St. Casimir of Poland, prince
Died 1484 at Grondo, Lithuania of tuberculosis Canonized by Pope Leo X
Commmemorated March 4
Patronage: bachelors, kings, Lithuania, Poland, princes
In art: represented by a lily
ST CASIMIR, PRINCE OF POLAND
From his life, compiled by Zachary Ferrier, legate of Leo X in Poland,
thirty-six years after his death and an authentic relation of his
miracles, with many cir***stances of his life by Gregory Swiecicki,
canon of Vilna; also the commentary of Henschenius, p. 337. A.D. 1433
ST CASIMIR was the third among the thirteen children of Casimir III,
King of Poland, and of Elizabeth of Austria, daughter to the Emperor
Albert II, a most virtuous woman, who died in 1505. He was born in 1458,
on the 3rd of October.
From his childhood he was remarkably pious and devout. His preceptor was
John Dugloss, called Longinus, canon of Cracow, a man of extraordinary
learning and piety, who constantly refused all bishoprics and other
dignities of the church and state which were pressed upon him.
Uladislas, the eldest son, was elected King of Bohemia in 1471, and
became King of Hungary in 1490. Our saint was the second son; John
Albert the third son, succeeded the father in the kingdom of Poland in
1492; and Alexander, the fourth son, was called to the same in 1501.
Casimir and the other princes were so affectionately attached to the
holy man, who was their preceptor, that they could not bear to be
separated from him. But Casimir profited most by his pious maxims and
example.
He consecrated the flower of his age to the exercises of devotion and
penance, and had a horror of that softness and magnificence which reign
in courts His clothes were very plain, and under them he wore a hair
****rt. His bed was frequently the ground, and he spent a considerable
part of the night in prayer and meditation, chiefly on the passion of
our Saviour.
He often went out in the night to pray before the church-doors; and in
the morning waited before them till they were opened to assist at
matins. By living always under a sense of the divine presence he
remained perpetually united to, and absorbed in, his Creator, maintained
an uninterrupted cheerfulness of temper, and was mild and affable to
all.
He respected the least ceremonies of the church: everything that tended
to promote piety was dear to him. He was particularly devout to the
passion of our blessed Saviour, the very thought of which excited him to
tears, and threw him into trans****ts of love. He was no less piously
affected towards the sacrifice of the altar, at which he always assisted
with such reverence and attention that he seemed in raptures.
And as a mark of his singular devotion to the Blessed Virgin, he
composed, or at least frequently recited, the long hymn that bears his
name, a copy of which was, by his desire, buried with him.
His love for Jesus Christ showed itself in his regard for the poor, who
are his members, to whose relief he applied whatever he had, and
employed his credit with his father, and his brother Uladislas, King of
Bohemia, to procure them succour. His compassion made him feel in
himself the afflictions of every one.
The Palatines and other nobles of Hungary, dissatisfied with Matthias
Corvin, their king, son of the great Huniades, begged the King of Poland
to allow them to place his son Casimir on the throne. The saint, not
then quite fifteen years of age, was very unwilling to consent; but in
compliance with his father's will he went, at the head of an army of
twenty thousand men, to the frontiers in 1471.
There hearing that Matthias had formed an army of sixteen thousand men
to defend him, and that all differences were accommodated between him
and his people, and that Pope Sixtus IV had sent an embassy to divert
his father from that expedition, he joyfully returned, having with
difficulty obtained his father's consent so to do.
However, as his dropping this project was disagreeable to the king his
father, not to increase his affliction by appearing before him he did
not go directly to Cracow, but retired to the Castle of Dobzki, three
miles from that city, where he continued three months in the practice of
penance.
Having learned the injustice of the attempt against the King of Hungary,
in which obedience to his father's command prevailed upon him to embark
when he was very young, he could never be engaged to resume it by fresh
pressing invitation of the Hungarians, or the iterated orders and
entreaties of his father.
The twelve years he lived after this he spent in sanctifying himself in
the same manner as he had done before. He observed to the last an
untainted chastity, notwithstanding the advice of physicians who excited
him to marry, imagining, upon some false principle, this to be a means
necessary to preserve his life.
Being wasted with a lingering consumption, he foretold his last hour,
and having prepared himself for it by redoubling his exercises of piety,
and receiving the sacraments of the church, he made a happy end at
Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, on the 4th of March, 1484, being
twenty-three years and five months old.
He was buried in the Church of St. Stanislas. So many were the miracles
wrought by his intercession that Swiecicki, a canon of Vilna, wrote a
whole volume of them from good memoirs in 1604.
He was canonized by Pope Leo X, whose legate in Poland, Zachary Ferrier,
wrote the saint's life. His body, and all the rich stuffs it was wrapped
in, were found quite entire, and exhaling a sweet smell one hundred and
twenty years after his death, notwithstanding the excessive moisture of
the vault.
It is honoured in a large rich chapel of marble, built on purpose in
that church. St. Casimir is the patron of Poland and several other
places, and is proposed to youth as a particular pattern of purity. His
original picture is to be seen in his chapel in St. German des Prez in
Paris, built by John Casimir, King of Poland, the last of the family of
Waza, who, renouncing his crown, retired to Paris, and died Abbot of St.
Germain's in 1668. ~Tom Coss~ Of Meriden, Connecticut 06450 USA
http://www.tomcoss.net
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