Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

St. Elizabeth was born in Hungary in 1207 AD, a daughter of King Andrew II and Queen Gertrude. Her father promised her in marriage to the family of Landgrave Hermann I, ruler of Thuringia in central Germany. In 1211 AD Thuringian knights took the four-year-old to the Wartburg, the landgrave's castle above Eisenach.

In 1213 AD nobles in Hungary murdered her mother. In 1216 AD the landgrave's eldest son, Hermann, died, and she was betrothed instead to his brother Ludwig.

At court, people whispered that her ways did not fit a princess. On the feast of the Assumption she took off her crown in church, laid it before the crucifix and lay face down on the floor. Landgravine Sophia, Ludwig's mother, reproached her for it.

St. Elizabeth married Ludwig at the Wartburg in her early teens. By then Ludwig ruled Thuringia as landgrave. Part of the money meant for the wedding banquet went to the poor.

In 1225 AD Conrad of Marburg, a preacher known for his sternness, became St. Elizabeth's confessor. With Ludwig's consent she vowed to obey Conrad, and to stay unmarried if she were widowed. At her husband's table she refused any food that did not come from his lawful income.

In 1226 AD famine struck Thuringia while Ludwig was away in Italy. She opened the granaries and fed nine hundred people a day at her gate. When Ludwig came home, he approved everything she had done.

Ludwig took the cross to join Emperor Frederick II's crusade to the Holy Land. St. Elizabeth parted from him at the end of June 1227 AD, when she was twenty and pregnant with their third child.

Fever spread through the crusading army, and Ludwig died at Otranto in September. The news reached her in October, just after she gave birth to a daughter, Gertrude. She wept bitterly.

Ludwig's brother, Heinrich Raspe, took over the government and called St. Elizabeth a pious woman unfit to rule. In tears she begged Conrad to let her beg for alms from door to door. Conrad refused.

On Good Friday, with the altars stripped, she laid her hands on the altar of the friars' chapel at Eisenach. In front of friars and relatives she gave up her own will and all worldly show. Conrad ordered her to keep her widow's income, and it paid for her charity.

St. Elizabeth moved to Marburg, where Conrad lived, and took a plain grey habit from him. There she founded a hospital and sat the most wretched patients at her own table. She carried the sick in her arms, washed their sores and cleaned their sheets.

Conrad sent away Guda and Isentrud, the women who had been with her since childhood and marriage. After she visited the convent at Altenberg, where her little daughter Gertrude lived, he had her flogged. The marks were still visible three weeks later.

In November 1231 AD St. Elizabeth fell ill with a high fever. When Conrad asked about her goods, she told him that whatever seemed to be hers belonged to the poor. She asked him to give away everything except one worn dress to be buried in.

She died at her hospital in Marburg, as if falling gently asleep, at twenty-four. The General Roman Calendar keeps her memorial on November 17, the day of her death.

St. Elizabeth was buried in the chapel of her hospital, and miracles of healing soon began at her grave. Papal commissioners took sworn testimony from people who had been healed. On January 1, 1235 AD, four of her women gave sworn testimony about her life.

Pope Gregory IX declared her a saint at Perugia at Pentecost 1235 AD. In 1236 AD her body was raised at Marburg in front of a vast crowd. Emperor Frederick II came to it barefoot, in a plain grey garment.