Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231)

Rare for a laywoman of the Middle Ages, Elizabeth is exceptionally well documented — and by direct witnesses. Her death so young, the miracles immediately reported at her tomb, and the Church's desire to canonize her quickly prompted a methodical inquiry, parts of whose records have come down to us.

Conrad of Marburg's Summa vitae (1232)

The oldest source is the letter Conrad of Marburg, Elizabeth's last spiritual director, addressed to Pope Gregory IX around 1232 in support of her cause: the Summa vitae.^[7] Brief but of capital importance, this text comes from a man who heard her confessions, directed her, and assisted her until her death. It fixes the decisive facts of her widowhood: the Good Friday renunciation of 1228, the founding of the hospital, the service of the sick.

The Libellus of the four maids (1235)

The major source is the Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum sanctae Elisabeth — the "little book of the sayings of the four maids". During the third commission of inquiry, in January 1235, four women who had shared Elizabeth's private life testified under oath: Guta, Isentrude of Hörselgau, Irmgard, and a maid named Elizabeth.^[8] These are eyewitness testimonies, of a freshness and domestic precision almost without equal for a medieval saint: we see Elizabeth spinning wool, rising at night to pray, hiding her alms, laughing with her poor.

The later biographies

Upon these foundations rise more literary Lives, to be handled with discernment according to their date:

This stratigraphy of the sources is essential: the further removed in time, the more the marvellous grows. The most famous details of the "little saint of the roses" belong to the late layers; the historical core — a heroic charity and a radical voluntary poverty — belongs to the direct witnesses.^[9][10]

Birth: Pressburg or Sárospatak? (1207)

Elizabeth was born in 1207 — tradition retains 7 July. The place, however, is disputed: one tradition has her born at Pressburg (Pozsony, present-day Bratislava), where she is said to have spent her early years; another, popularized later, names the castle of Sárospatak, in north-eastern Hungary.^[11][12] The Catholic Encyclopedia prudently decides: "probably at Pressburg". The very uncertainty is instructive: we know this saint's inner life better than her cradle.

Daughter of King Andrew II and Gertrude of Meran

Her father was Andrew II of Hungary, king of the mighty House of Árpád, the very man who would promulgate in 1222 the Golden Bull, a kind of Hungarian great charter. Her mother was Gertrude of Meran (von Andechs), a German princess whose sister was none other than Saint Hedwig of Silesia.^[13][14] Elizabeth thus grew up in a family where holiness was almost hereditary: niece of Saint Hedwig, cousin of Saint Agnes of Bohemia, she would later give her name to Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, her great-niece.

A tragedy marked her early childhood: in 1213, when Elizabeth was six, her mother Gertrude was murdered by Hungarian lords who reproached her for favouring her German relatives.^[15] The little girl was already far from Hungary.

Betrothed at four, raised at the Wartburg

According to the political custom of the time, Elizabeth was betrothed as a child, around 1211, and sent to the court of Thuringia to be raised there. Intended first for the eldest son of Landgrave Hermann I, then, upon his death (1216), for his younger brother Louis, she was educated at the castle of the Wartburg, above Eisenach — one of the most brilliant courts of the Holy Roman Empire.^[16][17]

The child come from abroad, too pious for the court's taste, was diversely loved there. The maids would later testify that she interrupted her games to go and pray in church, imposed small renunciations upon herself, and was thought odd.^[18] But Louis became deeply attached to her. Far from dynastic calculation, their union would become one of the finest stories of married tenderness in hagiography.

Marriage to Louis IV (1221)

In 1221, Elizabeth, aged fourteen, married Louis IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, seven years her senior.^[19][20][21] She became landgravine of a rich and strategic principality. The court may have expected her to acquire a taste for splendour; instead she brought the Gospel taken at the letter.

A happy marriage

Contrary to the widespread image of a saint browbeaten by a hostile husband, the primary sources are unanimous: the marriage was happy and Louis constantly supported his wife's charity.^[22][23] The maids describe a rare affection: Elizabeth sometimes accompanied her husband on his travels; when he was away, she slept little and prayed much; on his return, she welcomed him with a child's joy. Louis, for his part, let his wife empty the granaries for the poor without ever complaining.

This point is doctrinally important. Elizabeth's holiness was not born of marital unhappiness but blossomed within a fully embraced human love: she is one of the great figures of holiness in marriage, showing that one can tend towards Gospel perfection without leaving the married state.

Three children

From this union were born three children in five years: Hermann II (1222), who would briefly succeed his father; Sophie (1224), future Duchess of Brabant and ancestress of the Landgraves of Hesse; and Gertrude (1227), born a few weeks after Louis's death, who would become Abbess of Altenberg and be beatified.^[24][25] Elizabeth was, even amid the separation her director would impose upon her, a loving mother — the wrench of having to entrust her children to others would count among her hardest trials.

The charity of a landgravine

From these happy years, her charity already overflowed. She rose at night to pray, ate frugally, refused to wear clothes she suspected had been obtained through injustice towards the poor.^[26] She visited hovels, nursed the sick, supported the destitute. Above all, around 1226, she had a hospital built at the foot of the Wartburg where she herself fed and nursed the needy — an unheard-of gesture for a princess.

"All her life she was the friend of the poor, and gave herself wholly to relieving the hungry. […] Twice a day, morning and evening, she went to visit the sick, and tended with her own hands the most repulsive." — Conrad of Marburg, letter to Gregory IX (Summa vitae)^[27]

The famine of 1226

The year 1226 put her charity to the test of fire. While Louis was in Italy with Emperor Frederick II, Thuringia was struck by floods, famine and plague. As de facto regent, Elizabeth opened the ducal granaries, distributed grain throughout the land, sold her jewels and ornaments, gave away even her garments of state.^[28][29] Tradition reports that she fed hundreds of poor people daily at the foot of the castle. The officers protested; on his return, Louis rebuked them and approved everything: "Let her give whatever she will for God, provided only she leaves me Eisenach, the Wartburg and Naumburg."^[30]

The "miracle of the roses": the story of a legend

Here one must be historian as much as believer. The most famous tale attached to Elizabeth — going down to the poor, her apron laden with bread, surprised by her husband (or a hostile relative), she opens the fold of her mantle and the bread has turned into roses — does not appear in the primary sources.^[31] The early vitae say on the contrary that Louis was never scandalized by his wife's largesse. The legend of the roses was first attached to Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, then transferred to her ancestress; and where Dietrich of Apolda reported a wholly spiritual "vision of faith", later storytellers materialized it into a shower of roses.

Should it therefore be rejected with contempt? No. A Catholic encyclopedia does not treat traditions with a sceptical reflex. The miracle of the roses says, in the form of symbol, a profoundly true truth: Elizabeth's charity transfigured the humblest matter — a crust of bread — into the beauty of the Kingdom. It need only be presented for what it is: a late legendary flowering set upon a historical foundation of a very real charity.

"What had seemed bitter was changed into sweetness for me." The saying is Saint Francis's about the lepers; it could be Elizabeth's.^[32]

The leper and the crucified Christ

Another tradition, handed down by Dietrich of Apolda, tells that Elizabeth took in a leper and laid him in the marital bed; her scandalized mother-in-law summoned Louis, who tore away the sheets — and "Almighty God opened the eyes of his soul: in place of the leper, he saw the figure of the crucified Christ lying upon the bed".^[33] Late and unverifiable in detail, this tale nonetheless condenses the central intuition of her whole life: in the poor and the sick, it is Christ whom we touch. It is Matthew 25 made flesh in a life.

The first Franciscans in Thuringia

Around 1223-1224, the Friars Minor of Francis of Assisi arrived in Germany. Their ideal of joyful poverty overwhelmed the young landgravine. One of them, Brother Roger (Rodeger), became her first guide; through him, the spirit of Assisi entered the Wartburg.^[34] Franciscan tradition even holds that Francis, shortly before his death in 1226, had his cloak brought to her as a sign of blessing. Elizabeth would never be an enclosed nun: she would live the Gospel in the world, as a laywoman, which would make her one of the first and greatest figures of the Third Order.

Conrad of Marburg, a director of iron

Around 1225, Elizabeth placed herself under the guidance of another man, of a very different temper: Conrad of Marburg, a learned priest, crusade preacher and soon inquisitor of Germany.^[35] His direction was of extreme severity: fasts, mortifications, absolute obedience; he made her send away her ladies-in-waiting, inflicted corporal corrections upon her, tested her harshly. The maids kept a memory of him mingled with fear.

The historian must here hold both ends. On the one hand, this rigour corresponded to Elizabeth's own desire for the absolute — she wanted to be stripped of everything. On the other, Conrad — assassinated in 1233 after mercilessly repressing heresy — remains a controversial figure, and the Church never canonized his methods. His direction was the burning, sometimes excessive crucible in which Elizabeth's holiness was completed; it is not its model.

"I attest before God: I have seldom seen a more contemplative woman." — Conrad of Marburg, concerning Elizabeth, in his letter to Gregory IX^[36]

Louis's death at Otranto (1227)

In 1227, Louis IV took the cross with Emperor Frederick II for the Sixth Crusade. But scarcely embarked, he was carried off by fever — the plague, it is said — and died at Otranto, on 11 September 1227, without ever seeing his wife again.^[37][38] Elizabeth was twenty; she was carrying their third child, who would be born after his father's death. At the news, she cried out, according to the witnesses:

"Ah! Lord my God! Lord my God! Behold, the whole world is dead to me, the world and all the sweetness it holds." — Cry of Saint Elizabeth on learning of Louis's death, before running through the castle repeating: "He is dead, dead, dead!"^[39]

Leaving the Wartburg

Then began the hardest winter of her life. The regency passed to her brother-in-law Henry Raspe, during little Hermann's minority. For disputed reasons — conflict over her dower, hostility of the court towards her "ruinous" largesse, or her own desire for poverty — Elizabeth left the Wartburg.^[40][41] Tradition shows her wandering through Eisenach with her children, turned away by the townsfolk she had nevertheless fed. The story may be embellished; the rupture itself is real: the landgravine found herself stripped, and she welcomed it as a grace.

Good Friday 1228: the renunciation

On Good Friday 1228, in the chapel of the Friars Minor at Eisenach, Elizabeth laid her hands upon the altar and solemnly renounced her own will and all the vanities of the world.^[42] She even wished to rid herself of all her goods; Conrad dissuaded her — "for love of the poor", so that she would keep the means to help them.

"On Good Friday 1228, having laid her hands upon the altar in the chapel of her town of Eisenach, where she had welcomed the Friars Minor, in the presence of several brothers and of her kin, Elizabeth renounced her own will and all the vanities of the world." — Conrad of Marburg, Summa vitae^[43]

Tertiary of Saint Francis

It was then that she fully joined, by vow and grey habit, the spirit of the Franciscan Third Order, of which she is one of the very first great figures.^[44] Historians debate the exact juridical forms — the rule of the Third Order would be fixed later — but the substance is certain: Elizabeth chose to live, as a widowed laywoman, the poverty of Francis among the poor. The Church would give her as patroness of the Third Order, alongside Saint Louis of France.

The hospital of Saint Francis

In the summer of 1228, with the money of her dower finally obtained, Elizabeth settled at Marburg, in Hesse, and founded there a hospital which she dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi — then only recently canonized (1228).^[45][46] This was no prestige foundation administered from afar: she lived there, worked there, died there.

Serving the sick with her own hands

There, the Árpád princess became a servant. She swept, washed soiled linen, fed the infirm, nursed the sick twice a day, reserving for herself the "most repulsive" cases — lepers, wounds, the dying.^[47][48] To earn her living and that of the poor, she spun wool, like the humblest of women. Her joy, attested by all the maids, never faltered: she served "laughing".

The austerities

Under Conrad's direction, mortifications intensified: fasts, vigils, privations, separation from her children. Her body, already worn by work and childbearing, was quickly exhausted. But this stripping had nothing of a morbid hatred of self: it was the reverse of a love that wished to give everything, until it had nothing of its own left, after the image of Christ.

Death, 17 November 1231

In the autumn of 1231, Elizabeth fell ill. She distributed her last goods, bade farewell, and died on the evening of 17 November 1231, aged twenty-four.^[49][50] The maids gathered her last words, turned towards the Nativity and the Resurrection of the Lord:

"Behold the hour when the Virgin Mary brought forth the Lord […] : behold midnight! Behold the hour when the child Jesus was born, when he was laid in the manger […] ; behold the hour when he came to redeem the world; he will redeem me also; behold the hour when he raised the dead and delivered bound souls; he will deliver mine also from this miserable world." — Last words of Saint Elizabeth, at the first cockcrow, as reported by her maids^[51]

A maid heard her, in the night, singing softly. When asked about it in surprise, Elizabeth answered, according to the deposition of her namesake maid: "I tell you that a charming little bird came and perched between me and the wall, and sang to me for a long while so sweetly and so softly […] that I too had to sing. It revealed to me that I shall die within three days."^[52] She died in peace, having made a throne of her poverty.

Charity as the face of faith

The heart of Elizabeth's holiness is effective charity: not a feeling, but hands that wash, feed, nurse. She took literally the word of the Last Judgement:

"For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was naked and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me. […] Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 25:35-40^[53]

In her, believing and serving are one. Her faith is not a doctrine held at a distance from the poor; it is that doctrine put into practice, down to touching wounds. In this she remains, eight centuries later, a model for all Christian charity — and the reason her name is borne by countless hospitals and social works.

Voluntary poverty and Franciscan minority

Elizabeth is, with Saint Clare, one of the two great saints of the first Franciscan generation — Clare in the cloister, Elizabeth in the world. A princess, she chose real poverty: not suffered, but embraced. She wished to have "nothing of her own", to eat the bread of her labour, to share the condition of the destitute. This minority — making oneself small, last, a servant — is exactly the spirit of Francis transposed into the life of a woman in the world.

Imitation of the poor and crucified Christ

At the root of all lies a Christology. If Elizabeth laid down her crown, it is because she contemplated a King crowned with thorns. Tradition lends her, before the crucifix, this saying:

"Dear lady, do not be angry with me. Here before my eyes is my God and my king, this sweet and merciful Jesus, crowned with sharp thorns; and I, who am but a vile creature, would stand before him crowned with pearls, gold and precious stones! My crown would be a mockery of his." — Reply of Saint Elizabeth to her mother-in-law, before the crucifix, after removing her crown^[54]

This conformity to the poor and suffering Christ — which joins the stigmata of Francis and the love of the Cross in Saint Bernard — is the secret mainspring of her stripping. She gives not from philanthropy, but because she loves someone who first made himself poor.

Holiness in the lay state

Finally, Elizabeth says something liberating: one can be holy without leaving the world. A loving wife, mother of three children, then a widow, she sanctified each of these states. She did not flee marriage for the cloister; she made marriage, motherhood and widowhood paths of perfection. The first great married laywoman of Franciscan times, she opens the way for the saints of ordinary states of life — a way the Church, from the medieval Third Order down to the universal call to holiness recalled by the Second Vatican Council, has never ceased to widen.

The trial (1232-1235)

Scarcely dead, miracles were reported at her tomb at Marburg. Gregory IX, who had known and esteemed her, ordered the inquiry. From 1232 to 1235, three commissions gathered the evidence: Conrad's Summa vitae, the attested healings, and above all the depositions of the four maids (January 1235).^[55][56] Seldom was a trial conducted on foundations so sure and so close.

Canonization by Gregory IX (1235)

At Whitsunday 1235 — 27 May — at Perugia, Pope Gregory IX inscribed Elizabeth in the catalogue of saints, by the bull Gloriosus in maiestate.^[57] Less than four years after her death: a swiftness that measures her radiance. That same year began at Marburg the building of a great shrine.

The Elisabethkirche at Marburg

Over her tomb rises the Elisabethkirche (Saint Elizabeth's Church), begun in 1235 by the Teutonic Order and consecrated in 1283: it is one of the first great purely Gothic churches on German soil, a model for the cathedrals of the Empire.^[58] Her relics were laid there in a magnificent shrine of gilded and jewelled metalwork; the solemn translation of 1236 is said to have taken place in the presence of Emperor Frederick II himself. Marburg became one of the greatest pilgrimages of Europe.

The relics and the Reformation

The fate of the relics bears the mark of Christendom's lacerations. At the time of the Reformation, Landgrave Philip of Hesse — a descendant of Elizabeth turned Protestant — had the bones removed to discourage pilgrimage to Marburg, gone Lutheran.^[59] Skull and relics were scattered; part ended up at the Saint Elizabeth convent in Vienna, another, looted during the Thirty Years' War, at Stockholm. The church itself remains — Protestant today — keeping the empty tomb of the Catholic saint who gave it her name.

Patronages and posterity

The cult of Elizabeth was immediate and universal. Celebrated on 17 November (the day of her death; formerly the 19th), she was proclaimed patroness of the Franciscan Third Order, of Catholic charitable works, of hospitals and caregivers, of bakers and widows.^[60][61] Her name is borne by thousands of charitable institutions. In the nineteenth century, the young Montalembert devoted to her a Histoire de sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie (1836) which set Catholic Romanticism aflame.^[62] Eight centuries after her death, the little landgravine of the roses remains the radiant face of charity: proof that one can, at twenty-four, in a world of crowns, choose the Christ of the poor and give him everything.

• Medieval primary sources: Conrad of Marburg, Summa vitae (letter to Gregory IX, 1232); the Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum sanctae Elisabeth (depositions of the four maids, 1235) — the two founding documents; Caesarius of Heisterbach, Vita S. Elisabethae (1236-1237); Dietrich of Apolda, Vita (1289-1297); Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend (chapter on Saint Elizabeth).
• Editions and studies: Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony from her Canonization Hearings, Oxford University Press, 2011 (translation of the trial sources); Charles de Montalembert, Histoire de sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie, duchesse de Thuringe (1836), full text on Gallica.
• Reference notices: Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "St. Elizabeth of Hungary" (New Advent); Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint Elizabeth of Hungary"; Franciscan Media and EWTN, Saint of the Day.
• Related articles on Ignispedia: Saint Francis of Assisi and the Order of Friars Minor (whose tertiary she was); Saint Clare of Assisi, the other great saint of the first Franciscan generation; Saint Louis, co-patron of the Third Order; Gregory IX, who canonized her; Saint Dominic and Saint Anthony of Padua, figures of the thirteenth-century renewal.