Today is the Feast Day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. She was born in Pressburg Hungary, 1207; died in Marburg, Hesse, Germany, November 17, 1231; canonized by Gregory IX in 1235; feast day formerly on November 19.

Her husband Count Ludwig IV of Thuringia is also popularly esteemed a saint but died at age 27. One of her three children, Gertrude was beatified.

In the Life of Saint Elizabeth, Dietrich von Apolda relates that one evening in 1207 the minnesinger Klingsohr from Transylvania announced to the Landgraf Hermann I of Thuringia that a daughter had been born to the king of Hungary that night, who should be exalted in holiness and become the wife of Hermann's son.


Indeed Saint Elizabeth was born that night, the daughter of Queen Gertrude of Andechs-Meran and Andrew II, two years after he was crowned king of Hungary. Her lineage also included Saint Hedwig, another married saint, who was her aunt.
At her baptism she was carried to the church under a canopy of the richest cloth to be found in the country. From her earliest days she was the delight of her parents. It is said that her first word was a prayer, and almost the first thing she did was an act of kindness to the poor. Even when she was only four, her sweetness of character was such that people in other countries had heard about her.

At the age of four she was sent 350 miles from home to Wartburg Castle near Eisenach, Germany, as the betrothed of the 11-year-old Count Ludwig IV of Thuringia and Hesse. His father, the haughty and powerful Duke Hermann I of Thuringia, cousin to the German emperor, dispatched an embassy to the Hungarian court where, with full protocol, the child-fiancee was handed over to be educated by Hermann's wife Sophie as Ludwig's future bride.

Elizabeth and Ludwig had a wonderful relationship built upon their childhood friendship full of shared sorrows and fired by passionate devotion to each other. When Elizabeth was six, her mother was assassinated and Ludwig comforted her. Soon afterwards Ludwig's elder brother died and, about 1216, the insane Duke Hermann died violently while under the ban of the Church. Suffering and sympathy in their youth bound Elizabeth and Ludwig as a couple. And Elizabeth had further suffering to come.

She loved to visit the sick and the poor. No road was too rough or day too stormy to keep her from going on some errand of mercy to a wretched cabin. Because Wartburg Castle was located on a steep rock, which the ill were unable to climb, Elizabeth even built a hospital at its foot and often fed and cared for the patients herself.

In church one day she saw a large crucifix. So full of love for Christ was she that she took off her crown, thinking it inappropriate for his servant to wear a crown of gold and jewels while He wore a crown of thorns.

She provided for helpless children, especially orphans, founded another hospital with 28 beds, and fed hundreds of persons daily, in addition to making provisions for others throughout the kingdom. Ludwig's family and their peers began to criticize the young princess for associating with the common folk, but she bore their insults patiently without ever replying in anger, probably because Ludwig supported her in this work.

When Ludwig returned from his knightly training, his family tried to dissuade him from marrying her. They urged him to send her back to Hungary. To his credit Landgraf Ludwig would not listen to his mother's and household's slanders against Elizabeth. He defended her and married Elizabeth in 1221.

When they married Elizabeth was only 14 and Ludwig, 21. Everyone remarked what a handsome couple they made. He was tall, good looking, and manly. Elizabeth was young, beautiful, and sweet in every way. They understood each other well, and were very happy together.

What was intended to be a marriage of convenience, a uniting of two powerful families, was actually a marriage of tender love and mutual affection, in which both found tremendous joy and peace. (It is said that Ludwig never forgot to bring Elizabeth a present after one of his journeys--not necessarily identifying married bliss with gifts .)

The year after their wedding (1222) their son Hermann was born; in 1224 Sophie, and in 1227 another daughter Gertrude. (Hermann died as Landgraf at age 19. Sophie married the Duke of Brabant, Henry II and lived to age 60. Blessed Gertrude became Abbess of Altenburg.)

Saint Francis died six years after they had married; Elizabeth was influenced by one of his friars--Brother Roger, who shortly after her wedding told her about Francis and Christ's message to him. He urged her to seek release from her marriage vows, so as to be free to serve Christ. Elizabeth desired to surrender herself utterly, in an all-absorbing love. That she did not do this was probably the restraining influence of her confessor--Master Conrad of Marburg, who had been appointed to this post by Pope Gregory IX.

Conrad, a learned, able and insensitive man, whose harsh methods of guiding her spiritual life have been sharply criticized, may be forgiven his ruthlessness because he was an irreproachable ascetic himself and scrupulous in the performance of his duties. He moderated her ambition to be a mendicant and lessened her generosity to the poor. She took a vow of obedience in all things, but those related to spousal rights, to Conrad in front of her mother-in-law and her children in 1225.

As a child she was unequalled in her devotion: devotion to the Church, obedience and complete dedication to virtue. As a woman she was pious and almost obsessed with the spirit and letter of the law of love and its precepts. With her there were no half measures, no restraint, no compromises, no appeasement. It was all or nothing. That Christ must come first was impressed upon her when, during Mass one day, she was admiring her husband and looked up at the bells of the Consecration to see Blood pouring from the elevated host. So, she devoted herself to meditation on the things of God, and acts of charity with the blessing of Ludwig.

Her servant Irmingard, during the canonization process said that Conrad had forbidden her to eat or use anything which she did not certainly know had been produced without injustice. For this reason Ludwig had allowed her to observe a particular rule of diet. She disciplined her body by fasting and scourging and made her servants chastise her on Fridays and fast days.

Though she arrayed herself in purple and gold to please her husband and his court, underneath these costly robes she wore a horsehair shirt. When her husband was away she put on humble garments and sat with her maids to spin wool. She continued to refuse to wear her jewelled coronet when she entered a church. She longed to suffer as Christ did; hence her self-denial, poverty, sacrifice, and penance. Nevertheless she was spontaneous and mischievous. Often before a party she would do penance. Yet she appeared cheerful and happy, when it was time for gaiety.

When she was home she ate little. One day Ludwig returned to find she had taken nothing but bread and water at her meals. He asked her to take better care of her health. She told him to taste the water left in a glass from which she had been drinking. To his great astonishment he found that it tasted like the very best wine.

Elizabeth was not satisfied with giving money and food to the poor. She knew that God wants us to sacrifice ourselves as well as our treasure. So she herself waited beside sickbeds, cooked the meals, cleaned houses, milked cows, and even dressed the sores of her patients. One day she carried into the castle a small child suffering from leprosy, and laid him on a couch. In horror at the sight, the ladies called Ludwig to show him what his wife had done. Ludwig looked at the poor leper, but saw instead the Christ Child Himself!

One day, while returning from the woods in the middle of winter, Ludwig met Elizabeth carrying food in her mantle. She opened it to show him that she bore, not bread, but the most beautiful red and white roses. At the same time he noticed a beautiful cross in the air over her head. He took one of the roses, and went on his way. It is said that he kept the rose for the rest of his life.

It's seems unfortunate that Ludwig kept the rose for so short a time. Their idyllic marriage lasted only six years. In 1227, Ludwig was called with the knights of Christian Europe to fight the Turks in the Holy Land. Before leaving he promised to send back his signet ring if anything should befall him.

He left for the Fifth Crusade but died of the plague in the seaport town of Otranto near Brindisi, Italy, before leaving Europe and just 18 days before the birth of his daughter Gertrude. Shortly after her birth, messengers came with Ludwig's ring to Elizabeth, who grieved piteously. When she heard the news, Elizabeth is said to have run crazily throughout the castle shrieking, "O Lord my God, the whole world and all that was joyful in the world is now dead to me! But Thy will be done!" But there was worse to come (some of the details are uncertain).

Ludwig's relatives, who had never liked her ways, accused her of mismanaging the estate because of her great charity. She was forced to leave Wartburg, probably by her brother-in-law Heinrich, regent for her young son, who may have wanted Ludwig's estate. She was put out of the castle in the depths of winter on a wet night with the baby at her breast. The people of Eisenach were forbidden to shelter her or her children, so for a time she slept in a pigsty. Poverty didn't seem to really bother Elizabeth, rather she embraced it as God's gift.

An old woman she met, while crossing a stream on some stepping stones, pushed her into the water and said: "There! That's where you belong. When you were a princess you wouldn't act like one. I wouldn't stoop to help you either!" That was the thanks she received, she who had done so much for the poor--why should we expect gratitude?

In any case, she suffered much until she was taken away from Eisenach by her aunt Matilda, abbess of Kitzingen, who gave shelter to Elizabeth and her children. She next visited her uncle Eckembert, bishop of Bamberg, who put his castle of Pottenstein at her disposal. She travelled there with her son Hermann and the baby Gertrude, leaving her daughter Sophie with the nuns at Kitzingen.

Eckembert had plans for her remarriage, but she refused to consider them. She and Ludwig had pledged never to remarry. When Emperor Frederick II proposed marriage to her, she refused saying that she had promised to serve God and Him alone for the rest of her life. Eckembert locked her up in a keep, where she continued to pray confidently and humbly. (Nothing is said of how or when she was released.)

Ludwig's body was returned to Elizabeth according to most accounts and buried in the abbey church at Reinhardsbrunn. On Good Friday that same year, in the church of the Franciscan friars of Eisenach, she became a member of the third order of Saint Francis. With her hand on the altar of a chapel, she renounced, "her family, her children, her own will, and all the pomps of the world." Her confessor, Conrad, had intervened to prevent her from also renouncing her dowry and the property that remained to her.
Some say that that the returning Crusaders reproached her brother- in-law and wanted to wrest his property from the hands of Heinrich, but Elizabeth refused to allow it.

Heinrich finally did return Elizabeth's dowry with which she later founded a hospital with her life-long friends Guda and Ysentrude. Others say that she was restored to Wartburg, but insisted that all revenues be turned over to the poor.
Elizabeth had developed a love of poverty from the Friars Minor but had been unable to act upon it while she was Landgraeffin. Once her children had been provided for by relatives, and she was free to live in Marburg, she lived for a time in a tiny house at Wehrda. Returning to Marburg, she built a small house just outside, and devoted herself to caring for the sick, the aged, and the poor at a hospice she founded there.

Christian charity for her was not simply philanthropy; it bore the wounds of the love of Christ and conformed itself to the special conditions of life with Him. The love of Christ for her implied the love of His Cross and the bearing of it after him. She adopted a little orphan who was chronically sick. Day and night she tended him, washing him, and changing his clothes. Filth, suppuration, and mucus soiled her noble hands, but it never bother her for in tending the littlest, she cared for Jesus.

She begged door to door for food for herself and others, until Conrad of Marburg, still her confessor, stopped her from begging, divesting herself of all her goods, giving more than a certain amount in alms, and exposing herself to diseases such as leprosy. Nevertheless, he was a hard director.

He overshadowed the closing years of her young life, treating her ruthlessly and, at times, brutally. She admitted how much she feared him. But his methods did not break her spirit: with remarkable humility she submitted to his harsh discipline and obeyed.

Conrad forbade her the joy of seeing her children. When she thought she had given up everything, he forced her to part from the two friends she had known and loved since she came to Germany from Hungary at age four, replacing them with a lay brother, a pious unattractive young woman, and a harsh irritable noble widow--cruel women who reported all she did to him. The loss of all she held dear--her family and friends--was compensated by Our Lord and his Blessed Mother who appeared to her frequently bringing her the sweetest consolations.

Conrad would slap Elizabeth's face for disobeying his smallest command and sometimes beat her with a rod that left its mark for weeks. After each chastisement Elizabeth arose strong and unhurt, in her words, like grass bent by heavy rain.

Until her health failed Saint Elizabeth was tireless in serving the wants of those in need: the princess who made garments for the poor went fishing to get them food and cleaned the homes of the sick. One day a Magyar noble arrived at Marburg, and at the hospice he found Elizabeth at her spinning wheel in her plain gray habit of the Order of Penitence. He asked her to return with him to the court of Hungary and leave her life of hardships, but Elizabeth would not go.

She led a life of exceptional poverty and humility, though some say that the usurper allowed her to come back to the castle four years before her death, and that Heinrich also recognized her son's succession to the title of landgraf.

She died at Marburg on November 17, not yet 24. She is certain to have heard the angelic choirs ineffably singing the resurrection at her death and seen the hands of light stretched out eternally towards those who willingly suffer expiation. To be poor is generally a sign of honesty. To know how to be poor is a sign of modesty. To want to be poor is a sign of virtue. To sacrifice everything, including oneself, to the poverty of others is a sign of holiness.

More beggarly than the beggar, this king's daughter chose to follow the painful road the underprivileged toil along. More initiated than the initiated, this innocent girl knew what many of us still refuse to know--the promise, the gift of God: for in hearing the pleas of those suffering from fever, she knew who it was that was asking her for a drink.

Her relics were translated to the Church of Saint Elizabeth in Marburg, where they remained as an object of popular pilgrimage until 1539, when the relics were removed to an unknown place by the Lutheran Philip of Hesse.

Soon after her death, miracles were reported at her tomb. So numerous and wonderful were they that she was canonized just years after her death. Her father, mother, three children, and many relatives were present at the canonization to hear the Voice of God, through His Church, declare her a saint. She has ever since been one of the most beloved saints of the German people (including this Austro-German American woman who took her name--but vacillates between Elizabeth of Hungary and the mother of John the Baptist) (Ancelet-Hustache, Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Condenhove, J. Delaney, S. Delaney, Encyclopedia, Martindale, Melady, White)

In art, Saint Elizabeth is depicted as a queen with a double crown surrounded by beggars, to whom she gives food and clothing, or combs their hair. Sometimes she is shown (1) carrying a pitcher and loaf; (2) carrying bread which turns to roses in her lap; (3) with three crowns at her feet, beggar under her mantle; (4) crowned, pitcher in one hand, bird on the other, beggars and cripples in the background; (5) with angels bringing garments to her to give to the poor; (6) crowned among her women spinning for the poor; (7) with a loaf and fishes; (8) in the habit of a Franciscan tertiary; (9) crowned, kneeling before the bishop (her confessor Conrad), who hands her a palm branch, behind him Saint Francis holding shears; (10) girt with the Franciscan cord, she kneels before Saint Francis of Assisi (Roeder).


St.Elizabeth of Hungary is the patroness of bakers, beggars, confraternities engaged in good works, countesses, the falsely accused, the homeless, nursing services, Sisters of Mercy, charitable organizations, lacemakers, widows, and young brides.