Saint Agnes of Bohemia

Saint Agnes of Bohemia, also called Agnes of Prague, was a princess of the Přemyslid dynasty. She refused royal marriages, founded a hospital and a Poor Clare monastery in Prague, and went to live in that monastery herself. She was bound in friendship to Saint Clare of Assisi. The Church commemorates her on March 2.

She was born in Prague in 1211, the daughter of Ottokar I, king of Bohemia, and of Constance, sister of Andrew II, king of Hungary. From childhood, marriages were arranged for her for political reasons. At the age of three she was sent to the monastery of Cistercian nuns at Trzebnica in Silesia, where her relative, Saint Hedwig of Silesia, taught her her first prayers and the truths of the faith. Three years later she returned to Bohemia and was educated by the Premonstratensian nuns at Doksany.

Betrothed to Henry, son of Emperor Frederick II, she was sent in 1220 to the court in Vienna, where she stayed until 1225. When the betrothal was broken off, she returned to Prague and resolved to live in virginity for God. King Henry III of England and Emperor Frederick II himself still sought her hand. Agnes asked Pope Gregory IX for protection, and he came to her defense.

From the Friars Minor who had come to Prague she learned of the life Clare was leading in Assisi. She sold her jewels and costly garments and gave the money to the poor. In 1232 and 1233 she used her own property to found the Hospital of Saint Francis and a brotherhood from which grew the Order of the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star, which still exists today. At the same time she built on the bank of the Vltava the first Poor Clare monastery in Bohemia. She entered it on the Solemnity of Pentecost, June 11, 1234, and Saint Clare sent five sisters there.

Agnes soon became abbess, though she thought of herself rather as an elder sister. She gave up her rights over the hospital, which was meant to support the monastery, because she did not want to depart from the poverty of Christ. She nursed sick sisters and lepers, and washed and mended their clothes. She never met Clare, yet their friendship lasted about twenty years. Four letters from Clare to Agnes have survived, and in the last one Clare calls her half of her soul.

Agnes also worked for peace within the royal family. It was in her monastery that her brother, King Wenceslaus I, and his rebellious son Ottokar were reconciled. In 1278 her nephew, King Ottokar II, fell in battle, foreign armies occupied the country, and the people suffered famine and plague. Agnes died in her monastery on March 2, 1282.

The Czechs venerated her from the moment of her death. Pope Pius IX confirmed her cult in 1874. John Paul II canonized her in Rome on November 12, 1989, together with Brother Albert Chmielowski. A few days later, changes began in Czechoslovakia that restored the country’s freedom. In April 1990 the pope said in Prague that this canonization had shone like the dawn of liberation.