March 2

BD AGNES OF BOHEMIA, VIRGIN (A.D. 1282)

BD AGNES of Bohemia, or "of Prague", whom St Clare called her "half self" and who founded the first establishment of Poor Clares north of the Alps, was a descendant of St Wenceslaus ("Good King Wenceslaus"); her father was Ottokar I, who succeeded to the throne of Bohemia in 1197, and her mother was sister of Andreas II, King of Hungary: St Elizabeth of Hungary was her first cousin and two years her junior. Agnes was only three years old when, in 1208, she was betrothed to Boleslaus, the son of Henry, Duke of Silesia, and of St Hedwig, and she was immediately sent away from home, under the care of her nurse and a suitable retinue, to the monastery of Trebnitz in Silesia, which her fiancé's mother had founded. Here, according to a fourteenth-century Latin document in the Bamberg library, "she was taught the rudiments of faith and morals by a daughter of St Hedwig" -- who must have been Gertrude the abbess. Boleslaus died when the little girl was only six, and she returned to Bohemia, where she was placed in the Premonstratensian convent of Doxan. Two years later she was recalled to her father's court, and when, at the age of nine, she was betrothed to the Emperor Frederick II's son Henry, she was sent away again -- this time to the Austrian court to learn the German language and customs. The life had no attraction for Agnes, and more and more she turned her mind to God, practicing in private strict fasts and austerities. She was seized with a great desire to consecrate herself to a life of virginity, and prayed fervently that she might be enabled to follow the call. Her life at the time can hardly have been a happy one, for Duke Leopold of Austria, to whose care she had been committed, was plotting to break off her engagement and to marry his own daughter to the prince. In this he was eventually successful, and Agnes was once more sent back to her home joyfully enough, we may be sure, and feeling that her prayers had been answered.

But she was not long left in peace. Proposals for her hand came from Henry III of England as well as from Frederick II, who had become a widower, and in spite of her vehement objections her brother, King Wenceslaus, affianced her to the emperor. From this time Bd Agnes increased her penances and prayers, and under her jewelled robes wore a hair-shirt and a girdle studded with iron points. Often she would rise before dawn and barefoot and meanly clad sallied forth, escorted by the most devout of her ladies, to visit the churches. Upon her return she would bathe her bleeding feet, resume the attire fitted to her rank, and attend to her duties as a princess and visit the sick. She was twenty-eight years old and a beautiful woman when, in 1235, the emperor sent an ambassador to Prague to escort her to Germany that the marriage might take place. Wenceslaus would listen to no remonstrances; but Agnes found means to delay her departure and wrote to Pope Gregory IX, entreating him to prevent the marriage because she had never consented to it and had long desired to be the spouse of Christ. Gregory, although for the moment he had made peace with Frederick, knew him well enough to be able to sympathize with the unwilling victim. He sent his legate to Prague to undertake her defence and to Agnes herself he wrote letters which she showed to her brother. Wenceslaus was greatly alarmed. On the one hand he feared to anger the emperor, but on the other he did not wish to alienate the pope or to force his sister to marry against her will. Eventually he decided to tell Frederick and to let him deal with the matter. The emperor on this occasion showed one of those flashes of magnanimity which have made his complex character so fascinating a study to historians. As soon as he had satisfied himself that the objection came, not from the King of Bohemia, but from Agnes herself, he released her, saying, "If she had left me for a mortal man, I should have made my vengeance felt; but I cannot take offence if she prefers the King of Heaven to myself."

Now that she was free, Agnes set about consecrating herself and her possessions wholly to God. Her father had brought the Friars Minor to Prague, probably at her suggestion, and she built or completed a convent for them. With the help of her brother she endowed a great hospital for the poor and brought to it the Knights Hospitallers of the Cross and Star, whose church and monastery still remain in the same place, and the two also built a convent for Poor Clares. The citizens would fain have shared in the work, but the king and his sister preferred to complete it alone. Nevertheless it is said that the workmen, determined to do their part, would often slip away unperceived in the evening in order to avoid being paid. As soon as the convent was ready, St Clare sent five of her religious to start it, and on Whitsunday 1236 Bd Agnes herself received the veil. Her profession made a great impression: she was joined by a hundred girls of good family, and throughout Europe princesses and noble women followed her example and founded or entered convents of Poor Clares. Agnes showed the true spirit of St Francis, ever seeking the lowliest place and the most menial work, and it was with difficulty that she was induced, when nominated by Pope Gregory IX, to accept the dignity of abbess -- at least for a time. After much entreaty she obtained for the Poor Ladies of Prague the concession obtained in 1238 by St Clare at San Damiano, namely, permission to resign all revenues and property held in common. The four letters from St Clare to Bd Agnes which have come down to us express her tender affection for her devoted disciple, to whom she also sent, in response to her request for a souvenir, a wooden cross, a flaxen veil and the earthen bowl out of which she drank. Agnes lived to the age of seventy-seven and died on March 2, 1282. Her cultus was confirmed by Pope Pius X; the Friars Minor now keep her feast on June 8, with BB. Isabel of France and Baptista Varani.

The questions relating to the sources of Bd Agnes's life are very fully treated by Dr W. W. Seton in his volume Some New Sources for the Life of Bd Agnes of Bohemia. The better-known documents have been printed in the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. i, but Dr Seton has found and edited an earlier Latin text (fourteenth century), together with a fifteenth-century German version which presents sundry expansions of the original. He also vindicates the authenticity of the four letters addressed to Agnes by St Clare. A popular account may be found in Léon, Auréole Séraphique (Eng. trans.), vol. i, pp. 339-348, and in Mazzara, Leggendario Francescano, March, nn. 19-21.

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(Butler's Lives of the Saints, Christian Classics, 1995) wmaster@hcbc.hu