![[Saint Agnes of Prague]](sainta40.jpg "antique Saint Agnes holy card, artist unknown; please do not write to ask about the image")
Educated by Cistercian nuns at Trebnitz. Though she early perceived a call to religious life, Agnes was for years promised into a series of arranged marriages for political reasons. At age three she was promised to a prince named Boleslaus. When he died young, prior to the marriage, she was betrothed to Prince Henry, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. When Henry chose to marry another, young Agnes was betrothed to Emperor Frederick himself. With the help and intervention of Pope Gregory IX, Frederick was affronted, but released from her marriage obligations, acknowledging that he had lost her to the king of heaven.
She built a Franciscan hospital on land donated by her brother, King Wenceslaus I. She then established the Confraternity of the Crusadera of the Red Star to staff it and its related clinics. She later built a Franciscan friary, and in 1234, Poor Clare convent of Saint Saviour in Prague with the aid of five nuns sent by Clare of Assisi herself. Agnes entered the convent of Saint Saviour herself on Pentecost Sunday 1234, eventually became its abbess, and spent 50 years in the cloister.
Agnes was always free with her wealth in service of the poor. She enjoyed cooking for the other sisters, and mending the clothes of lepers. She had the gifts of healing and prophecy, and was given to ecstacies. Though they never met, she and Saint Clare of Assisi kept up an extensive correspondence for two decades, and some of the letters have survived to today.
New Catholic Dictionary Catholic Encyclopedia, by Stephen M Donovan Google Directory John Paul II's Book of Saints Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints, by Matthew Bunson, Margaret Bunson, and Stephen Bunson
- Pope John Paul II, during the canonization of Saint Agnes