July 24

BD CUNEGUND, or KINGA, VIRGIN (A.D. 1292)

CUNEGUND, whose Magyar name was Kinga, was born in the year 1224, daughter of Bela IV, King of Hungary, and niece of St Elizabeth; her mother, who had suffered greatly at former births, was on this occasion delivered with ease, and other marvels of a more unlikely nature are recorded of her birth and infancy, as that her first cry took the form of a salutation to the Queen of Heaven. Cunegund was brought up at the court, learning "Latin and the fear of the Lord", and in her sixteenth year was married to Boleslaus V, King of Poland. She had agreed to the marriage, but on her wedding night asked the king to observe continence towards her, as she had given herself to God; to this he agreed for one year, and at the end of that time took with her a vow of perpetual chastity before the bishop of Cracow, whence he is known in history as Boleslaus the Chaste.

The queen led a most austere life, wearing a hair-shirt under her royal garments and giving much time to the care of the needy and sick. When her husband died in 1279 she refused the wish of the nobles that she should carry on the government of the kingdom and became a Poor Clare in the convent she had founded at Sandeck and there passed the rest of her life, dying on July 24, 1292. She built churches and hospitals, paid the expenses of chapters of the Friars Minor, and ransomed Christians from the Turks. When in 1287 Poland was overrun by the Tartars, the nuns of Sandeck had to take refuge in the castle of Pyenin which was besieged by the invaders; but at the prayers of Cunegund they drew off. Her last years were marked by many miracles and supernatural manifestations. Her popular cultus was approved in 1690.

Of this saint there are two medieval biographies. The first, attributed erroneously to a Franciscan named Stanislaus, has been printed in the Monumenta Polon. histo., vol. iv, pp. 682-744; the second, by Jan Dlugosz, may be found in the Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. v, and in the collected edition of the works of Dlugosz (1863-1887). Cf. F. Banfi, Sponsus Marianus filius regis Hungariae (1930).

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