King of Hungary and Croatia and patron saint of Hungary. He was born circa 1040 in Krakow, Poland, the second son of the future King Bela I of Hungary. Bela's reign lasted from 1060 until his death in 1063. At that time Ladislaus and his older brother, Géza, relinquished their rights to the crown in favor of their cousin, Solomon, whom Bela had ousted in 1060. In 1074 Solomon was defeated during a period of civil war, and Géza was crowned king. Upon Géza's death in 1077 Ladislaus was elected king. His spent the next eighteen years fending off civil wars and attempting to bring a stability to his people. He died in Nyitra, Hungary, now Nitra, Slovakia in 1095. His afterlife was nearly as famous as his real life. The location of his body is said by some to be buried in Somogyvár Abbey in Hungary, while other sources state Nagyvarad Cathedral in Romania. It was at this second location that his tomb was opened in 1192, upon his being canonized by Pope Celestin III, and his remains divided up into reliquaries. His skull was removed and placed in a reliquary above his tomb. In 1406, after a fire broke out and damaged the reliquary, the St. Ladislaus Herma was created to house his skull. After local skirmishes threatened the safety of the bust it began a two hundred year journey from its original location, first to Báthoris Castle in Ecsed, then to Gyulafehérvár, now present day Alba lulia in Romania, then to Prague where a new crown was commissioned for it, and finally in 1607 to its current home in the Cathedral Basilica of Győr, where it rests in the Héderváry Chapel. St. Ladislaus' Herma was the subsequent object in question of the 1964 film The Golden Head, which was filmed on location at the cathedral and in Budapest.

View Another Cenotaph at Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mary.