Of the first nobility of Poland, he was piously educated by his mother, who had seen in a dream his future sanctity. With his brother Paul he went to Vienna to study at the Jesuit College. After changing from the fathers’ boarding-house to the home of a heretic and being cruelly maltreated by his brother, he was comforted by a Communion brought to him by angels and healed by the apparition of the Madonna, who bade him enter the Society of Jesus. To obey this command he fled from home, though pursued in vain by his brother, who saw him but did not recognise him, and made his way to Dillingen, whence St Peter Canisius sent him to Rome to place him beyond the reach of his relatives. On 28 Oct. 1567 he was received by St Francis Borgia into the novitiate of S. Andrea al Quirinale. Of angelic purity, ardent devotion to the Eucharist and to Mary, and lofty contemplation, he soon left the earth to fly to heaven. Beatified in 1670, he was canonised in 1726. Feast, 13 Nov.
Celestino Testore
ICONOGRAPHY. - He is depicted as a youth in the habit of the Society of Jesus; frequent are the representations of the Saint in the act of receiving from an angel the Host of the Most Holy Sacrament. The features of the Saint have come down through a portrait painted in 1568, the year of his death, by Scipione Delfini (Château de St-Symphorien d’Ozon, Isère, France).
STANISLAUS, Saint, Martyr – Miracle of St S. Fourteenth-century fresco, in the lower church of S. Francesco, Assisi.
Various images of the Saint are in the church of S. Andrea al Quirinale in Rome. There, above the altar where the Saint’s body is preserved, a canvas by Carlo Maratta shows St S. kneeling before the Madonna with the Child Jesus; to the right of the altar is his angelic Communion, and to the left his ecstasy, painted by Mazzarino. In the room of the house near the church, where the Saint died and which has been turned into a chapel, above the altar is an excellent model for the pathology of the Saint in a painting of the early 17th century.
In the same chapel a black-and-white marble sculpture by Pierre Legros (q.v.) depicts St S. on his deathbed. In one of the rooms leading to the chapel are eleven water-colours by Fra Andrea Pozzo illustrating the legend and miracles of the Saint.