breski1 Born a princess, the youngest daughter of King Ottokar I and Queen Constance of Bohemia. Relative of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
Educated by Cistercian nuns at Trebnitz, Germany. Though she early perceived a call to religious life, Agnes was for years promised into a series of arranged marriages for political reasons. At age three she was promised to a prince named Boleslaus. When he died prior to the marriage, she was betrothed to Prince Henry, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. When Henry chose to marry another, young Agnes was betrothed to Emperor Frederick himself. With the help and intervention of Pope Gregory IX, though affronted, Frederick released Agnes from her marriage obligations, acknowledging that he had lost her to the king of heaven.
She built a Franciscan hospital on land donated by her brother, King Wenceslaus I. She then established the Confraternity of the Crusaders of the Red Star to staff it and its related clinics. She later built a Franciscan friary, …