Catholic Saint

St Elizabeth of Hungary

Widow (1207-1231) 

Saint of the day November 17

St Elizabeth, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and Gertrude of Andechs Meran (and a niece of St Hedwig), was betrothed in infancy to Louis IV, son of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia. Accordingly, since the age of 4 she was brought up at the Wartburg castle and educated at the Thuringian court, one of the most magnificent and cultured of Germany at that time. Distinguished for her piety from early youth, Elizabeth pursued her devotions and active works of charity quite undeterred by the ridicule and rudeness of the frivolous courtiers and troubadours. Characteristic of her humility was her refusal to wear her golden and bejewelled coronet in church—”How can I, when our dear Lord wears but a crown of thorns!”

At the then not unusual age of 14, Elizabeth was married to Louis, and their exemplary marriage was blessed with three children. Mortification, fasting, scourging and prayer had a prominent place in her earnest striving for perfection, and Louis fully seconded his young wife’s prodigal charities among tie poor and her loving, personal care of the sick. During the first year of their happy married life the Franciscan Friars arrived in Germany, and Elizabeth became their first tertiary—a fact that brought great consolation to St Francis d’Assisi, as he wrote to her in a letter accompanying his cloak, which he sent at the suggestion of his Cardinal-protector a few years before he died.

In 1227, while on his way to the Sixth Crusade, Louis suddenly died of the “Typhus” (his remains were brought back by the returning crusaders), leaving the young Elizabeth rather heartbroken and defenceless. With his brother Henry assuming the regency, Elizabeth had no option but to seek refuge with her uncle, Eckbert, Bishop of Bamberg, who together with Mechtilde, Abbess of Kitzingen, helped her regain her rights. Not long after, Elizabeth distributed much of her wealth among the poor and, after safeguarding her children’s rights and future, retired to Marburg; here she built a hospital in honour of St Francis where she personally tended the lepers. Miracles of spiritual and bodily healing attributed to her prayers were soon in evidence; wine and bread too were miraculously multiplied at her intercession. Our Lord and Our Lady also favoured her with repeated apparitions.

Having instructed Konrad von Marburg, her spiritual director, to distribute all her goods and possessions to the poor, except one worn-out dress in which she wished to be buried, Elizabeth died on 17 November 1231, aged barely 24. The numerous miracles that occurred at her tomb, led to her being canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1235. Pilgrimages to her shrine became almost as popular as to Campostela, but in 1539 the Landgrave of Hesse, a Protestant, stopped them and removed the relics.

St Elizabeth is hailed as the patroness of the Franciscan Tertiaries and of bakers.