I was born in 1374 and reigned as monarch from 1384 to 1399.
I spoke Latin, Bosnian, Hungarian, Croatian, Polish, German, and was interested in the arts, music, science, and court life.
My father, Louis I of Hungary, had made an arrangement in 1364 with his former father-in-law the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV to inter-marry their future children, and thus I was destined to marry before I was born.
At age ten I was crowned King of Poland. After my coronation, my pre-natal wedding plans were assailed by various factions, and I ended up married at the age of twelve to a pagan Lithuanian royal who adopted Latin Christianity in order to unite Lithuania with Poland.
Although young, I was actively engaged in my kingdom's political, diplomatic and cultural life and acted as the guarantor of Władysław’s promises to reclaim Poland’s lost territories. In 1387 I led two successful military expeditions to reclaim the province of Halych in Red Ruthenia, which had been retained by Hungary in a dynastic dispute.
I sponsored writers and artists and donated much of my personal wealth, including my royal insignia, to charity, for purposes including the founding of hospitals. I financed a scholarship for twenty Lithuanians to study at Charles’s University in Prague to help strengthen Christianity in their country, to which purpose I also founded a bishopric in Vilnius. Among my most notable cultural legacies was the restoration of the Academy of Kraków, which in 1817 was renamed Jagiellonian University. I had many Latin books translated into Polish for my people.
No sooner did I die than I was considered a saint. Numerous legends about miracles were recounted to justify my sainthood.
I often prayed before a large black crucifix hanging in the north aisle of Wawel Cathedral. During one of these prayers, the Christ on the cross is said to have spoken to me. The crucifix is still there, with my relics beneath it.
According to another legend, I took a piece of jewelry from my foot and gave it to a poor stonemason who had begged for my help. When I left, he noticed my footprint in the plaster floor of his workplace, even though the plaster had already hardened before my visit. The supposed footprint can still be seen in one of Kraków's churches.
Despite widespread veneration for my memory in Poland, it was only in 1997 that I was canonized.
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Here's the game: I give you clues and you try to guess what more or less famous person I'm talking about. The clues are written in the first person, but they weren't really written by that person, they were written by me. A sample clue would be: I was the first pilot to make a successful solo, non-stop flight across the Atlantic "the hard way," i.e. from East to West. When you are ready to see the answer, click on "comments" and the answer will appear in a new window.
1 comment:
The answer is Jadwiga of Poland. She was crowned King of Poland — Hedvig Rex Poloniæ, not Hedvig Regina Poloniæ. The masculine gender of her title was meant to emphasize that she was monarch in her own right, not a queen consort.
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