Queen Jadwiga

I attended church today at Kościół Karmelitów, the Church of the Carmelite Brothers, the neighborhood monastic order. Along with bookstores and bake shops, it would seem almost every block has its own clerical gang. The Bernardines, the Capuchins, the Dominicans, the Felicians, the Franciscans, the reformed Franciscans (what’s the story there?), the Johanines of the Cross, the Norbertines, the Paulines, et al.—all have their own houses of worship. I won’t get to all of them this trip, but it’s nice to know that Kraków is well supplied with the meek. I sympathize and identify with them, however unlikely I am to share in their inheritance—the ultimate territory.

The church was founded by the sweet, young Queen of Poland, Jadwiga, in 1395. Herself a bit of a waif, “intelligent, pretty, an accomplished musician and scholar, and entirely helpless” in the dynastic intrigues of her day, she was wedded to Jagiełło, a Grand Duke from the Lithuanian sticks, a man thrice her age and only recently a pagan. He would do respectably for Poland over his long lifetime, but the young queen died in 1399, “at the age of 24, leaving her entire personal fortune for the refounding of the Cracovian Academy, the Jagiełłonian University.” (117-8) She was a patroness of the poor, the powerless, the pious, and the scholarly, and though slight, left her mark on this country, both figuratively and literally: the impression of her foot in a stone that graces the foundation of the Carmelite church. Don’t ask me how. The historians provide no detail on this. She was a saint as well, so it might have been a miracle. All I know is that there is a depression in the stone with the vague outline of a small, feminine foot. The university is still here, too. Which reminds me that I have notes to revise.

Monument to the Marriage of Jadwiga and Jagiello on the Planty