"Saint Thecla Liberating the City of Este from the Plague" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo {1696-1770}

"The Death of Hyacinth" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770)

Apostle of the North St. Hyacinth was a native of Silesia, which then belonged to Poland. The preaching of St. Hyacinth effected an entire change of morals in the city of Cracow. He studied at Cracow, Prague, and Bologna. He was if not the greatest, at least one of the greatest travelers of his day. He carried the gospel to the idolatrous countries of the North; in Prussia, Pomerania, along the Baltic, in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. He labored in Russia traveling as far as the Black Sea and the Aegean, and penetrated among the Tartars, going even to China and Tibet. He again arrived at Cracow in 1257, the seventy-second and last year of his life. He died on August 15 of the same year. Ecclesiastical historians called him the Apostle of the North