St. Casimir

The son of King Casimir IV of Poland, Casimir refused at fifteen to lead an army against a fellow Catholic kingdom, and lived a brief life of conspicuous personal asceticism, devotion to the Eucharist, and love for the poor. He died of tuberculosis at twenty-five and is buried in the cathedral of Vilnius. He is a patron saint of Poland and Lithuania.

Despite being groomed for kingship, Casimir chose a life of prayer and simplicity within the splendor of the Jagiellon court. He wore a hair shirt beneath his royal garments, slept on the floor, and spent long hours before the Blessed Sacrament, often found kneeling at the church doors before they opened at dawn.

He turned down a proposed marriage to a daughter of Emperor Frederick III, preferring to keep the vow of chastity he had made in his youth. When he died in 1484, a copy of his beloved Marian hymn "Omni die dic Mariae" was found beneath his pillow. He was canonized in 1522, and his silver reliquary chapel in Vilnius Cathedral remains a place of pilgrimage for the faithful of the Baltic lands.