Hungarian Royalty. He was known as "Matthias the Just" in folk tales, who was as King of Hungary, as Matthias I, and Croatia from 1458, at the age of 14 until his death. After conducting several military campaigns, he became also King of Bohemia from 1469 to 1490 and Duke of Austria form 1486 to 1490. He established education institutions, patronized art and science, and introduced a new legal system in the Kingdom of Hungary. With his patronage, Hungary became the first European country which adopted the Renaissance from Italy. He was born in Kolozsvár, which is in the Kingdom of Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in a house now known as the Matthias Corvinus House. He was the second son of John Hunyadi, a successful general of the Kingdom of Hungary, and Erzsébet Szilágyi, from a Hungarian noble family. On January 24, 1458, 40,000 Hungarian noblemen, assembled on the ice of the frozen Danube, unanimously elected Matthias Hunyadi as King of Hungary, and on February 14th, the new king made his state entry into Buda. He married three times: Elizabeth of Celje was the first wife, who he married in the spring of 1455 but his wife died at age fourteen before the marriage was consummated. On May 1, 1463 he married Catherine at Matthias Church in Buda. He was eighteen and his bride thirteen. The wedding negotiations had begun in 1458 when Catherine was nine years old. Since his queen was very young, she played little part in the politics of his two kingdoms. When his wife was age fourteen, she gave birth to a child with both his wife and child dying within a few days later, an event that caused him concern about fathering a legitimate heir. He eventually married Beatrice of Naples, daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabella of Taranto, but that marriage also failed to produce an heir. His only surviving offspring was an illegitimate son, János Corvinus, by a mistress named Barbara. Although there were several in hope of the Hungarian throne, Vladislaus Jagiellon ruled after him becoming Vladislaus II and taking Matthias I's widow, Beatrice, as his second wife.