The Lights above the Grave of the Blessed Agnes

The Blessed Agnes, whom the Bohemian people venerated as a saint soon after her death, believing that miracles were worked at her intercession, was the youngest daughter of King Přemysl Otakar I and of Constance, daughter of Béla, King of Hungary. In early childhood she was betrothed to Henry, son of the German Emperor Frederick II, and when he released her from that promise she did not hanker after worldly glory but gave herself up to a life of piety and charity, and did not marry even when the Emperor Frederick II himself and King Henry III of England sought her hand. Beneath her princely robe she wore a hair shirt and a sharp girdle. In an evil time, under the regency of Otto of Brandenburg, she died on 2 March 1282 and was buried, with great lamentation of the people, in the convent chapel of Our Lady. As early as 1328 there was talk of her being declared a saint, and Charles IV also laboured for it, but during the Hussite wars the matter fell into oblivion. In 1643 lights used to be seen in that chapel, and people supposed that a treasure was hidden there; they dug and found in a grave the mouldered remains of a body from which a strange fragrance came, and some thought it might be the body of Saint Agnes. Where it was buried afterwards, Beckovský, who relates this, does not know.