composed, or at least frequently recited, the
long hymn that bears his name, a copy of {507} 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 succor. 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 a 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, 1482, being twenty
three years and five months old. He was buried in the church of St.
Stanislas. So