogative of honor. Then others above or below others, in innumerable number, ate as each one's nobility or age warranted; nor were those who most needed them — the poor — excluded from the festivities. Tables were therefore spread everywhere in the courtyard of the monastery; not merely hundreds were fed, but a total number such as these tables, repeated ten times and again as many times, are accustomed to accommodate.

[29] And indeed this act, so heroic, of Agnes did not suspend the admiration of hearers and spectators for only one or two days, or even a week or a month; but it celebrated the extraordinary nature of the deed for one year and another, nothing else being more frequent on the lips of mortals than that a woman born a Queen and the sister of the reigning Wenceslas, and shortly before the bride of the Emperor and nearly his wife, had been able to hold all these things, which are so highly valued by men, in such utter contempt, and to prefer supremely the sacred love of Christ alone in extreme poverty to the love of so many suitors. But beyond fame, which is of no such great account, there were the examples of princely heroines who took their beginnings from the occasion of so glorious a betrothal of Agnes with God. For when the account of this most beautiful deed had been dispersed throughout Germany and especially Poland and other neighboring and distant kingdoms, by her example she draws others to the same Religious life, thenceforth a great number of heroines of royal blood began to desire the same choice of life, however austere, and to be inflamed with equal ardor for triumph over contempt of the world and the flesh, and finally, in this extraordinary institute of Saint Francis so unusual for persons of their kind, to express by serious imitation the example of Agnes who had gone before them. For this reason, most of the monasteries of the Poor Clares everywhere in the world arose by the example of Bohemia, not only with sacred buildings but above all with the outstanding pursuit of rare virtue. So much can the endeavors of even a single person accomplish, if they are undertaken with a great spirit, and when skill everywhere fails and human industry has nothing more to offer, God strengthens those who labor and raises up rivals for the emulation of a glorious work.

^a The manuscript records of the Order of the Crusaders with the Red Star, which Theodore Moretus, a priest of our Society, transmitted to us from Wroclaw, have "at the front of the bridge."

^b The monastery and hospital, for which Blessed Agnes obtained from her brother King Wenceslas and his wife Kunigunde a property with rich possessions. The Prague Hospital. So state the said manuscript records.

^c These Crusaders, or Bearers of the Cross, had come from Palestine to Europe and, having adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine, had founded many hospitals in various places. Crusaders with the Red Star. Among other things, in Bohemia, in the village of Porzick not far from Prague, they acquired lands, built a hospital for the poor, and erected a church dedicated to Saint Peter. From this Hospital of Saint Peter, Blessed Agnes arranged for them to be brought to Prague, and so that these Crusaders might be distinguished from others of different kinds who were then wandering about, at the prayers of Blessed Agnes, Innocent IV ordered a star to be added to the Cross. So the said manuscript records state at greater length. That church still stands with a beautiful tower, enclosed within New Prague near the Porzick gate, under the jurisdiction of those Crusaders, who also administer parochial duties there. So Hlavvitius and Tanner write in their letters to us.

^d Indeed, she was a widow after her husband was slain by the Tartars in 1241. She built the church of Saint Elizabeth and the Hospital of Saint Matthias at Wroclaw with great endowments added, together with her sons, and with the consent of Bishop Thomas, The Wroclaw Hospital. handed them over to the Crusader Brothers. Innocent IV confirmed the donation by an Apostolic diploma, and by another commanded the Bishops of Prague and Olomouc not to permit the Rector and Brothers of the Hospital of Saint Elizabeth of the Stellate Crusaders of Wroclaw to be unduly molested. So the said manuscripts state at length. Indeed, that the Order of Crusaders was confirmed by the same Innocent in the first year of his Pontificate, the year of Christ 1243, Ciaconius also observed after others. But Gregory IX asserts in the Regesta cited at number 58 that the Canonical Order according to the Rule of Blessed Augustine was instituted by him in the Prague hospital.

^e The hospitals afterward erected in the cities of Bohemia render obedience to the General Master at Prague, namely those at Slatov, Mys, Pont, Hospitals subject to them. Litomerice, Aust, Eger, and Znojmo in Pottinberg. But to the Master of Saint Matthias at Wroclaw render obedience the hospitals erected at Kreuzberg, Swidnica, Legnica, Boleslav, and Munsterberg, and in other places, as well as in Poland and Lithuania. So the said manuscripts state.

^f Crugerius observes that the Archbishops of Prague have held the supreme Prefecture there for some time.

^g Dubravius, in Book 15 of his History of Bohemia, writes that King Premysl erected two monasteries at Prague, one under the title of Saint Clement, the other under the title of Saint Francis, and into both he transferred members whom Francis himself or Dominic had planted. Martin Boregh has the same in his Bohemian Chronicle, page 200. Convents of the Order of Preachers and Friars Minor at Prague. But that the Convent of the Friars Preachers in honor of Saint Clement was begun in the year 1222 by Blessed Ceslaus, sent to Prague by Saint Hyacinth, Maluenda in the Annals of the Preachers and Bzovius at that year report from ancient records: which we shall examine more fully at his Life on July 15 and at Hyacinth's on August 16. Therefore the Friars Minor seem to have arrived at Prague at about the same time, at whose urging Lady Agnes gave herself to the Order of Poor Ladies of the Rule of Blessed Francis, as Albert, who from being Abbot of Stade became a Minorite in the year 1240, reports in his Chronicle.

^h The same Albert assigns the day of Pentecost and the year 1236.

^i John, surnamed Scholasticus, praised by Hagecius and Pontanus for his piety and devotion, is said to have presided from 1228 to 1236.

^k The author noted by this word, more remote from common usage, that the person understood is he whom the Roman Curia calls a Legate a latere, commissioned to represent the person of the Pontiff himself before foreign Princes.

SECTION IX. The rare and heroic virtues of Blessed Agnes living among the Poor Clares.

[30] In the convent of the Holy Savior, from the year 1235 until the year 1281, Agnes led her religious life for a full forty-six years, with great virtue and — without any affected reputation — yet with remarkable renown. And so from her entrance until her death she lived in such a way that all that followed most beautifully corresponded to those most noble earlier preludes. Those were like a foundation upon which these later things of the greatest example and extraordinary virtue would rest. But in so great an abundance of the best things, what incredible task would I undertake if I wished to embrace with a particular style Agnes's virtues and her other manifold generous character and religious nature? It will therefore be enough for us to have woven a catalogue of only some of them, and to narrate more briefly here what she possessed at great length. Let submission of spirit lead the way, Before all, humility, which exalted Agnes by a rarer miracle, the more she among mortals, greater by fortune's favor, could have despised according to custom those very women to whom she so greatly submitted or even subordinated herself. she refuses to preside over the monastery. A great proof of her humble spirit was, above all, that she fought so greatly, so often, and so seriously against being placed over the convent. Although the Superiors of the sacred Order were moved to confer the governance of the monastery both by Agnes's royal character and by her great benefactions, and the Sisters, looking to nothing but virtue and accordingly all willingly promising submission and subjection without any dissent, they were nevertheless never able to bring the matter to the point where Agnes might be distinguished even by this singularity. For she would resist and fight in every way, here alone seeking intercessors, elsewhere generously complying in all things, begging and entreating, finally being afflicted in spirit and even falling ill in body, and not recovering her health or being fully herself in spirit again until people desisted from these extravagances, abandoned all thought of the Prefecture, and took no account of Agnes whatsoever. ^a

[31] From this virtue, moreover, it came about that one born a Queen and so eagerly sought for marriages with Kings and Emperors would cast herself below all the sacred Sisters, even her own she esteems herself inferior to all, subjects (I say), never placing herself before anyone in word or deed, admiring in all others greater prudence and other gifts of mind and virtues, but finding in herself absolutely nothing of all those things by which she could be compared to others, let alone preferred. What would you have done with this humble handmaid of Christ? Would you have spoken more kindly about her in her presence? She would immediately collect herself, and the blush of her face seemed to be confounded even with tears. Would you have compared her to some familiar or the least of the Sisters? She, thus compared, would blush even more vehemently, and would confess that each one, even the least, was an instruction to her in virtue. Would you perhaps have resisted her in a word and seriously turned aside from what she had judged? Then indeed she would in no way display unseasonable authority, but courteously either keep silent at objections or speak little, as it were condemn her own views, and with the lightest countenance go entirely and migrate into the contrary opinion with hands and feet. Would you, either unwittingly or carried away by anger, have heaped abuse and mockery upon this most humble virgin? she bears contempt with equanimity. Then indeed you would have delighted one who sought contempt from every quarter, and you would have filled her modest spirit, unconfused by any injury of that sort, with truly remarkable joy.

[32] With such self-abasement, what wonder if she devoted herself to the more menial tasks? You would have seen her, the daughter of Premysl III, King of Bohemia, preparing fires for the Sisters in the early morning; her, the sister of Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia, cleaning the filth of bedchambers; her, the bride of Emperor Frederick II, she performs the lowliest services, toiling in the kitchen like a despised maidservant. And when she did all these things, she did not condemn them with a somewhat stern face and a confused countenance, but, radiant with joy, showed the spectators of her new example, suffused with heavenly sweetness, for Whom she labored so greatly as a servant of Christ. Nor did this modesty, so extraordinary, extend only to the healthy: also among the sick at home she most willingly and gladly bestowed these same services upon those afflicted with ill health. For them she would make their beds softly, laboriously remove everything that offended eyes or nostrils in the room, prepare food with her own hands, and by whatever skill or industry contrive that it should please the taste — in short, doing everything and carefully concentrating her strength to this end: that with the afflictions of illness relieved and pains diminished, and sickness finally driven away, everyone's former health might be restored. These were the exercises of her humble spirit within her own convent,

but neither could the sacred virgin, enclosed within walls, be prevented from admirably exercising her charity toward the sick, especially religious men, throughout all Prague. For them, since it was the one thing she could do to lessen the burden of their illness, and to outsiders, she liberally provided — through pauper's dainties and delicacies of food exquisitely prepared by herself — even though she was absent. But the following was truly singular among the few Saints commended for this virtue: that our Agnes, not once or twice but very often, raised her spirit, accustomed to royal delights, in imitation of her most illustrious kinswoman Elizabeth. She would order garments infected with foul filth and the discharge of lepers to be gathered from every hospital and infirmary throughout the city; she washes and mends their garments. When they were brought to her in the convent, admitting no one else's help, Agnes alone would wash them thoroughly, dry them and clean them completely with all diligence, and finally, if any needed mending, she would sew them at last and repair them excellently in every part. Hence that discharge did not smell altogether sweet to her; yet Agnes preferred this stench to all perfumes. Hence her sacred hands, corroded by the acidity of the foul filth and horrifying to others, struck terror into them — yet to Agnes alone they brought delight. She bore the pain indeed, but complained of it to no one, and concealed it as much as was possible, and sought no praise among men for this most noble deed, but solely for the sake of God's grace — let men say and do what they would — she heroically triumphed over nature in this victory.

[33] When the report of these most excellent exercises of Agnes's virtue had been carried to Assisi, to Clare ^b who was still surviving and dwelling among the living, she is encouraged by letters of Saint Clare, the first Foundress of this new austerity leapt for joy, and was filled with gladness, when she learned how firmly the royal virgin held to the fitting virtue. She therefore wrote a most gracious letter to Agnes, in which she wonderfully animated her on the path she had taken toward heaven, and so that she might run more happily by a hastened way, having avoided dangers by a certain shortcut, she also transmitted the rules ratified by the authority of Pope Innocent IV. ^c rules approved by Innocent IV At the urging of her Superior, the otherwise swift virgin — why would she not be driven still more vehemently in the course she had begun? And with what joy did she not receive the prescribed instructions for a holier life? But so that those laws might be more firmly established and thereby observed more intimately and tenaciously by the Sisters, she sent envoys to Alexander IV ^d and herself sought anew those aforementioned laws, she arranges for them to be confirmed again by Alexander IV, modestly indeed, yet most earnestly and intensely asking that they be strengthened by the Pontiff's authority and adorned with graces and indults.

[34] But indeed, besides that principal virtue — without which, unless one has excelled remarkably, feigned holiness usually deceives the rest of mortals — other great and heroic qualities also wonderfully distinguished Agnes among the Poor Clare virgins. After submission of spirit, you would easily call poverty the chief of these. devoted to strict poverty Hence the clothing of that royal daughter, sister, and then aunt of Kings, although clean, was of extreme cheapness; her bed was poor, and then in place of it even the bare ground; her food was simple and lightly prepared. In a word, although she was above all others, she made herself equal to everyone in the convent, and indeed usually conducted herself among the lowest in food and clothing and other necessities, not with feigned gentleness but with the greatest zeal for affected poverty. Wenceslas II, King of Bohemia IV, Agnes's brother, having built both monasteries, intended this one thing: she does not accept revenues offered by her brother the King, that beyond the sacred building itself and the churches dedicated to the Savior and Saint Francis, being wonderfully generous also to his sister and the other virgins, he might create for himself an eternal memorial through eternal revenues. But Agnes fought even more vehemently against this; she prevailed in the end so that no munificence of this kind, otherwise well-known and customary, would harm the poverty of the Poor Clares. Nor was even Cardinal Cajetan, ^e who had been appointed by the Pontiff himself as Guardian and Protector of the recently erected monastery, able to persuade her by his authority or indulgence that, at least in the most difficult times, rights to certain properties or small domains of their own should remain with the Sisters. Whence, by a memorable surname lasting until the very destruction of the monasteries, that monastery of sacred virgins at the Savior was celebrated as the "monastery of the poor Ladies." For they called them "Ladies" because they knew all were sprung from illustrious families; but they diminished the splendid title with the added adjective of "poverty," because they saw that these same virgins were distinguished from other nuns by an unusual prohibition of wealth and certain fortunes.

[35] Nor did Agnes want anything of her own for her Sisters or for herself; but she did not long retain even what was granted and permitted for use by the poor. she spends jewelry on sacred things Therefore she removed from herself as far as possible toward God or the poor the most precious gifts of her father and brother, and indeed the betrothal gifts and the gems, purchasers of so many rival Princes and marriages, as being hostile to this virtue. A great part she magnificently spent for Christ at the altars in his church, or on chalices and crosses, or for the use of the poor, or on the very coverings of altars and priestly vestments; or else from the remainder she converted into money, with which she primarily corrected the illness or extreme poverty of very many.

[36] But Christ sometimes approved this liberality further, when after the death of her brother, her nephew Ottokar III, ^f King of Bohemia V, valued not only his aunt's virtue but not even her blood so highly as to relieve her extreme want with modest subsidies. under Premysl III she patiently bears the utmost want. For Premysl was entirely occupied in wars, by which, gloriously concluded, he had hung up many trophies throughout the world. And so, more eager for money, he did not so much distribute as scraped together from every quarter such assistance — justly or unjustly? — as is customary. Hence Agnes, in addition afflicted with extreme illness and reduced to equal destitution, found absolutely no help among humans. Meanwhile most of the Ladies subject to her or Sisters wept for their plight; yet they alleviated the calamity only moderately with that grief. But the virgin, having dismissed unseemly lamentations as of no account, did nothing less than dignify the inconveniences of the time and the desertion of her own with any grief. Thus while others bewailed human misfortunes or anxiously sought help, Agnes, poured out entirely toward God, hoped that He might wish to aid her; if not, she gave thanks ever more often for the noble opportunity presented for testing her virtue.

[37] Moreover, an outstanding contempt for human affairs and fortune was accompanied by remarkable enmities against her own body. she afflicts herself with fasts and abstinences On account of these she indulged the flesh not at all, but wherever she could, she disturbed its comfort in every way. Who would believe it? In the first years in which she had entirely turned to Christ, the young woman, accustomed to royal delicacies of this kind, ate no cooked food nor meats, but only a single raw apple or several other fruits and a small crust of bread — not more often than once during the day — with water from a fountain. And with this austerity of drink and food, once customary among the ancient dwellers of the desert, she barely sustained life. She then observed her fasts not only with the above-named abstinence, but with a far greater deprivation of food and drink, unbearable I would say not merely for a woman but for any person. Nor did she keep the usual manner of subduing the body only through customary fasting; but in addition on Wednesday and again on Friday, and thereafter on the four days preceding feasts of the Most Blessed Virgin, and finally from Saint Martin's Day until Christmas, she sustained life on nothing but bread and water. Amid so stunning an oppression of the body, there was added also another cruelty of the sacred virgin, by which she had entirely conquered the flesh. A horrific hairshirt of horsehair she put on entirely, with a horrible hairshirt, with which at last, as with a breastplate, she preserved the flesh against every improper movement. Moreover, she bound this so tightly to her body that its cords, as it were, dug grooves into her flesh in which to embed themselves. And by this sacred self-torture, finally even her bones were singularly tormented with a singular kind of suffering. But Agnes, that extraordinary enemy of the body, concealed the pain, and spurning all palliatives, with only her Confessor aware of the deed, she courageously continued the noble victory as long as she lived. Besides this extraordinary armor, she had yet other weapons with which the virgin might fight against the extraordinary enemy. with vigils, genuflection, and scourges She conquered most nights with vigils and tears; she spent six or seven hours kneeling in prayer; from time to time she even struck her body with blows. Yet even after the most severe punishment of the scourges, she found nothing that would have been worthy of that punishment.

[38] Through these studies of such persistent penance, she soon so wasted herself she contracts illness that all beauty and grace had departed from the very recently most robust virgin, and scarcely the strength necessary for retaining her soul remained to her. Therefore, with her body worn down and ruined in nearly this fashion, she could not but approach the dangers of final illness, and once or twice she nearly deceived the outstanding services of the Sisters competing to help and the extreme skill of the physicians, with death almost following. But she stood by the counsels of her Superiors at that time, and carried out most exactly all that she was commanded, as was otherwise her custom. But as soon as she recovered from the illness, upon convalescing she resumes her penances, she quickly resolved in her mind to return to her habit and to continue regarding as trifling the dangers of exercising the body once more. Thus, several times having granted, as it were, truces to her dangerous penance during her illness, she fought now with her body, now with death, always victorious; until around the year 1281, after so many unhappy conflicts, as we shall say later, death at last stripped from Agnes, but only the extremely emaciated spoil of her body, ingloriously.

[39] From this fierce enmity with her own flesh, however, a powerful intimacy between God and Agnes arose, with fervent prayer, which she renewed, besides the customary and common supplications of her religious order, also in her private oratory very frequently with most humble prayers interspersed with tears. And there were times, especially in the final years of the sacred virgin's life, when Bohemia needed a Moses of this kind; and had not this virgin perhaps stayed the arm of the Godhead extended in vengeance, on account of those innumerable disasters that followed the death of Ottokar, perhaps one would have to ask whether any Bohemians existed at all, she preserves Bohemia, so much had all the elements conspired together with men toward the destruction of the Bohemians. But Agnes especially revealed the fruit of her intimacy with God where she had to do or endure the greatest things for love of Him, even contrary ones. For besides various illnesses and the customary inconveniences of unusual want occurring two or three times, the Sisters also through imprudence, or the sacred Superiors themselves deliberately, excellently tested her. But all these trials always stood most beautifully within the bounds of virtue. she bears all injuries. Those adversities wrung from her no laments, only thanksgiving to God; no injuries, however impudently inflicted, drove her to just complaint except about her own faults before the image of the Crucified. The more anyone assailed her with injuries, the more gloriously Agnes vindicated herself against him with benefits, in heroic imitation of Christ.

^a Blessed Agnes, Abbess. Pope Gregory IX, in letters sent to John, Minister of the Friars Minor in Saxony,

and Thomas, Custos of the same in Bohemia, commanded that by Apostolic authority they appoint Agnes as Abbess of the monastery. Wadding cites from those letters at the year 1234, number 6, and the Pontiff in his letters to her addresses her as Abbess.

^b Saint Clare died in the year 1253. Her Rule was published by Wadding at the year 1244, number 1.

^c Innocent IV sat from the year 1243 to 1254. Various indults were given by him to the Poor Clares in the year 1246, and he confirmed the Rule of Saint Clare in the year 1253, three days before his death.

^d Alexander IV succeeded Innocent, and very many grants by him to the Friars Minor and the Poor Clares can be seen in Wadding, volume 2. He died in the year 1261.

^e John Cajetan Orsini was created Cardinal at Lyon in the year 1224 at the General Council. In "Pious Bohemia" by Bartholomew Pontanus it is said that John the Cardinal, Legate of Gregory IX, admonished John Cajetan, Cardinal her to keep something of her own for contingent necessities, but Agnes replied that she had left all things to the world; nevertheless, she had given one part to churches, another to the Sisters, and a third to the poor. Cajetan was later created Pontiff and called Nicholas III. Gonzaga, part I, lists among the Protectors of the Order the fourth as John Cajetan Cardinal.

^f Premysl III, also called Ottokar, succeeded his father Wenceslas in the year 1254.

SECTION X. Visions of heavenly and infernal beings experienced by Blessed Agnes.

[40] By these most excellent virtues, Agnes so attracted heaven that it confided its most secret things to her, and she so extremely afflicted the demons that they left nothing undone to trouble Agnes. But she held these in utter contempt, and as long as she lived she yearned most vehemently solely for heavenly things, even glimpsed from afar through a shadow. But she despised the feeble terrors of the demons as though the efforts of cats or dogs. Now of the most delightful spectacles — although most places exhibited a heavenly scene — nowhere, however, could she more behold God and the Most Blessed Mother and other heavenly beings with her bodily eyes than when in her private oratory, separated from all other mortals, she was most sweetly absorbed entirely in heavenly things amid prayers and tears. She is rapt in ecstasy. For then indeed Agnes would lose her senses and for a long time, no different from one buried except that a very slight beating of the heart betrayed that she was alive, she would perceive nothing at all of the movements of the Sisters or other motions of that kind. But her face would be especially illuminated with an extraordinary light, and with that brilliance she would strike a certain divine awe among the sacred virgins who watched, and win for herself extraordinary veneration with the greatest effect. Among the wonders, though they were almost daily, one was singular, which another sacred virgin saw on a certain occasion when, for some reason, she boldly entered the sacred chapel during the hour of prayer with her usual confidence. Agnes was fixed in prayer, raised entirely above the earth, she is elevated into the air, and lifted more than three or four spans from the ground, she was borne in the air. And now not only her face coruscated as usual, but the very room itself was full of divinity from the encircling bright cloud; moreover, a voice greater than human gave responses to the praying virgin, as once from the tabernacle. she is honored with a cloud and a voice But though she could not clearly understand them, yet under the uncertain perception of them, she was shaken with an extraordinary tremor at the majesty of the present God.

[41] But on the day of the Ascension of the Lord, that vision was far nobler, to which the manuscript codices attest that Prisca and Vratislava, sacred virgins there, were witnesses. On the Ascension of the Lord, conversing in the garden, The aforementioned Sisters were chanting psalms with Agnes in the garden of the convent and were observing the solemn feast with private devotion all the more, as the departure of the heavenly Savior into the heavens from time to time further provoked gratitude. Neither place nor time hindered their piety; they had risen from dinner a little before and, as I said, were walking about among the thick groves and the carefully tended and wonderfully fragrant flower beds while chanting divine psalms, when Agnes was suddenly lifted from the earth on high, and borne upward by no visible but by a hidden support even to the clouds, and finally escaping all eyes, she migrated into the very heavens. Meanwhile Prisca and Vratislava, their psalms broken off by the extraordinary spectacle, she is elevated into heaven, stood transfixed, and though they wished to, they could not utter a word; but confused not only in body and face but even in mind, they were torpid, and as though suspended in continual wonder, they gazed ceaselessly at the heavens and recalled Agnes with only their tears. For a full hour longing held them anxious; then Agnes appeared again in their midst. When the sacred virgins more closely inquired into her absence, after an hour she returns, they extracted nothing at all except a becoming and gentle smile, by which the remnants of heavenly delights were noted. For the most beautiful bride of the most beautiful of men had seen things that she could safely confide to no mortal; she had heard the secrets of God, knowledge of which she was not permitted to divulge to anyone. Hence the most modest virgin, and lest any account be taken of herself, most assiduously concealed the heavenly visions, though so thoroughly revealed.

[42] Nor is what happened to Agnes during a sacred procession in the church of the Savior in the year 1278, on the sixth day before the Kalends of September, any less memorable. The Poor Clares, preceded by the Cross as was their custom, were processing through the sacred church while chanting psalms and anxiously commending to God the unfortunate expedition of Ottokar, King of Bohemia V, against Rudolf ^a of Habsburg. during a procession When Agnes began to grow pale with changed color and to betray an unusual fear in her entire face, to stop in her tracks, and finally to be moistened with uncertain tears. The other virgins, ignorant of the cause of the sudden change, halted and questioned Agnes about this matter, and finally also asked her what it meant, that she should not hide it from them but narrate everything in order and proper sequence. she sees and narrates the defeat of Premysl III, The most modest virgin did not defer the Sisters' prayers, but briefly disclosed what she had seen: that King Ottokar, mangled in his entire body, propped up by two warriors, had first induced her pallor by the pitiful spectacle, then had caused the stupor that followed, and finally had drawn out tears. Therefore let them note the day and hour: by such a vision nothing but something fatal and grievous was portended (would that she herself were wrong). She had spoken, and her words shortly afterward found confirmation: for on the same day and hour the aforementioned King, in that one unhappy battle at the Lava, ^b had destroyed so many previous trophies, and although not unavenged, had finally fallen too through the treachery of his own men. Who drove the sword into Ottokar's throat is not yet designated by certain report. ^c

[43] Now how illustrious was that spectacle in which she so often beheld souls departing from bodies seeking heaven? Brigitta, ^d one of the seven virgins sent from Italy, she sees the soul of a dying Sister borne to heaven by Angels, was the foremost among the Poor Clares at the Savior, of no ordinary holiness as long as she lived. After she had most excellently revealed her great virtue to the Sisters chiefly through her illnesses, she at last surrendered her soul to the Creator amid ardent sighs toward heaven. Agnes was accompanying the departing one together with the Sisters' pious suffrages, according to her customary piety toward the dying. While the others could not bear the loss of the excellent virgin and so expressed their grief even with tears, Agnes alone, having condemned all mourning, proceeded with joy. Compelled to give a reason for this untimely gladness, she at last modestly revealed what was: that she had seen Brigitta ascending into heaven amid the ranks of Angels, full of light, entering the light otherwise inaccessible. She therefore exhorted the Sisters to set aside their useless grief, to give thanks to God individually, and to congratulate the Sister received into so excellent a place with all their prayers. Nor was it difficult to persuade the nuns of these extraordinary things about Brigitta, because the earlier and middle examples of excellent virtue, as I said, easily persuaded everyone to faith even in the final ones.

[44] But the enemy of the human race, despite all that has been narrated thus far, could not be restrained from expressing his hatred toward Agnes and from threatening her now with empty terror and now with terrible blows, yet without any loss of virtue. Here is one or two examples of terrors overcome. Agnes had risen from illness, and not yet having recovered her strength, she was being supported while walking by Dominica, a sacred virgin. Suddenly a demon rushed upon both of them, hideously clad in various forms. by the sign of the Cross she drives away demons seen under various forms. When Dominica glimpsed him even slightly, a fearful figure leaning on a piece of wood, she immediately raised a cry and, her voice already broken with fear, called for help in a dying tone. But Agnes, not at all frightened by this infernal specter, neither feared the demon, more horrible than an Ethiopian in blackness, nor cared at all for one dressed in the guise of dogs and cats, but dismissed from her sight with the single sign of the Cross, with the greatest ease, any form representing the foulness of any beast. With equal ease at another time, when before the oratory the demon assumed utterly deformed and most hideous spectral images with noted mockeries, and finally counterfeited a foul owl, and with its horrible tail blocked every entrance, the virgin Agnes drove away the feeble enemy with the cross. Once, however, by God's permission, having grown more impudent, he attempted to afflict her not in an alien guise; but more audacious beyond that infernal horror, he also flew upon the virgin as she was leaving the oratory. And so he violently dashed her to the ground, so that in falling he dislocated a joint from her shoulder. The atrocious pain that followed this disorder of the limbs extremely tormented Agnes. But indeed this fury raged against the virgin in vain: she, beyond the injury, even when harmed by them, revealed the pain to no one, and gave thanks to God that He so mercifully punished her errors, when she judged herself worthy of even the most extreme punishments from His servant. After the hidden defect of the shoulder was corrected, since the demon was neither diminishing virtue by wounding nor by striking, he thenceforth abstained from these worst outrages. Yet, so that he might not obscurely confess his hatred against Agnes, he often displayed from afar his weakness in various shapes, but without causing terror.

[45] Besides heavenly beings or infernal specters, Agnes sometimes beheld, imbued with a most sweet sense of piety, souls from the fires of purgation either imploring help or already helped. Among similar visions, not the least was that of a certain Sister, also a Poor Clare there. While she lived, this Sister, prompted indeed by an evil spirit, bore everything about Agnes more heavily, and even twisted deeds done according to virtue mostly toward the border of vice, or condemned them as transgressions against the rules by a perverse observance and austerity of the institute. she helps the appearing soul from purgatory. Agnes heard these things from time to time, but this virgin, so great in age, did not repress the injuries of the lowly virgin even by a word; indeed sometimes, when others were preparing vengeance, she even deflected it, thinking that the one most knew how she ought to be treated, and as it were she wonderfully repaid gratitude for benefits everywhere to her detractor. But heaven had a different judgment about the deeds of the most modest Agnes, and the impudent nun did not bear so easily what she had said or done while alive. For having been removed from the living, she felt how often her indiscreet tongue had given offense. Carried down to the purgatorial fires, she incurred extreme punishments for having treated Agnes's words and deeds more unfavorably; nor could she be freed from those torments until, appearing to Agnes during prayers, she obtained pardon from her for such offenses. The most gentle

Agnes could not bear the pitiable plight of this otherwise good Sister, but she doubled the benefits she had once bestowed on her while living, having easily granted pardon for her errors. When she obtained this, the soul of the deceased immediately left the fires, and hastening on her way to heaven, through Agnes's work she passed, happy, into perpetual joys and immortal delights, while Agnes herself watched.

^a Rudolf received the Roman Empire in the year 1273; previously he was Prefect of the court, or Marshal of King Premysl. Sifrid, a priest of the Bishop of Minden, who flourished at the time of Emperor Albert, son of Rudolf, asserts that solemn envoys with much money and gifts were sent to Pope Gregory by the King of Bohemia, because he himself aspired to the Empire. He had occupied Austria, Styria, and Carinthia and other places, which Rudolf recovered by arms.

^b Lava or Laba, a town of Austria on the borders of Moravia.

^c Crugerius observes that the Bohemian historians designate the traitor as Milota the Moravian.

^d It is remarkable that the name of this Brigitta is not inscribed in the Franciscan Martyrology or in the Sacred Gyneceum of Arthur of Monastier.

SECTION XI. The spirit of prophecy in Blessed Agnes and predictions of future events.

[46] These and many other things of the kind could be commemorated, had we not resolved, having selected a few, to pass over most of them, lest we incur tedium through prolixity. And indeed Agnes herself attributed so little to these things that, although she overflowed with these heavenly delights or was honored with the visions of blessed souls, she never counted them among the testimonies of sanctity; but on the contrary, by a memorable modesty of spirit and contempt of self, and by her diligence in prayer and skill in governing herself, she measured true and genuine virtue in herself and in others. Although it cannot be denied that since Agnes had excelled remarkably in these latter things, she had also been greatly commended to men by God through those things which are illustrious in the mouths of men. She predicts victory in war for her brother the King. But these she diminished by her characteristic modesty, since they were so frequent and conspicuous around her. Moreover, renowned for prophecies, she foresaw and predicted many things before they happened. Under the auspices of Emperor Frederick II, Wenceslas her brother was marching against Frederick, Duke of Austria, with an army gathered around the year of the Lord 1246. Few promised a happy outcome for the military expedition, but most, like timid augurs, were making gloomy predictions for the finest youth of Bohemia. Agnes alone exhorted the King publicly and added courage from heaven too: let him go forward and advance his standards against the rebel Prince of the Empire; and from this let he himself expect certain victory from God, let the soldiers expect spoils, and let the Emperor expect submission. Nor did so magnificent a promise fail in any of these things. Duke Frederick, wise at last at his own cost, acknowledged the Emperor; the soldiers returned home laden with immense plunder from Austria, with glory. ^a Wenceslas at last, besides a solemn victory, also took Vienna, which he then finally restored only when the Duke, rather than by arms, ingloriously redeemed it with much gold.

[47] Then around the year 1269, when Agnes lay dangerously ill, and not only the sacred Sisters but the physicians themselves said they were vainly exhausting all their skill in correcting her illness, although she was abandoned by men, after she had nevertheless prepared herself for the last journey of mortality with the final Viaticum according to custom, dangerously ill, she predicts that her remaining relatives will die before her, she not only immediately began to recover, but also learned by a clear voice from the Lord present that she would not depart from human affairs before all the remaining Princes related to Agnes had preceded her on the path common to humanity, to the grave. This secret, uniquely confided at that time to the holy man who was her confessor, was solemnly revealed by the truth only in the year 1281, when from the Premyslid line only one survivor, Wenceslas III, ^b King of Bohemia VI, outlived Agnes; all the other Princes of both sexes, having been carried off at different times, inhabited their burial tombs.

[48] Now the things about herself and her family that she had penetrated so deeply as to predict them with certainty long before they happened — how could she not also foresee even smaller things in the sacred convent? There was at the Savior a virgin whom they called Eriganda. she recognizes that another is asking God for unworthy things in prayer This woman had been frequenting the church for some days, indeed even nights, continuing other prayers besides the common ones, wearying God with tears and weeping; yet she confided to no one what she wished to accomplish, nor did she consult anyone's cooperation in her extraordinary devotion. The persistent secrecy displeased Agnes, and being moreover informed by the Godhead that nothing worthy of so many prayers and such great sighs was being asked by the indiscreet virgin, here, with a somewhat forced severity of countenance, she said: "Why do you not desist from prayers by which you may sooner provoke God to anger than extort by them what you so earnestly seek, unworthy as it is, to your own detriment and perhaps to contempt of the Godhead?" Eriganda could not bear the unusual severity of Agnes, who was otherwise the most modest, but since the one thing she could do was blush — having been caught — she threw herself at her feet and obtained pardon for her admitted imprudence only when she removed that untimely desire from herself by a salutary abstinence.

[49] At another time, another vestal, whose name the old records concealed, learned by her own experience how much the absent Agnes could see, after committing a theft. Some apples of remarkably fine appearance and intrinsic quality were lying in the room with the permission of the superiors, which illustrious matrons would occasionally send to their Agnes as small and very humble gifts, since she would accept nothing else. Why would the virgin not be attracted by their beauty? another to have stolen something. She therefore diverted one to herself, intending when convenient to satisfy her hunger or thirst with it. But soon, as the memory of violated poverty kept recurring and pricking her conscience sharply again and again, she returned the stolen apple and, the number being completed, as it were, she buried and hid the theft anew, without Agnes's knowledge. But Agnes, having summoned her as if for another reason and having detained her long enough, finally offered her two of the finest apples, and with a smiling face, not at all concealing the deed, said: "It is better for you to eat even ten according to the rules than, in contempt of the vow of voluntary poverty, to appropriate them against the prescriptions." The guilty virgin understood what this addition of gifts meant, and having deprecated the deed, she thenceforth bound her greater spirit to poverty even in this small desire. Agnes, quite content with the blush and honest confession, absolved her with the easiest pardon. She foresaw, moreover, and predicted very many such things, as we have said, so that Agnes was never deceived in future events. But having dealt with her prophecies, before we proceed to her death, let us append a few things from many that were done by her beyond human power.

^a Dubravius, Book 16, and Hagecius at the year here related, 1236, treat of this expedition and the capture of Vienna.

^b He was then a youth; afterward in the year of Christ 1286 he married Judith, daughter of Emperor Rudolf: concerning whom more is said below at number 64.

SECTION XII. Miracles performed by Blessed Agnes during her life.

[50] Agnes became renowned after death, as we shall see a little further below, for remarkable miracles; but no less, and indeed no fewer, were those with which God distinguished her life from heaven. Most of them, however, the negligence of the ancients either failed to record, or the Hussite disturbances destroyed. among other miracles Therefore only three or four will need to be mentioned, of which the old records expressly make note. Other miracles, indeed famous, but hitherto dispersed only by uncertain rumor, we shall omit, their credit resting meanwhile on old tradition, until some codex or the monastery's records confirm them. In the first place, her command over unhappy spirits was eminently conspicuous, who could not be restrained either by her virtues or by other heavenly signs from expressing their hatred against Agnes very often. she restrained demons But how much Agnes was permitted against the infernal powers we have already touched upon; now let us reveal one or two proofs of her lesser dominion over diseases and even death itself.

[51] Elizabeth, a virgin living the same manner of life as Agnes, bound to the institute of Saint Francis in extreme poverty, had given proofs of excellent virtue by a religious manner of life, and was held among the sacred Sisters as of entirely the first rank in example. she removes a headache But this most excellent virgin's outstanding exercises and other virtue of the institute were extremely disturbed by a very sharp pain in the head, and though human skill labored greatly to remove it, all herbs and other medications accomplished little more than nothing in correcting her condition on several occasions. Despairing of human remedies, she at last conceived the idea of hoping in divine assistance: they therefore went to prayers, and wearied the saints in the usual manner, but without the customary diminution of the ailment. When Agnes, pitying the lot of her most afflicted Sister and full of trust in God, with the veil of her own head, removed the sacred veil from her own head and gently covered the head that had been so wretchedly treated, and as it were compressed the pain, invoking the name of God over Elizabeth, until all the disease at last departed from the afflicted woman. Great crowds then gathered around the freed nun, congratulating her on the removal of the disease; thanks were offered everywhere to Agnes the healer, and the restored health of the virgin was proclaimed with one voice as accomplished through her work. But the most modest virgin blushed indeed, because they were attributing to her things which in her own estimation pertained in no way to her own virtue; she urged, however, that they should praise God alone, who by a memorable proof had shown how highly He valued the sacred veil of religion, by restoring health beyond nature.

[52] Nor was Agnes esteemed for great benefits of this kind only within the convent; even among outsiders, through her intercession, pains were overcome and illnesses of every kind were forbidden from bodies, to the astonishment of despairing nature. Among others, more illustrious was Sophia, wife of the Knight Conrad, who after childbirth, when she had vainly tried to avert impending death with all remedies and had therefore given up all hope of recovery, she frees a woman in childbirth from danger of death was awaiting the final hour with her most sorrowful husband. Yet at last, lest she seem to have tried only human means, she ran to Agnes for help, as if stealthily, so as not to offend the modesty of the most humble virgin if she implored her openly, making supplication through her husband. He, as if doing something else, first at great length described to Agnes the illness of his wife Sophia, then added that nature and skill were moreover powerless, and finally said that unless God alone conquered the force of the disease, shortly his wife would be not a wife but a corpse to be mourned with tears. Agnes groaned amid these things, and turning in every direction to see if she could by any means avert the final lot, she said at last: "Let us implore God further; for your wife has not been brought to that point from which she cannot be recalled to life." "Why then," added Conrad, "if you can, will you not gratify my wife, who craves an apple, with this last delicacy?" For Sophia had earnestly commanded her husband, when he left, that this was to be obtained from Agnes; thinking that from food which the hands of a Saint had touched, perhaps all the violence of the disease would be happily consumed. Nor did Agnes refuse so small a gift, but the domestic orchards, though the virgin was otherwise generous, deceived her, however anxiously she searched throughout the convent for an apple. having procured apples by the sign of the Cross, She nevertheless came upon an orchard near the convent, and at a season other than summer or autumn — namely wintertime — from a dry tree she produced three and indeed most excellent apples by the Cross of Christ.

When Sophia had eaten one of these, with the merits of Blessed Agnes interposed, she dispelled all the force of her illness and at last seriously recovered her former health, for which shortly before all remedies, however serious, had nevertheless come too late. Her husband did not long survive the receiving of so signal a benefit; therefore, freed from marriage, Sophia — in order to repay God and Agnes in some part — spurned the world, distributed her ample fortune among the poor, and having been enrolled among the Poor Clares, she excellently honored extreme poverty for many years with great example and outstanding virtue. Now let no one especially wonder that the trunk of a barren tree poured forth those three apples for Agnes at the single making of the sacred sign of the Cross, because with that same sign she prodigiously corrected not only trees but all other members in human bodies, when the need arose. This power she was believed to have wrested from her spouse Christ Jesus for this reason especially: that besides other exercises of devotion toward the holy cross, every Friday from early morning until the ninth or even the tenth hour, she was completely alienated from her senses, and thus, for the most part absorbed in the sufferings of her Savior, she persisted amid tears and sighs. These portentous cures of limbs more than sufficiently declared Agnes's dominion over every infirmity. There remains a single prodigious proof of triumph even over death.

[53] The youngest daughter of Premysl III, already deceased, had died — a sister of Wenceslas Ottokar, King of Bohemia IV, and of Agnes the Poor Clare, ^a about fifteen years of age — whom the sacred virgins at the Savior had until then been raising in the convent with the usual education once given to royal children, still uncertain of her definite state, and had excellently trained in every virtue. her sister Ludmilla, dead, And the royal girl had given unmistakable signs that, if only her brother and the rest favored Agnes, she would pass her virgin years nowhere but in the monastery with her sister Agnes, for as long as she lived. And perhaps this desire moved the Heavenly Beings to hasten the blessed departure of Ludmilla, since otherwise a longer life in the sacred convent, because it suited her brother and other relatives, would with all certainty have been despaired of. Lest therefore the now marriageable virgin be dragged, unwillingly, to earthly nuptials, she was, beyond all expectation yet not without the enormous grief of all her relatives, carried off from mortals by some disease, around the year 1244, and lay on her bier in the church of the Savior, to be interred — an outstanding, because royal, example to spectators of human vicissitude. And already the sacred virgins were carrying out the funeral rites, as they are called, with the solemn prayers for the dead according to custom, when Agnes, unable to bear the loss of her Ludmilla and grieving for the plight of her relatives, silently sought this supreme grace with great vows from God: that He would allow the laws of mortality to be temporarily broken against custom, and that her sister, already kindled among the immortals, by her prayers she raises her from the dead, might, if it so please Him, be restored to the number of mortals by a privilege unheard of for the Kings of Bohemia until then. With no one aware of this most extraordinary indult, after Agnes while praying had reached that verse, "Who raised Lazarus from the dead," etc., the prayers began to show themselves not in vain. For what had until now lain as a corpse — the little body of Ludmilla — immediately began to receive life and gradually to move in all its limbs. And then the royal girl, no longer dead but fully alive, raised herself on her elbow, and finally sat up decorously on the bier and looked around at those present with her eyes.

[54] Meanwhile the holy virgins were shaken with fear, they broke off their prayers, and all began to look around in flight from the specter with headlong steps; but Agnes intervened among the frightened, bade them be of good courage, and taught them that nothing was to be feared from that maiden whom they had previously so greatly honored as a royal infant or loved in every way as practically a sacred vestal. but complaining that she is called back from heavenly joy For Ludmilla was alive, without danger to their eyes, and having returned to mortals, she was greeting her virgins in a friendly manner. But then the recalled sister interrupted: "See, Agnes, how perversely you have interrupted my joys with your prayers. Christ the Virgin had already received me as His bride, and I had begun to be no small part of that number which few maintain with inviolate body; when you, troublesome to the Godhead, obtained indeed what you wished, but from me — what a great injury! — you unwittingly snatched away delights and with them all happiness. Why not rather dismiss these desires, and attend not to what benefits you for a brief time, but to what benefits me eternally? Come, restore me again to the immortals as a mortal, and let me enjoy uninterrupted the joys that heaven had granted when your untimely prayers broke in. The time will come when you too will not wish to exchange a similar rest for any other." Ludmilla had spoken, and eagerly awaited what Agnes wished should be done with her; but Agnes noticed that she was discovered before all, and therefore blushed more vehemently than usual, and as though it were no concern of hers that Ludmilla had returned to the living, she seriously excused the benefit (or misdeed) of the survivor. Finally, however, she dropped all this as superfluous, and having heard the just complaints of the recalled virgin, she condemned her own prayers; she permits her to die again. and all that life which Ludmilla so greatly abhorred, she too rejected and deeply abhorred from her heart. Therefore, when Agnes had said, "Let her return where God wishes her," having obtained pardon elsewhere from mortals to immortals, Ludmilla once more composed herself in the bier, while the remaining virgins were struck with sacred awe, and modestly laid down upon the bier the body that had been upright until now, as though overcome by sleep. After this movement all sensation departed, and what until then by a great and second prodigy seemed to be a living, moving, and feeling body was once more a corpse. Thereafter the remaining prayers were suppressed as superfluous, since it was established by Ludmilla's own confession that she had been received into heaven, and the sacred remains of that blessed soul were buried with great veneration in a certain place not far from the principal altar in the very church of the Savior. Agnes also, however much she tried to cover or conceal everything, was from this time esteemed as greater than human. Her modesty in subsequent years was by no means able to prevent heaven from illustrating her holiness with notable graces, contrary to her own opinion.

^a In Pontanus's "Pious Bohemia" she is called the daughter of King Wenceslas, the brother of Blessed Agnes.

SECTION XIII. The death of Blessed Agnes and certain singular events preceding it.

[55] ^a In the year 1281, at the age of 76 The year 1281 was turning, and after the winter had largely passed, the first spring was opening, when Agnes, a virgin now greatly advanced in age — for she was seventy-six years old and had spent forty-six years in the sacred institute of Saint Francis with distinguished fame for virtue and holiness — began at last, she yearns for heaven, sated with age and life, to hate human things from the heart and to yearn with continual desires for immortal ones. For it grieved the excellent virgin that her body, although partly wasted by religious austerity and partly by the relentlessness of continual ill health, nevertheless confined like a prison her free spirit, which continually aspired to heavenly things; and thus, though frail, it daily presented a great and intolerable barrier to her delights. But especially as the solemn forty-day fast of the Church approached, Agnes was more than usually seized with longing for heaven and with yearning, through every prayer and sigh and lamentation of her soul, to commend herself to the heavenly Spouse for the hoped-for nuptials with the Virgin Lamb, in Lent she fasts, purchased in holy season and moreover by so many labors. Hence, however much the sacred virgins opposed her decrepit age and continual illness, she nonetheless, no less than before, with her customary austerity and an extraordinary abstinence from food, barely took anything each day: a morsel of bread and water from a fountain. From time to time what she consumed showed she was human, since on other days, from morning until evening, she tormented the flesh — now no longer flesh but mere bones — with extreme fasting without even these necessities. Meanwhile, as the body thus voluntarily lacked its usual nourishment, her eyes did not lack the extraordinary showers of tears, nor her royal back the servile lashes. With these Agnes, withdrawn from mortals and hidden away in the last corner of the sacred convent, that she might the more express her heart to Christ, she mourns her errors, day by day copiously mourned her whole life, and in it — since she could not find vices — some unknown faults, most gravely. But why would Agnes not bear this solitude more lightly, since Angels undoubtedly frequented it? Why would she nearly lose her eyes, when the Heavenly Beings usually compensated them with heavenly joys? Why would she even accuse her life of the sins of some unknown fault, when Christ, visible to her, absolved it with certain and so often repeated joys?

[56] ^b Now half of Lent and somewhat more had already elapsed since Agnes had been treating her body singularly badly, when her strength began to give way to such great rigor, and her advanced age began to decline — no longer gradually but precipitously — dangerously ill and to bear this kind of austerity in so strict a religious life all too heavily, and plainly to succumb. Life was finally being diminished with great losses, and death was approaching with its final steps — not indeed unexpected for the virgin and beyond her age, but yet more rapidly than usual because of these austerities. The physicians, moreover, since virtue so poorly suited the body, promised no help; they even somewhat impiously reproached her piety, imprudently demanded prudence, and finally in vain seriously condemned these misguided hatreds of the body in Agnes, with all hope of recovery abandoned. What would the most holy virgin do amid such extreme measures of desperate mortality? Then at last she began to hope from the heart for eternal happiness, when human nature had entirely failed. Therefore, as the body's illness increased with great increments, she turned herself entirely to propitiating the Godhead. she is fortified with the Last Sacraments. Having then summoned the holy man who had been her confessor, when the innocent virgin had reviewed her entire life, not without tears and a sharp detestation of sins, she prepared herself with the divine Body of Christ, as the final Viaticum, to run the last course of the journey to immortality properly and securely, according to the custom of the Church. She wished moreover to be piously and Christianly fortified also with sacred oil in the customary ceremonies, so that she might contend more strongly and happily with the final enemy, whom she had until now even held in contempt, for the imperishable crown.

[57] Meanwhile a cry arose throughout the entire convent, with all hastening to her, that Agnes was no longer caring for mortal things, and so, as her strength was gradually and imperceptibly fleeing from her body, she was hastening with her entire soul toward heaven. Therefore the sacred Sisters, groaning for their own plight, some wept, others tried to delay the one already running toward the final hour, with prayers and last vows; all in short left nothing undone by which, either by divine help or human effort, a longer life might be prolonged for their Agnes. At the same time, Catherine, a sacred virgin who had been deprived of the use of her feet for ten years by the malice of disease, asked whether she might find her alive: whether she might greet her once more, or also receive health from her? And so she begged her attendant to carry her, with the sign of the Cross formed by her hand, since she could not stand on her feet because of weakness, to Agnes's chamber. When she had been brought there,

she did everything possible to obtain from Agnes the grace of signing her with the sacred sign of the Cross according to her custom, and thereby to overcome the old malice of the disease. But the virgin, ever most zealous for self-abasement, somewhat stunned by so magnificent a petition, condemned the solemn vows of the Sister even on her deathbed with an extreme blush, and begged only that she, the lowest of all mortals, not be perversely honored with such a prerogative, which pertained in no way to her. But Catherine could not or would not be dissuaded by so humble a refusal. And so she persisted once more in seeking the benefit by entreaty, and from Agnes, now at the very end of life, she eagerly expected nothing but a single Cross for her final comfort. Agnes nevertheless resisted and defended herself by her own unworthiness, and finally, as her health worsened further, she made no response at all. Wherefore the other sick woman, lest Agnes perhaps pass her by not only in virtue but the dying one now also in death, full of trust in God, seized Agnes's right hand by force and with it signed her feet, where the affliction was greatest, with the sacred sign of the Cross. she heals the lame woman. From this pious violence the disease immediately departed from her feet completely. Catherine, who until now could not even stand on them, thenceforth also walked firmly. Thus God exalted Agnes's modesty, and the virtue she had so greatly concealed, He revealed by a solemn miracle even in her final hours.

[58] But after Catherine, as we said, had begun from this touch to be not merely somewhat better but perfectly well, everything for Agnes on the contrary was at its worst: nature was giving way everywhere, and a certain horror and failure of her limbs heralded the final dissolution. Amid these lapses, the cheerful patient — because she was ever closer to heaven — was either mostly breathing forth most ardent sighs to her Spouse, or also sometimes, though more rarely, she gives her final admonitions to her own, addressed the Sisters gathered around her. The brief summary of her address was this: Let them cast their thoughts upon the Lord; let them fix their hope on heaven, whence certain help would always be present in time. Let them cultivate virtues, but none more than charity above all. All things were fleeting and transient except God: Him let them love above all things. Let them believe that the sinews and bones of their religious life were poverty, and therefore let them cultivate and preserve it to the utmost. Finally, let each and every one render to the Roman See the lowest subjection and the highest veneration. And now the last day had finally arrived, all the more welcome to Agnes because the Savior of the human race Himself had expired on Mount Golgotha some centuries before. illuminated by heavenly light The ninth hour had moreover sounded, when Agnes began to fail utterly at last and to struggle in extremity with death. But what a wondrous transformation! At the very same time a certain heavenly light began to make her face more radiant, and the more the light faded as it rose, the more the splendor increased all around, and with its most brilliant rays it filled the entire chamber and everything nearby, striking the virgins with sacred awe. The most holy virgin then at last gave up her soul at the tenth hour of the day, at the beginning of the sacrifice being offered, at the very same time at which the sacred scriptures declare that Christ expired on the cross, she dies. so that it might be clear, I believe, how similar Agnes had lived to the one nailed to the cross — she who also died most happily on the same ^c day, indeed at the same hour as He.

^a The year 1281, if it is reckoned from Easter, which fell in the following year 1282, as is clear from what follows.

^b That is, on the 24th day of Lent, if the day of death is to be marked.

^c Blessed Agnes dies in the year 1282. On the Friday before Laetare Sunday, to speak in ecclesiastical terms. For in the said year 1282, with solar cycle 3, lunar cycle 10, and Dominical letter D, Easter fell on March 29. Which dates do not agree with the year 1281, or with 1283, which Wadding, Arthur, and others assigned.

SECTION XIV. The burial of the deceased Blessed Agnes at the Savior in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and afterward certain deeds beyond human power.

[59] From March 6 until the tenth day of the same month, the sacred body of Blessed Agnes was publicly displayed for the devotion of visitors. Because it appeared neither rigid nor discolored, it was already at that time, by the judgment of all, considered to have been honored from heaven by a prerogative proper to the Saints, the body appearing more illustrious even after the departure of the blessed soul. And rightly so: for what harsh virtue had, while she lived, made horrible and dried out through fasts and other austerities of life, now that very body, as though it had acquired color and vigor from death, with an appearance far above the human, publicly displayed, and with a form entirely similar to what immortality usually grants to Saints even after the fatal hour, refreshed the eyes of the spectators with an intimate sweetness of the divine spirit. with the veneration of those who came running. Hence on those intervening days, crowds of people of every age and rank made pilgrimage in extraordinary throngs to the place where the sacred corpse lay exposed. And even after they had detained their eyes for several hours with that sacred spectacle, they were not sufficiently sated; but they wished to bend their gaze upon the same sight again and again, and repeatedly to fix their vision anew, and always to refresh their spirit with new pleasure from this pious curiosity. Others likewise, to continue the memory as long as possible, would approach the body itself more closely, and by whatever authority or force penetrate to Agnes herself, venerate the sacred limbs on bended knee and kiss them most sweetly, touch them with rings or necklaces or finally belts and precious veils, and thereby, as it were, draw from the dead and formerly dried-out body I know not what vivid moisture and a truly medicinal virtue for driving away diseases. Nor did they do these things with vain hope and no result: for an admirable wonder above human powers, by which the Godhead from heaven wonderfully illustrated the holiness of His beloved virgin, had, besides other living merits of the still living Agnes, extraordinarily excited the pious multitude to this extraordinary devotion. Would you like a brief account of the event?

[60] While Agnes was still alive, there had been lying gravely ill from an incurable abscess on one side a heroine of a very illustrious family among the Bohemians, who had rendered the greatest services to the fatherland — Jerotima, whose baptismal name was Scholastica. The disease was beyond all medical art; all remedies had fallen to no avail in driving it away. She herself had spent lavishly, an abscess is cured, with absolutely no resulting remedy or even alleviation of the most serious illness. Rightly, then, while Agnes's sacred corpse still lay exposed so that it could be conveniently handled by devout hands, Scholastica, full of trust in God, had her attendants bring her to the place, and there, after she had humbly implored the divine mercy on her knees, with the merits of the blessed virgin interposed before God, she cast herself reverently upon the sacred corpse, and in a most pious embrace she pressed her sick side tightly and closely against the side of the deceased Agnes. Nor did God, at Agnes's intervention, delay the hoped-for help in this most desperate illness. Immediately upon touching the sacred body, the abscess burst, dispelling impending death, and prolonged for many years the life of the heroine who had come devoutly to the tomb, by a signal miracle.

[61] But this so numerously thronging devotion, which this miracle had been the greatest incentive for (since it was growing excessive and seemed of its own accord to tend toward some kind of violence), was disrupted by the indiscreet tearing of a single nail from the sacred body by a certain sacred virgin, and thereby the running crowd, however great, was as it were checked by the usual barrier of the sealed tomb. Now the account of what happened was noted by the records of a contemporary writer. The sacred body of Blessed Agnes was lying on a poor cot, as was the custom of sacred virgins professing the poverty of Saint Clare, on account of a nail being torn off so that it might for some time satisfy the pious curiosity of both the domestic Sisters and also the external benefactresses of the convent, and console the longing they had conceived from the departure of so holy a soul. When behold, one of the sacred Sisters dared a deed — the virgin's name was Judith — she dared, I say, something that, unless excessive love for Agnes excused it, should altogether have been punished. She tore a nail from the big toe of the right foot with her tender hand, thinking she would have some memorial of the virgin she loved, to console her absence. copious blood flows out But an immense quantity of blood bursting from that wound immediately condemned the piety inappropriately attempted — since the sacred corpse had already lain for some days without a soul, and otherwise Agnes, dried out by fasting and other afflictions of the body, scarcely had in her entire body as much blood as had flowed from that wound after death. Frightened by this portent, the virgin Judith — lest she be discovered — tore the sacred veil from her own head and dried the blood; but since it was so soaked that it could absorb no more, and since nothing availed, she threw herself on her knees before the sacred corpse and piously begged pardon for her apparent temerity with prayers and tears. The blood thereupon stopped, revealing that the otherwise most gentle Agnes had been appeased toward Judith. and it removes diseases. Nor did the blood rashly shed from the rash wound moisten the veil further; yet lest it seem to have been shed for nothing, it thereafter restored with certain healing the afflicted or damaged health of many.

[62] After this so celebrated act of violence, lest anyone dare something worse and perhaps under the pretext of piety extend a profane hand to the sacred remains, the sacred Virgins thenceforth enclosed the body of Blessed Agnes, which until now had been freely exposed for veneration, in a wooden sarcophagus; and since even this did not sufficiently provide for its safety, they also most firmly secured it with solid iron plates and heavy nails against all temerity. a wooden sarcophagus fortified with iron plates Thus, with Agnes enclosed in a wooden tomb and furthermore armored in iron, there arrived later than the rest a woman of a very illustrious family among the Bohemians, who was indeed most eagerly desirous of inspecting the sacred body once more; but cautiously uncertain of obtaining the benefit, she had prudently and in time, before approaching, obtained a diploma from the Papal Legate by which access for the admirer and venerator of Blessed Agnes was liberally granted without any difficulty. But intending to use this only as a last resort, and indeed only if she were rudely refused, she first humbly begged the sacred Virgins to bear so small a trouble and, having opened the sarcophagus, to grant her merely the final sight of Agnes. They could not, she said — knowing themselves intimately — be unaware that some grace of this kind was owed to her above all others, since she had venerated the living Agnes more obsequiously and had in turn been honored by her above others. Let them therefore grant this favor to her and especially to Agnes. it opens of its own accord. But the sacred Virgins, scarcely moved at this point, offered some sort of scruple by which they asserted they were firmly prevented from opening the sacred body. Here the Heroine Scholastica Steinberg (for that was her name) produced the Papal diploma, removed every scruple by supreme authority, and no longer requested a favor but pressed her due claim all the more vehemently. And as the Virgins ran this way and that, still hesitant, and were at last not without difficulty beginning to consent to the opening, God anticipated their forced liberality with an unexpected grant: for by His work, with no one approaching the casket, the iron bindings were so loosened

of their own accord, so that Scholastica could freely venerate the desired treasure with her eyes. Then the sacred Virgins were ashamed of their tardiness and their somewhat boorish scruple, by which they had so greatly prevented so illustrious a heroine of Bohemia from beholding the beloved virgin. But she all the more thanked the Vestals, whose pious reluctance had given heaven the occasion to reveal Agnes's sacred face to her once more by so remarkable a sign.

[63] On the tenth day of March, since Tobias, ^a the twenty-second Bishop of Prague, excused his absence for some reason, and the priests next in rank below the episcopal dignity — though they too were mitred in their own Church — deferred the assigned duty of the sacred carrying, perhaps because they thought it unbecoming for a woman to be borne out by Prelates, she is buried in the chapel of the Blessed Mary, or even refused to attend the funeral rites for reasons or non-reasons, at last the most humble virgin — as she herself had predicted — received this kind of final grace from an ordinary religious, though a man of no ordinary holiness among her Franciscans. And indeed he did not seem to have been carrying around the name "Bonagratia" ^b rashly, since so good a grace was granted him from heaven that he alone, in preference to the Bishop (otherwise a holy man) and the other Prelates, was appointed for Agnes's funeral by the judgment of God and at the will of the Saint herself. However much the sacred Virgins had carefully hidden the body of Blessed Agnes in wood and iron, and indeed also in the earth itself, in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin before the Marian altar, nevertheless shortly afterward, once the flesh was consumed (which was indeed scarcely any even at death), the dry bones at last broke through all these obstacles. it is wafted with a sweet odor And not once but very often they honored the pious nostrils of venerators with a heavenly odor — and what wonder? — a most sweet one, by divine favor. When the Sisters were sometimes astonished at the unusual fragrance, Agnes at last appeared visibly to one of them, while she was sleeping during prayers at the tomb, and removed all doubt, declaring that the place was solemnly honored with this prerogative of odor by the blessed spirits visiting her body. Nor did this favor of the Saints adorn only the bones lying hidden underground in the tomb; but thereafter also several times, when the earth had been dug up and they lay on the altar, it manifested itself in great wonder in honor of Blessed Agnes.

^a Tobias was made Bishop in the year 1279 and died in 1296.

^b There was then the General of the Minors, Bonagratia, Bonagratia. who in the same year 1282 celebrated the General Chapter at Strasbourg. Whether it is about him or another that is being discussed here, let others inquire.

SECTION XV. Benefits from Agnes, born a Queen of Bohemia and now received into heaven, toward the Kings and Queens of the same kingdom.

[64] Since Kings and Queens hold the foremost place among mortals, why should we not first commemorate the liberality exercised from heaven toward them? The royal infant Margaret, Margaret, her great-niece, is healed, who was to become the future wife of Boleslav, Duke of Wroclaw and Legnica, the daughter of Wenceslas III, King of Bohemia VI, and Judith of Habsburg, was considered by the physicians as beyond hope. For however much her parents tried everything, the disease had overcome all art. And so they were looking at the bier and designating a place among the royal mausoleums for so small a body. The mother alone, since no hope shone from earth, turned her eyes to heaven, and having become a suppliant of her kinswoman Agnes, recently placed among the Saints, she preserved the offspring, utterly despaired of by all, through great acts of grace. For when the Queen had placed Margaret, dressed in the Poor Clare habit, on the tomb of Blessed Agnes, and had earnestly prayed that the propitious aunt would will and command that her great-niece be safe and well, immediately the royal infant began at the same time to come to herself, to improve, and finally to feel no vestiges of the disease. The grateful parents fixed a votive offering at the tomb of their heavenly healer. The royal offspring, saved from death, filled not only the parents but the entire court with joy, and the fame of the present patronage wonderfully attracted the city and all Bohemia to honor and affection toward Agnes.

[65] But what obligated the Bohemians far more to the great Virgin was the fact that by her intercession Charles IV was saved and escaped impending death. Had he been taken, all those royal honors through which Bohemia had especially become famous in Europe would have been lost. Therefore that we first saw an Emperor in Bohemia, Charles IV, Emperor, that the Carolinian University was established, that the Kings of Bohemia have a crown with which they are solemnly crowned, that finally so many sacred Relics of Saints — and magnificent basilicas erected for those same Saints — mark an august piety: all this Bohemia owes to Agnes, the Savior of Charles; and would that she acknowledged it with some worthy veneration and also professed publicly that she was indebted. But let us examine this outstanding benefit a little more fully. ^a Charles IV, named Wenceslas in baptism, ^b while in his cradle in the royal castle, having reached only his second year — as that age is open to all diseases on every side — was not far from counting the year of the Lord 1317 as the last of his life. still an infant For some noxious humor had so dissolved the most tender body of the royal infant that it could not be dried or dissipated by any medicine or warmth procured at whatever cost. Meanwhile the royal attendants and the infant's guardians had blocked every avenue lest any troubling rumor reach the ears of the Queen, ^c and thus more vehemently torment — or outright devastate — the woman, already afflicted by marital dissensions: so that afterward Bohemia might grieve two funerals at once at the most inopportune time, and be deprived of an heir — if indeed that lamentable sequence repeated — and also of all hope of posterity from Bohemian blood.

[66] When earth failed in keeping faith, heaven preserved it; and however much the ministers at Elbow concealed the son's illness, the Heavenly Beings nevertheless, Blessed Agnes appearing to his mother the Queen, though ambiguously, revealed the danger of the certain misfortune. For to Elizabeth, who was sleeping and resting in the King's chamber, a clear voice sounded from heaven: let her rise from bed and avert the impending calamity, and what she herself could not do, let her deflect in time through the prayers of Agnes her fellow citizen. Every delay was full of danger; let her therefore go in haste and implore the intercessions she was commanded to seek. The Queen obeyed, as was fitting, the heavenly monitor, and fluctuating between hope and fear as to what misfortune was signified by that voice, she descended to the sacred convent of the Blessed Savior; for she knew that among the sacred virgins there was also an Agnes, whom on account of her celebrated reputation for virtue she believed to be the refuge pointed out to her from heaven. While Elizabeth waited for this advocate before the gates of the convent, before the Nun could approach the Queen, Agnes appeared, the one foretold from heaven, with an appearance more radiant than human and moreover surrounded by light, so that the sacred awe would persuade another mortal to veneration. But to Elizabeth, who did not dare speak, the Saint herself addressed her most sweetly, asking what she was doing in that place and to what end she sought her help. The Queen, having been warned only of some uncertain calamity, replied that she needed nothing but prayers. Then Agnes, as though somewhat indignant that she had mentioned only prayers without specifying the calamity — as though she herself could do nothing more than a mere human — was withdrawing from the Queen's sight. But Elizabeth, more frightened than usual and believing that all was lost unless she won her over, immediately fell to her knees and detained the departing Agnes with a humble supplication. At last, after many sighs and tears mingled with prayers, as though now softened by Elizabeth the Queen's entreaties, she finally took upon herself whatever Elizabeth had anxiously sought from her: all things to come that concerned her welfare would come to pass, provided she trusted in God and did not doubt the outcome on any account. Nor did Agnes say more magnificently than she did. At almost the same moment of time, the Queen's only little son revived beyond all expectation, and Elizabeth received letters from Elbow at the same hour, signifying that Charles, destined for death, had been snatched from it beyond human powers. Hence the Queen extended her greater liberality not only to Agnes's tomb, but also to the very sacred church and the convent of the Poor Clares. ^d

[67] By this act of gratitude toward the Saints, Elizabeth not only made amends for her son but further provoked Agnes to her own personal benefits as well. the Queen herself is also freed from death. For when after the birth of her daughter Judith, who later became the wife of John of Valois, King of France, she was expecting the final hour from an extreme failure of strength, and having lost consciousness — according to the opinion of the physicians — no human remedies remained by which she might be saved from death, Agnes, invoked once more, appeared and so happily suspended the funeral bell for her great-niece that the final hour did not sound for her until twelve years later. Elizabeth therefore came to herself, and gradually recovering her strength, she turned everyone's fear into hope; and with modest assistance applied, she was perfectly healed, and with royal treasure she pursued anew the renewed munificence of her heavenly kinswoman, and continued, as long as she lived, the veneration of her great Patroness with solemn worship and royal gifts. ^e

^a Elbow, in Czech Loket, in German Elbogen, on the Eger River.

^b Charles IV was born in the year 1316, on May 14.

^c Elizabeth, daughter of Wenceslas and Judith, and sister of Margaret — of whom we have already spoken — and the last heiress of the ancient royal family, married to John, son of Henry VII, Emperor of Luxembourg. He was crowned King of Bohemia on February 2, 1311. Elizabeth, mother of Charles IV.

^d Crugerius observes that the robberies of the Hussites, having destroyed the convent and despoiled the virgins, shamefully squandered that liberality.

^e On account of this benefit granted to Elizabeth, mother of Charles IV, perhaps Wadding at the year 1283, number 4, and at the year 1378 (in which Charles died), number 11, wrote that he was twice freed from the jaws of death: Arthur copies Wadding; Pisanus, cited above, preceded them. Unless this happened after these Acts were written.

SECTION XVI. Domestic patronage, or benefits toward the sacred virgins of the same convent.

[68] No one among mortals was closer to Agnes A nun resurrected from death. than those virgins who, authorized by the laws of Saint Francis, had held the world in utter contempt. So what wonder if she was even more bountiful than usual toward them from heaven as their companion? One of them, whom they called Dominica, after she had ceased to live, received life again at the touch of the mantle that Agnes had been accustomed to use while living. For when another Sister, out of longing for Dominica, had placed that sacred covering on the corpse, the dead woman quickly began to change her deathly pallor, to put on a lively color, to move limbs that had been numb and stiff, to open eyes that had shortly before been no eyes at all, and finally to raise a tongue until then mute, and to persuade those — scarcely believing her because of the novelty of the thing — that she was seriously alive. Moreover, Dominica said that from that supreme hour a mass of darkness had pressed upon her; but as soon as the sacred mantle of Agnes had covered her corpse, a new light had immediately arisen for her, by whose aid all pain had departed and a vicarious succession of joys and gladness had occupied her mind.

[69] Then to Varacia, a virgin of no ordinary virtue, a dying woman is healed. likewise enrolled among the Poor Clares at the Savior at Prague,

though without a funeral, yet shortly before death, an equal benefit of preserved life was bestowed by Agnes. The sacred Virgin lay on her deathbed, her case desperate despite the exhausted efforts of the physicians' art; and already, as the final hour of mortality approached, she was gradually and imperceptibly losing the remnant of strength that disease had spared, in the fatal struggle. Meanwhile the sacred Virgins gathered around the bed, as was their custom, aided the struggling soul with prayers — the one thing they could do — when she, not yet certain of dying, having somewhat recovered herself, raised her eyes to heaven and said: "Agnes, once the leader of our convent and now glorious among the Saints, if you will grant that I live through your intercession, I shall honor God three times at the sacrifice of the Mass." She had scarcely spoken when, with the vow indeed ratified, the health restored completely astonished the surrounding Sisters, who at last, when they had recovered themselves, together with Varacia prostrated themselves at the tomb of the healer and with joyful profession publicly hailed her as the Conqueror of death. But indeed the priest who should have offered the sacrifice three times for the preserved nun, having delayed the execution of the vow, she relapses but is healed again, having suspended the time of the Sacrifice with blameworthy delay, very nearly completely destroyed the heavenly benefit by the recall of death. Hence Varacia, having relapsed into a lethal illness and pressed again by the same straits of impending death, begged the priest by all things sacred and profane, and finally even adjured him by Agnes, not to let her be destroyed by this negligence, and thus delay the benefit of the Saint. When the priest was persuaded by these words, and also terrified by heavenly punishments if he did not act immediately, after he had offered the Sacred Sacrifice three times at the altar, the sick woman rose by a doubled miracle and happily eluded the threatening death for the second time.

[70] The Virgin Ludmilla, dying of fever, having professed the religion of Saint Francis in the same monastery, was overcome by a daily and not simple fever, and had made presages of approaching death — her tongue already swelling, her eyes receding and troubled, and all other signs appearing. At last the Sisters remembered their Agnes and washed the sacred bones — which they had already felt to be healing several times — in wine, sprinkled the dying woman with it, and indeed also gave her drink of it, bidding her hope well: Agnes, who had so often done good for outsiders, would not fail a deceased Sister. A great marvel! At that very moment of time the fever was disarmed, Ludmilla's mind and voice returned from exile, and her eyes, corrected to their former cheerfulness, changed the grim omens of death. The sacred Virgin therefore rose from her bed, marked with no vestige of fever; and she for whom only half an hour before they were already preparing a bier lived for some years yet after so celebrated a cure of the heavenly physician, a famous proclaimer of Agnes's virtues.

[71] dangerously ill unto death Another Virgin of the same community, whose name was Constantia, the second Abbess after the blessed Agnes herself had died, was dangerously feverish for a considerable time; and what aggravated the malignity of the disease was that in this danger all the resources and efforts of physicians had abandoned the patient. But Agnes, recently assumed among the Saints, did not abandon her Sister and, as it were, her own successor as head of the monastery. And so when Constantia at last prayed more frequently at her tomb in fulfillment of a vow, Agnes dispelled all that feverish heat with a heavenly hand; whence the resulting health, to the great wonder of the physicians, easily persuaded them that there was more power in a single intercession among the Saints than in all their art from the entire medley of herbs.

[72] Agnes Gysica, likewise a sacred Virgin of the same institute, rigidity of the arm is cured, was not suffering from any pestilent fever, but the force of disease had stiffened her elbow with no less pain; and so she carried around one arm, like a useless stump, in a pitiful spectacle. Much human skill had been attempted to revive the sluggish elbow of the afflicted Virgin, but by no artifice could that stiffness be diverted or moved. Hence at last, when human means could do nothing, they turned to divine assistance through the intercession of Blessed Agnes, by the common decree of all the Sisters. They therefore brought Gysica to the place where the sacred body rested, and having poured out a humble prayer full of confidence to the Saint, their Sister who had so often been a healer, they ordered one of them, who stood nearest to the patient, to assist her and apply the stiffened elbow to the sarcophagus of her Sister. Meanwhile Gysica, not hesitating at all, was to importune Agnes with all her vows for the recovery of her arm's use, if it so pleased God. Scarcely had the former persuaded and the latter done so, when that defect began to be corrected from heaven. The elbow having been softened beyond human power, the arm was thereafter easily capable of every necessary movement.

[73] Christiana, moreover, though not yet enrolled among the sacred Virgins, and an abscess, yet preserved by Agnes with a benefit equal to theirs, had occasion thereby to flee the world, and beneath Christ she took sacred vows as a Virgin there. The brief account of Christiana's preservation is this: Whether it was an abscess or pleurisy is uncertain, but a serious and dangerous illness had brought the virgin to extremity. The men consulted and entreated were to no avail; the malignity of the disease overcame all their efforts. Pious necessity at last prompted her to try heavenly aid, since all human means could do absolutely nothing. And so that Agnes might be more obliging, she vowed an offering — something she knew would be equally pleasing to the sacred Virgin: if her bodily health were fully restored, having abandoned and spurned the world, she would devote herself wholly to the service of Christ at the Savior. Christiana felt that this was most pleasing from the very moment of the vow. For the previously incurable force of the disease spontaneously remitted at once without any medicines, and gave the now fully healthy virgin the opportunity to fulfill the noble resolve of absolving the obligation of her solemn vow to Christ. And so Christiana, enrolled in the convent, was especially solicitous for two things as long as she lived: to remember that she owed her life chiefly to Agnes, and to continue that same life only for Christ, in imitation of her Savior, with heroic virtue. Nor indeed did Agnes merely correct the maladies of diseases in the bodies of her Sisters; she also preserved them from perishing amid reckless and chance misfortunes.

[74] Dominica, one of the sacred convent, assigned at times to kitchen duties, Virgins are preserved unharmed in fire, while about to hang a cauldron on a hook — whether the load diverted her hand or her foot slipped — fell forward into the middle of the burning area and the embers heaped up in great quantity. The innocent virgin would have suffered no small harm from the heedless element, had she not, in the very fall, invoked the power of Agnes against the savagery of the flames. For however much the fire blazed on every side, and Dominica did not immediately extricate herself from the flames after she had fallen, no trace of harm was noted — not only on her body, but not even on her hair or clothing. She therefore arose completely whole without any burn, the fire having utterly changed its nature at Agnes's command.

[75] and from drowning. I add her power also over water. When fish reservoirs had burst open from some cause, such a great mass of water had gathered into the Moldau that the banks, however high, were insufficient to contain the river, and it overflowed everywhere through the streets and alleys, especially of Old Prague. Meanwhile one of the sacred Virgins, whom they called Elizabeth, since the unbridled Moldau had also burst into the sacred church where Blessed Agnes's body lay buried, hastened with concern for the sacred bones, and unless I am mistaken, she carried the exposed relics of Saint Agnes — or those enclosed in a small casket — to safety. But her foot slipping near the relics themselves, she tumbled into the waters, which rose above her body by more than a cubit. What was she to do? She called out more intently upon that very Agnes whom she had gone to save at such risk to her life, in her very fatal fall, not to desert her in her manifest danger but to preserve her unharmed amid the whirlpools of water. Nor did Agnes neglect the danger of the Virgin who was so concerned for her; Elizabeth was extracted in time, and indeed perfectly dry, as though she had never been in the water. After the heavenly assistance, the instrument of the miracle was the virgin Zdinica: she, with Agnes invoked, pulled the fallen woman — who had been floundering in the deep — out of so great a vortex of the raging element without any difficulty, and indeed, as I said, without any dampness. Moreover, this too should be noted here: that inanimate objects which Blessed Agnes had used while living her chair unharmed by fire also remained immune from such misfortunes. An entire house had collapsed into ashes from an accidental fire, and yet the chair on which the Saint had once reclined neither was consumed by the common calamity nor even suffered notable damage. Only on one side it retained slight marks of having been touched by the flames, from which it might be noted that divine interventions had been made on its behalf. But let us now turn our pen from domestic to external patronage: for equal and sometimes even greater prodigies occurred concerning these.

SECTION XVII. Heavenly assistance of Blessed Agnes toward outsiders, both in Prague and throughout Bohemia.

[76] Lest faith lose itself rashly and without order among these prodigies, we shall produce in first place those snatched from death, then those cured from various illnesses and rescued from incurable diseases, A boy is freed from death, and then afterward, with a second century of years already elapsed since these were wrought from heaven, and perhaps even a third or fourth decade, as best we can from old testimonies. To the little boy Martin, son of Margaret, a citizen of Prague, nature had granted scarcely one year of life when adverse health abruptly cut short a longer age by the violence of disease. The loss tormented the parents all the more because they had enjoyed so brief a delight, a boy when they had marked in him a long-lived heir for themselves. But when the midwife, not having entirely given up hope of life, asked meanwhile that the final mourning be suspended until she herself returned from Agnes's tomb, with the child either alive or dead, the most sorrowful parents obeyed, and while the midwife carried Martin out, they suspended the final lamentation, and restrained, as best they could, their tears that were rushing forth of their own accord. The midwife, however, full of trust in God, placed that lifeless little scrap of flesh on the tomb of Blessed Agnes, and with both prayers and tears she sought the final help of the virgin who had so often been a healer, and pledged her own and the parents' patience as bound by a vow to everything. For perhaps half an hour or somewhat more the woman had importuned Agnes, when the little boy, about whom until then it had been doubtful whether he was alive or dead, proved by an unmistakable movement that by heavenly assistance he was for the time being kept from the grave for some years. And so the midwife, full of joy, carried little Martin — not only alive but free from all that malignity of disease — back to his parents, who had been suspense about the outcome, accompanied by a most joyful retinue of spectators. They, as was fitting, visited the tomb in turn, and having given thanks, hung up a wax image as a monument of the divine deed and of the miracle.

[77] The second place among those snatched from death is held by Pribico, another man, a man of servile but nonetheless free condition, who, from what disease is uncertain, had fallen to the ground in the very sacred church of the Savior, resembling one without life, with great force; and after many things had been tried, nothing else remained at last but to carry him from there to the nearest cemetery. And now

someone had already begun to act as gravedigger and was imploring aid from the neighbors for the transport of the corpse; when the sacred Virgins halted the funeral proceedings for a time, and having brought water with which they had moistened several hairs of Blessed Agnes, after all that multitude which had surrounded the corpse awaiting the outcome had poured itself into prayers, they sprinkled that man Pribico, and having invoked the aid of Blessed Agnes, they also poured the same water into the mouth of the dead man. Immediately from this moistening and infusion, he who had long been stiff began to soften, and as the cold dissipated, he moreover grew warm, and finally, having recovered his vital functions, he even rose, and beyond all this, as though nothing had ever happened to him, he was strengthened far more vigorously than before. When all praised the mercy of God, Pribico, since it was the one thing he could do, placed his gratitude at the virgin's tomb in lieu of a votive offering. All who had been present at the miracle, returning from the tomb, wonderfully magnified the account among the citizens by spreading it, yet within the bounds of truth.

[78] The third victim of death would have been a girl, to whom they had given the surname "Parva" because of a notable diminutiveness to come, had not Agnes, invoked at the very moment of drowning, been present in time. This girl was living with her parents and, for some reason, was crossing the Elbe River — dangerous in certain places because of its depth — in a domestic boat, when by an imprudent movement she so depressed the vessel beyond her intention that by that reckless tossing she herself was finally thrown into the water. Here, since she neither knew the skill by which she might extricate herself by swimming from the deep to the nearest bank, nor could anyone spot her even from a distance who might bring the utmost help for so great a danger in time, and the hostile waters were cutting off all breath on every side, and moreover the shifting sand entangled her, threatening immediate death — despairing of human aid, she turned to the divine, and with her final voice and a lamentable cry she implored Agnes, already known to her by fame. And indeed some hairs plucked not long before from Agnes's sacred head gave her courage, which the girl had received as a gift while she was serving the virgins at Prague. And so she all the more earnestly sought help because she had until then carried these about, full of trust in God, as a pledge of future salvation should she ever need rescue. Nor were her prayers, though she was by now nearly dead, in vain: sustained for some time without any hope, she at last, beyond all expectation, noticed some boatmen whom she had vainly called upon, and with their assistance she barely emerged from the waters at last. Having immediately given thanks on her knees to her savior, shortly afterward the pious girl also discharged herself of her vow at Agnes's tomb in Prague through sacred devotions.

[79] Having dealt with those whom Agnes had snatched from nearby death, we shall now review in their proper order those who, an Abbot is freed from madness, though their calamity kept them at a greater remove from the immediate danger of the grave, were nevertheless suffering grievously from a persistent and incurable illness of the body, barely tolerating the losses of their afflicted life. Of all of these, as Hinco surpassed in dignity, so he also played the leading role in the malignity of his disease. He was, moreover, besides being in a sacred institute, also the Abbot of a celebrated monastery; but of what place, the faithful but careless compiler of the old manuscript history omitted through damnable forgetfulness. The vehemence of his disease had deranged his mind, and so, while he was perfectly capable in other respects, he acted in all things foolishly, and easily compelled not only his own household but also outside spectators to remember with tender feeling human calamity through his pitiable folly. But what excited terror in the bystanders beyond mere commiseration was that he displayed his very tongue, protruded with a horrible appearance during lengthy contortions, amid discordant roars, and thus seemed to provide an example, according to tender judges of such gestures, of I know not what divine vengeance. Meanwhile his people implored every possible aid; they exhausted the ingenuity of physicians, both by the authority of so great a man and by the magnificence of their expenditures. But all was in vain. Despairing therefore of nature's remedies, it occurred to them to solicit Agnes — whose liberality in calamities of this kind was especially proven — with their last vows. Therefore, while some poured out prayers at the sacred tomb in her honor and others offered the sacrifice at the altar, where so many men, and with them all of human skill, could do absolutely nothing, one virgin — but one already received into heaven — accomplished a great deal. For having drunk the wine in which the Poor Clares had dipped Agnes's sacred bones, the Abbot both retracted his tongue and had it remain patiently in its place, and recovered his mind, and at the same time felt his body free from all disease. Worthy thanks for so great a benefit were then rendered to the healer, and a lasting monument of the event and of grateful memory was fixed at those bones from which such great well-being had flowed.

[80] A Knight's throat abscess, Now let nobility, prodigiously aided, occupy the next place after sacred rank. For Tasa, a man of illustrious lineage and ancient stock among the Bohemians, a Knight, a pestilent abscess had erupted within his throat, and it so tightly besieged the passages of his jaws that not only food and drink but even air itself could barely find access. And this interception of breath threatened his life all the more dangerously because it could not be dislodged from its position by any force of medications or from the ambush of herbs. Having therefore neglected human remedies, the noble man resolved thenceforth to fight with nothing but divine aid. He accordingly bound himself by vows to the Godhead: if He would free him from the troublesome abscess through the intercession of Blessed Agnes, then he would liberally make donations both to the sacred tomb and to the poor, as might be hoped from his fortune. God trusted his serious promise and hope, and by the timely removal of the abscess He wonderfully increased the fame of Agnes, already famous for her miracles. For when he had drunk the water which had washed Agnes's hair, and had bathed his affected members wherever he could with the same water, immediately that pestilent siege of the throat was lifted, and the entire malignity of the abscess, having dissipated, retained absolutely no power to harm the body further. Having recovered his health by so signal a miracle, the gratitude of the now healthy Knight aimed at nothing more than to be truly — not merely to appear — eminently liberal toward the tomb and the poor.

[81] With an entirely similar disease, though of a different type, Wenceslas, the secretary of a certain Knight, was suffering. For certain thick and noxious humors had so badly affected his throat that the constriction would not transmit food, and barely a thin and very harsh breath moderately preserved his life. likewise another. In an equal manner, the same medicine availed. The Vestal Virgins honored the water with the sacred hairs; when Wenceslas washed his throat with it, he first produced a bleating, similar to the sound of a sheep, but then a purified voice praising God, and he expressed himself in completely sound health. These benefits were bestowed upon men, but Agnes, also generous toward her own sex, extended her beneficent hand as well.

[82] a woman in childbirth is aided. A woman among the foremost of Prague (whose name the writer's negligence has lost) was laboring in childbirth, and for many days she continued the unsuccessful effort. Despite trying everything, neither the delivery nor the child would follow, but beyond that torment her mind at last also began to be disturbed, and so the wretched woman began to grow very ill and to experience the worst at last. Where therefore all human power deserted the unfortunate woman, there the divine, through the merits of Agnes, vindicated her from destruction. After her body was tightly bound with the belt that had touched Agnes while she lived as a mortal, she immediately recovered her disturbed mind and the mother gave birth to a healthy child. The family rejoiced effusively and meanwhile began giving thanks to the Saint, which the now safe woman — to whom the gratitude especially pertained — abundantly continued with her offspring at the tomb, in words and gifts.

[83] ^a Nor did Agnes exercise her extraordinary liberality only in Prague, one city — albeit the kingdom's capital — Saint Anthony's fire is removed, but she also frequently bestowed heavenly benefits with great commendation of herself in other places, though within Bohemia. Dobroslava, a matron of Slany, was afflicted by a most holy — though impiously — fire, and it had ravaged one of her thighs with a malignant pestilence, and was believed shortly to be about to assail her life without restraint. But she, having been brought to Prague, cast herself at Agnes's tomb and prayed for help for some time; she soon felt it granted after such long-lasting pains. For having drunk in addition the wine in which Agnes's bones had been soaked, Dobroslava's thigh was immediately corrected without any human hand, and the pestilent fire was thereupon extinguished.

[84] ^b and a hemorrhage. Finally, let the noble woman Maladata, also the wife of an illustrious man at Litomysl, conclude the solemn record of Agnes's generous hand. This woman, unable to stop a hemorrhage either with the expenditure of her fortune or with the help of so great a man, finally stopped it by the patronage of Agnes. For when, stationed ten miles from the city, she had made a promise of one visit and other gifts to be hung at the very relics, immediately after the vow was made she felt better, and she fulfilled her vow at Prague with great piety shortly afterward.

^a Slany, a town of Bohemia, whose territory extends along the left bank of the Moldau River as far as Prague.

^b Litomerice, a town with a very large territory on both banks of the Elbe, contiguous to Meissen.