Stanislaus Kostka, Saint

STANISLAO KOSTKA, saint. — Jesuit, born in his ancestral castle at Rostkow (Prasnysz, Poland) on 28 October 1550, died in Rome on 15 August 1568.

Belonging to a family of the highest Polish nobility and devoutly educated by his mother, who had foreseen his future holiness in a dream, he went with his brother Paolo to Vienna for his studies at the Jesuit College. Having exchanged the fathers’ boarding school for the house of a heretic, and being maltreated by his brother almost to the point of death, he was consoled by Communion brought to him by angels and healed through an apparition of the Madonna, who commanded him to enter the Society of Jesus. To carry out this order, he fled from home, pursued in vain by his brother, who saw him but did not recognize him, and went to Dillingen, whence s. Pietro Canisio sent him to Rome, to keep him safe from his relatives’ searches. On 28 October 1567 he was received by s. Francesco Borgia into the novitiate of S. Andrea al Quirinale. Of angelic purity, lively devotion to the Eucharist and to Mary, and profound contemplation, he did not take long to leave the earth and fly to heaven. Beatified in 1670, he was canonized in 1726. Feast on 13 November.

ICONOGRAPHY. — He is depicted with a youthful appearance, dressed in the habit of the Society of Jesus; frequent are representations of the Saint receiving the Host of the Most Blessed Sacrament from an angel. The Saint’s features have come down to us through his effigy, painted in 1568, the year of his death, by Scipione Delfini (Château de St-Symphorien d’Ozon, Isère, France).

STANISLAO, saint, martyr — Miracle of St. S. Fresco of the fourteenth century, in the lower church of St. Francis — Assisi.

in a painting from the early years of the seventeenth century.

In the same chapel, a sculpture in black and white marble, LEGNO (v.), depicts St. S. on his deathbed. In one of the rooms preceding the chapel, there are 11 watercolours by Fra’ Andrea Pozzo depicting the legend and miracles of the Saint.