Saint Ladislaus I, King of Hungary

It was only with pain that he saw his father ascend the throne, because he ascended it only by waging war against the king, his brother, and by winning a signal victory against him: for this holy young man was so far removed from the love of earthly greatness that he would have preferred to live banished from his country and in the want of all things, rather than to possess a kingdom by such illegitimate means. It is true that Andrew had attempted the life of Béla, to better secure the cro Salomon Cousin and rival of Ladislaus, deposed from the throne for his cruelty. wn for Solomon, his son, aged only twelve; but Ladislas did not think that this was a sufficient reason for his father to take up arms against his sovereign, and he believed that in this encounter he should only act like David who, pursued by Saul, was content to flee and hide, without ever attempting to take his crown or his life. Thus, after his death, he did not in the least give way to the ambition of reigning in his place; on the contrary, he very willingly yielded this honor, first to Solomon, son of Andrew, his first cousin, and secondly to Geiza II, his elder brother, although, the kingdom being in some manner elective, he could have laid claim to it through the favor of all the good people who had a singular affection for him.

But Geiza having driven out Salomon, a cruel and bloodthirsty prince who was putting everything to fire and sword in his states, and he himself having since died in the third year of his reign, all the prelates, lords, and magistrates of the principal cities of Hungary, who assembled to give him a successor, unanimously begged Ladislas t o accept Ladislas King of Hungary and confessor, known for his piety and martial virtues. the crown and take over the government of the kingdom. He indeed possessed all the qualities of body and mind that one could wish for in a great prince. There was no one in all of Hungary taller or of a more majestic bearing than he; he was capable of all affairs, both of peace and of war, and he easily endured all their fatigues. He received everyone with such affability that the least of his vassals had the freedom to approach him and represent his rights to him. He showed such moderation in his judgments that he was looked upon more as a father settling some dispute between his children than as a prince sovereignly judging the causes of his subjects: which had earned him the nickname of Pious. Neither the status of being the son and brother of kings, nor that of duke of the first duchy of the kingdom, prevented him from making himself familiar with the least considerable of his subjects, and from giving on every occasion marks of a truly Christian humility. In all the needs of the State, which was often attacked by barbarians, he was always seen the first on horseback to defend it, and, going himself at the head of the armies without fearing anything, he fulfilled there the duty of the bravest soldier and the most intrepid captain; he did not even hesitate, to spare human blood, to call the generals of the enemy armies to single combats from which he always emerged victorious.

He always remained very chaste, despite the dangers to which his virtue was exposed in the courts. Sobriety was in him the inseparable companion of continence, and, if his status as a prince usually obliged him to have a well-served table, he took only what was absolutely necessary for him to live. He even fasted often, slept on the hard ground, and performed other mortifications to tame his body and prevent it from rebelling against the spirit. If he was so severe with regard to himself, no one was more gentle and more charitable than he toward the needy.

His house was considered the common asylum for all the wretched, and, indeed, not one left it without having received some relief for their misery. The poor showed on all sides the clothes with which he had dressed them and the money he had given them. He took care of the subsistence of widows, wards, and orphans, and had large alms distributed to them; he married off the poor girls whom he saw in danger of losing their honor; he lifted up families ruined by unfortunate accidents; and, to say it all in a word, one found with him an assured help for every kind of need. The magnificent churches he had built after the defeat of Solomon were an evident mark of his piety toward God; but he had shown it even more by constantly supporting the Christian religion throughout Hungary, for which the greater part of the people, and especially the peasants accustomed to their idols, had no great inclination.

It was undoubtedly these rare qualities that compelled the Hungarian lords to present him with the crown with such insistence. However, he resisted them as much as he could. He considered, on one hand, that kings are exposed to an infinity of dangers of losing their souls, because their obligations are very great and they have before their eyes a thousand attractions that prevent them from fulfilling them; and, on the other hand, he found it difficult to take the title of king while Solomon, his cousin, to whom this crown seemed to belong legitimately, was alive; and, indeed, Geiza, his brother, before dying, had attempted an accommodation with this prince, and had only died with the resolution to do so if it were possible. But the Hungarians maintained that, this kingdom being elective rather than hereditary, they had had the right to give it to Geiza rather than to Solomon, and that they still had the right to prefer him to this cruel prince, who could not ascend the throne without setting all of Hungary ablaze; moreover, they protested to him that they would have no other king but him; he was therefore finally compelled to yield and to accept the government they offered him. But he still maintained in this a moderation worthy of a great prince; for, as long as he knew his cousin was alive, he did not wish to be crowned or to wear the diadem: showing by this that, if he was charged with the administration of the State, he had not done so out of an ambitious desire to reign, but only out of necessity and for the great love he bore his country.

Also, as soon as he had established peace and piety in the kingdom, he spared no means, neither divine nor human, to win the spirit of Solomon, and to make him abandon that fierce and cruel temper which m Salomon Cousin and rival of Ladislaus, deposed from the throne for his cruelty. ade him feared by everyone; he gave him pensions sufficient to maintain a royal retinue; he often sent him prelates and statesmen who were expected to have influence over his mind, to try to soften him and make him adopt the inclinations of a father toward the people, and he was ready to cede the crown to him, had he seen a change in his morals. But this prince, far from responding to the holy inclinations of Ladislas, did what he could to destroy him and even set traps for him where, under the pretext of a parley, he was to kill him. This obliged our Saint, warned of his perfidy, to secure his person and to put him in prison in Vizzegrad, a stronghold of Hungary; but it was not for long; for, having learned from a holy nun that this conduct was not pleasing to God, and that it was for this reason that the stone of the tomb of Saint Stephen, which he had wanted to have lifted to transfer his sacred body, had remained immobile, he set him at liberty and treat ed him with e saint Étienne First king and apostle of Hungary. very kind of humanity. Since then, this dispossessed king entered into various wars against neighboring princes, more as a bandit chief than as a great captain; but, having one day been entirely defeated, he was forced to flee all alone into a thick forest, from which he never returned. Historians say that he was so powerfully touched by the spirit of penance there, that he spent several years in solitude in tears and continuous groans, and without having any other bed than the leaves of the trees, no other clothing than a hairshirt and some skins of wild beasts, nor any other food than herbs he found in the woods, or some wild apples with the stagnant water of the marshes; and that finally he died there very holily and was buried in Pola, a city of Istria. This gives us reason to admire the infinite goodness of Our Lord, who humbles men to raise them up, who wounds them to he al t Pola City in Istria where Salomon died and was buried. hem, and who reduces them to the extremity of misery to make them enter the path of true happiness.

With Solomon gone in this manner, Ladislas no longer had anything in his states that could oppose the good regulations he wished to establish there. Thus, he convened a synod, where, in his presence, several fine ordinances were made to keep his subjects in justice and in the observance of divine law; and they were subsequently reduced into three books which we have at the end of the History of Hungary, by Bonfinius. His example was even more effective in maintaining the Hungarians in their duty than all his laws; for he ordered nothing that he did not do first, and he was such a faithful observer of all the commandments of God and the Church that he could himself be called a living law, which represented to everyone what they were obliged to do. His palace was so well regulated that one heard neither swearing, nor blasphemy, nor dishonest words: ecclesiastical fasts were strictly kept there, and one lived there with such restraint that it resembled a religious house more than a king's court. He had been very zealous in building churches, where the praises of God were sung continually; he founded others after his accession to the crown, especially the famous basilica of Our Lady of Varadin, which was erected into a bishopric; he a ttended Varadin City where Ladislaus founded a basilica and where he was buried. divine offices very assiduously, and often spent several hours in prayer in these places of devotion. His mercy for the needy, far from diminishing with his exaltation, increased on the contrary notably, and not only did he study not to create new ones through the multiplication of taxes and subsidies, but he also applied himself with all his power to relieve those who were or who became so through the misfortune of their affairs.

He had great wars during his reign: he was attacked by the Huns, the Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and other neighboring peoples. But he always repelled them, and even won signal victories over them, mainly over the Huns whom he defeated twice entirely, and over the Poles, from whom he took Krakow, which was the capital of the kingdom. Before leaving for war, he always had public prayers and a three-day fast held; and, although he took care to assemble good troops, always marched at the head, and threw himself courageously upon the enemies, he nevertheless did not place his trust in his own strength, but only in the help of God, which he implored with great insistence.

After so many generous exploits, his greatest desire was to lead an army against the infidels, to retake the Holy Land from them, and to deliver the tomb of Jesus Christ from their hands. The hope he had of shedding his blood for the glory of his Master, and of becoming a martyr, was what primarily animated him toward this expedition. A very favorable opportunity presented itself: for the famous Peter the Hermit had preached the crusade on all sides by the order of Pop e Urban II. Th pape Urbain II Pope who preached the First Crusade. e princes of France, Spain, and England, who had taken the cross, sent a famous embassy to our holy king, to beg him to be the leader of the army they were preparing, which was to be no less than three hundred thousand men. Ladislas received this offer with incredible joy, and, having also engaged the Duke of Bohemia, his nephew, in such a noble enterprise, he prepared for it with all possible diligence; but God had disposed otherwise: for, when he was only waiting for the time to go and make Him reign in Palestine, by exterminating the Saracens who had made themselves masters of it, he was himself called to heaven to reign there eternally with Jesus Christ. Bonfinius says that it was on July 30, 1095, and the eighteenth year of his reign;

but the Roman Martyrology has placed his memorial on June 27, which is the day on which the translation of his relics took place.

It is impossible to express the grief that filled all of Hungary when the news of his death spread there: everyone mourned him as the father of the poor, as the support of the State, as the restorer of piety and justice, as the defender of virginity, as the pillar of the Church, and as the model of all holiness. Mourning was observed for three years, and during all that time, no public or private festivities took place throughout the kingdom. His body was carried solemnly to Varadin to be buried in the Church of Our La dy, whi Varadin City where Ladislaus founded a basilica and where he was buried. ch he had founded. Two miracles made the procession very famous. Those who were leading it fell into such a deep sleep at the last stop, due to their great exhaustion, that they did not wake up until three hours after daybreak; the wagon carrying the holy body moved by itself toward Varadin, without being pulled by any horses, and traveled so quickly to the place the blessed king had marked for his burial that it arrived there before the drivers could reach it. Someone in the group having said that the body smelled bad, contrary to the testimony of all the others, who asserted that it exhaled a very pleasant odor, his mouth immediately twisted, and his chin became so attached to his shoulder that it was impossible for him to rise until he had acknowledged his fault and asked the Saint for forgiveness.

Since then, so many miracles occurred at his tomb that, with no one able to doubt his holiness, Pope Celestine III, or Innocent III, his successor, canonized him i n the year 1095; pape Célestin III Pope who confirmed the election of Albert and appointed him cardinal. and, in the same Innocent III Pope who commissioned Pierre de Castelnau against the Albigensians. year, he gave feet and hands to a small child who had been born without any of these limbs.

Our Saint is ordinarily represented with two angels at his sides: these are the two guardian angels that Solomon, a relative of the young prince, saw beside Ladislas when he was making war against him. It is also reported that when Ladislas died, his coffin was carried by two angels to the church that this Saint had built in honor of the most holy Virgin. — He is sometimes seen holding his rosary and his saber in the same hand; this was his ordinary way of charging the enemy; a happy and salutary inspiration that would find many critics today, but of which he never had to repent. — Quite commonly he is painted with the Hungarian standard, to show that his charity, his prayers, and his pious foundations did not prevent him from being a formidable and valiant prince. — Nothing prevents placing a church in his hands, since he is the founder of numerous basilicas and notably of the cathedral dedicated to Our Lady in the city of Varadin. — Hungarian prints frequently present him causing a fountain of living water to gush from a steep rock with his lance, with which he quenches the thirst of his soldiers whom he leads to war. — Artists do not disdain to paint him sometimes with the imperial globe stamped with the cross, because he refused the empire that the German princes offered him. — Finally, the battle-axe or the lance that is quite often placed in his hand is an allusion either to his duel with an enemy leader, or to the blow of the lance that caused the miraculous fountain of which we have spoken to gush forth, or, in general, to his martial virtues.

Acta Sanctorum. — Cf. Godescard and all hagiographers.