BLESSED AGNES of Bohemia. — Born in Prague in 1208 and died there on 2 March 1282. Daughter of Ottokar I, King of Bohemia, and Constance of Hungary, a relative of St Elizabeth, she received, according to the custom of the time, an appropriate education in the monastery of Trebnitz (Silesia) and then in that of Doxan (Bohemia). When Frederick II, Emperor of Germany, widowed, asked for her hand in marriage, she refused, having first consecrated herself to Christ; and to defend her refusal she had to appeal to the intervention of Pope Gregory IX, who sent a legate specially for the purpose. Once free, she devoted herself to works of charity and founded a hospital for the poor, entrusting it to the Brothers of the Cross (a knightly order whose members wore a red cross and star on their habit, approved by Gregory IX in 1237 and confirmed by Nicholas IV in 1282) and two convents, one for the Franciscans and the other for the Poor Clares. St Clare of Assisi sent five of her nuns to this latter. Agnes took the veil there in 1235, according to others in 1236, and was later elected abbess.
Desiring to establish the full spirit of poverty exemplified in the monastery of St Damian in Assisi, where St Clare was abbess, Agnes renounced the revenues of the hospital she had founded and chose to live on alms; but this restriction was not approved until the time of Innocent IV. Her holiness was crowned with the gift of miracles; among other things, she foretold the victory of her brother Wenceslas over the Duke of Austria. The four letters of St Clare to Agnes that have come down to us bear witness to the foundress’s affection for her, whom she called “the half of her soul,” and to whom she sent in remembrance several humble gifts. Pius IX confirmed her cult on 3 December 1874. Her feast is on 2 March.