Hungary's king sends four-year-old St. Elizabeth to Thuringia in a golden cradle

EISENACH, Thuringia, 1211 AD — Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the King of Hungary’s four-year-old daughter, left her parents this year for a castle in Germany, taken by envoys who had ridden from Thuringia with at least thirty horsemen to fetch her. After a long journey the envoys reached Eisenach and climbed to the Wartburg, the fortress above the town, where she was betrothed to the landgrave’s son, to be brought up by his family.

St. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and his German queen, Gertrude of Andechs-Meran. The prince who sent for her, Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia, ruled a land in the middle of Germany and was one of the richest and most powerful sovereigns in Europe. He wanted the King of Hungary’s daughter for his son, and Hungary on his side: the marriage was to seal an alliance against the German Emperor Otto IV, who had quarrelled with the Church. As was the custom, a girl promised this young went to live at the court of the family she would marry into, and was raised there alongside her future husband.

Tradition holds that St. Elizabeth’s birth was announced at Eisenach on the night it happened, by Klingsohr, a famous scholar from the King of Hungary’s lands. In 1207 AD he had come to Eisenach to judge a contest among the poets of Hermann’s court. One evening, in the garden of the inn where he lodged, he studied the stars for a long time and then told the knights and townsmen gathered around him: “Know that this very night there is born to the King of Hungary a daughter who shall be named Elizabeth, who shall be given in marriage to the son of the Prince here; who shall be a saint”. Early the next morning the knights went up to the Wartburg and told Landgrave Hermann.

Four years later Hermann sent his embassy: a count, a widow known for her good sense and modesty, and his cup-bearer, the knight Walter of Varila. Two young noblewomen and two squires rode with them to attend them. Along the road, the princes and churchmen whose lands they crossed received them with the honours due to envoys of so great a lord.

According to longstanding Catholic Tradition, the envoys were received at Pressburg with royal hospitality, and from the morning after they arrived many Masses were said. King Andrew put the request to his council. Queen Gertrude argued for the match, and the king did as she asked and agreed to send his daughter away. Before he let his daughter go, King Andrew held a feast in her honour: three days of games, dancing, music and minstrels’ songs for the knights and ladies of his court.

St. Elizabeth left Hungary with a rich dowry. The king and queen gave the envoys costly presents of their own, and sent more to Landgrave Hermann as the princess’s dowry. Nothing so precious or so beautiful had been seen in Thuringia before. Queen Gertrude added a thousand marks of silver and promised to double it from her own purse if she lived. The envoys had come to Pressburg with two vehicles and went home with thirteen. King Andrew also sent thirteen young Hungarian noblewomen to keep his daughter company.

At the end of the three days the child was carried out wrapped in a silk robe embroidered with gold and silver. She was laid in a cradle of solid gold and handed over to the Thuringians. King Andrew said to Varila: “I confide to your knightly honor my supreme consolation.” Queen Gertrude, in tears, asked the knight to take care of her child. Varila answered the king and queen: “I will most gladly keep her under my protection, and will always be faithful to her.”

The journey to Thuringia passed without accident. When Landgrave Hermann and his wife, Landgravine Sophia, heard that the envoys were near, they knelt and thanked God, then went down from the Wartburg to meet them at Eisenach. At the inn of Hellgref, the best in the town and the one where Klingsohr had lodged, Hermann took the little girl in his arms, held her close and thanked God for her. He went back up to the castle to have rooms made ready, and Sophia stayed the night at the inn with the child.

The next morning Sophia took the child up to the castle. Hermann had gathered his court there, famous for its splendour, and had invited the leading citizens of Eisenach and their wives, so that they could see the child God and the King of Hungary had sent him.

There the betrothal was celebrated. Tradition adds that the four-year-old princess and the landgrave’s son were laid side by side in the same bed. Then, as at Pressburg, there were banquets, dancing and poetry. From that day St. Elizabeth was never apart from the boy, and she called him her brother.

The castle where St. Elizabeth was betrothed still stands above Eisenach. In 1854 and 1855 AD the painter Moritz von Schwind painted her life in seven large frescoes in its Elisabeth Gallery, with the Seven Works of Mercy beside them.