Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
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The Life of Saint Elizabeth

(Credit for the following entry goes to Wikipedia.org)

 
St. Elisabeth (Erzsébet) of Hungary (b. 1207 – 17 November 1231) was the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary (1175–1235) and his wife Gertrude of Andechs-Merania (murdered in 1213). Elisabeth was widowed while still young, relinquished her wealth to the poor, built hospitals, and thus became a symbol of Christian charity.

At the age of four, Elisabeth was betrothed to the Blessed Ludwig IV of Thuringia, son of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia, and was raised at the magnificent court kept at Wartburg. This betrothal embodied a great alliance against Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor, a member of the house of Welf, who had quarreled with the Roman Catholic Church. Some have suggested that Ludwig's brother Hermann was in fact the eldest, and that she was first betrothed to him until his death in 1216, but this is doubtful. An event of this magnitude would almost certainly be mentioned at least once in the many original sources at our disposal, and this is not the case. In addition, the only source document that might support this by putting Hermann's name before Ludwig's relates to a monastery in Hesse which supports the theory that Hermann was the younger of the two, as Hesse was traditionally the domain of the second son. It would therefore be normal to put his name first, as this document deals with his territory.

Elisabeth married Ludwig in 1221 and the marriage appears to have been happy. Ludwig was not upset by the distribution of his wealth to the poor believing that his wife's charitable efforts would bring eternal reward; he is venerated in Thuringia as a saint. Ludwig was a staunch supporter of the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. In the spring of 1226, when floods, famine, and plague wrought havoc in Thuringia, Ludwig represented Frederick II at the Diet at Cremona. Elisabeth assumed control of affairs and distributed alms in all parts of their territory, even giving state robes and ornaments to the poor. Below the castle at Wartburg, she built a hospice with twenty-eight beds and visited the inmates daily to attend to them. It was also about this time that the inquisitor Konrad von Marburg — a harsh man and a true product of his age — became her spiritual director. Elisabeth's life changed irrevocably when Ludwig died of the plague on September 11, 1227, at Otranto, Italy en route to join the Sixth Crusade.

Elizabethenkirche Marburg

With Ludwig's death, his younger brother Henry assumed the regency during the minority of Elisabeth's eldest son, Hermann II landgrave of Thuringia (1222–1241). After bitter arguments over the disposal of her dower, Elizabeth left the court at Wartburg. The popular tradition is that she was cast out by Henry, but this does not stand up to critical examination. After unsuccessful attempts to force her to remarry, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, a lay Franciscan group, and built a hospice at Marburg for the poor and the sick.

Elisabeth is perhaps best known for the legend which says that whilst she was taking bread to the poor in secret, her husband asked her what was in the pouch; Elisabeth opened it and the bread turned into roses. This miracle is commemorated with a statue in Budapest, in front of the neo-Gothic church dedicated to her at Roses' Square (Rózsák tere). The architect of the church was Imre Steindl, architect of the Budapest Parliament.

Sophia (1224-1284), Elisabeth's second child, married Henry II, Duke of Brabant and was the ancestress of the Landgraves of Hesse, as in the War of the Thuringian Succession she won Hesse for her son Heinrich I, called the Child. The Blessed Gertrude (1227-1297), Elisabeth's third child, was born several weeks after the death of her father; she became abbess of the convent of Altenberg near Wetzlar.

Elisabeth died in Marburg, either from physical fatigue or from disease, at only 24 years of age. She was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on May 27th, 1235 in Perugia, Italy. This papal charter is on display in the Schatzkammer of the Deutschordenskirche in Vienna, Austria. Her body was laid in a magnificent golden shrine — still to be seen today — in the Elisabethkirche in Marburg. It is now a Protestant church, but has spaces set aside for Catholic worship. Marburg became the centre of the Teutonic Order, which adopted St. Elisabeth as its second patroness. The Order remained in Marburg until its dissolution by Napoleon I of France in 1803.

Elisabeth's shrine became one of the main German centers of pilgrimage of the entire 14th century and early 15th century. During the course of the 15th century, the popular cult of St. Elisabeth slowly faded. However, this was to some extent replaced by an aristocratic devotion to St Elisabeth, as through her daughter Sophia she was an ancestor of many leading aristocratic German families.

Three hundred years after her death, one of Elisabeth's many descendants, the Landgrave Philip I "the Magnanimous" of Hesse, a leader of the Protestant reformation and one of the most important supporters of Martin Luther, raided the church in Marburg and demanded that the Teutonic knights hand over Elisabeth's bones, in order to disperse her relics and thus put an end to the already declining pilgrimages to Marburg.

Philip also took away the crowned agate chalice in which St. Elisabeth's head rested, but returned it after being imprisoned by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The chalice was subsequently plundered by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War and is now on display at the National Museum in Stockholm. St Elisabeth's skull and some of her bones can be seen at the Convent of St Elisabeth in Vienna; some relics also survive at the shrine in Marburg.

(End Wikipedia Entry)

Patronage

St. Elizabeth is the patron saint of bakers; beggars; brides; charitable societies; charitable workers; charities; countesses; death of children; exiles; falsely accused people; hoboes; homeless people; hospitals; in-law problems; lacemakers; lace workers; nursing homes; nursing services; people in exile; people ridiculed for their piety; Sisters of Mercy; tertiaries; Teutonic Knights; toothache; tramps; widows

Representation
Woman wearing a crown and tending to beggars; woman wearing a crown

Readings

The following is from a letter by Conrad of Marburg, spiritual director of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Elizabeth was a lifelong friend of the poor and gave herself entirely to relieving the hungry. She ordered that one of her castle should be converted into a hospital in which she gathered many of the weak and feeble. She generously gave alms to all who were in need, not only in that place but in all the territories of her husband's empire. She spent all her own revenue from her husband's four principalities, and finally she sold her luxurious possessions and rich clothes for the sake of the poor.

Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, Elizabeth went to visit the sick. She personally cared for those who were particularly repulsive; to some she gave good, to others clothing; some she carried on her own shoulders, and performed many other kindly services. Her husband, of happy memory, gladly approved of these charitable works. Finally, when her husband died, she sought the highest perfection; filled with tears, she implored me to let her beg for alms from door to door.

On Good Friday of that year, when the altars had been stripped, she laid her hands on the altar in a chapel in her own town, where she had established the Friars Minor, and before witnesses she voluntarily renounced all worldly display and everything that our Savior in the gospel advises us to abandon. Even then she saw that she could still be distracted by the cares and worldly glory which had surrounded her while her husband was alive. Against my will she followed me to Marburg. Here in the town she built a hospice where she gathered together the weak and the feeble. There she attended the most wretched and contemptible at her own table.

Apart from those active good works, I declare before God that I have seldom seen a more contemplative woman.

Before her death I heard her confession. When I asked what should be done about her goods and possessions, she replied that anything which seemed to be hers belonged to the poor. She asked me to distribute everything except one worn-out dress in which she wished to be buried. When all this had been decided, she received the body of our Lord. Afterward, until vespers, she spoke often of the holiest things she had heard in sermons. Then, she devoutly commended to God all who were sitting near her, and as if falling into a gentle sleep, she died.