Blessed Gisela of Hungary

Blessed Gisela of Hungary, also known as Gisela of Bavaria, was the first queen of Hungary, the wife of Saint Stephen and the mother of Saint Emeric. The Roman Martyrology says that she helped her husband to spread the faith and that after his death, stripped of all her possessions and exiled from the kingdom, she withdrew to the monastery of Niedernburg in Passau, where she later became abbess. The Church commemorates her on May 7.

She was the daughter of Henry the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria, and of Gisela of Burgundy, and the sister of Henry, the future emperor, whom the Church venerates as a saint. She was born around 985; the exact date and place of her birth are not known. Around 996 she was given in marriage to Stephen, the son of Géza, prince of the Hungarians. When Stephen received the royal crown around the year 1000, Gisela became queen.

She supported her husband in building a Christian kingdom. She founded churches and monasteries and endowed them generously. She is especially linked with Veszprém: she contributed to the building of its cathedral and gave it precious liturgical vessels. A chasuble has survived which, according to the inscription embroidered on it, King Stephen and Queen Gisela gave in 1031 to the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Székesfehérvár. It was later made into the coronation mantle of the kings of Hungary. According to tradition, the queen herself worked on its embroidery.

Of the royal couple’s children only Emeric survived childhood. His father prepared him carefully to rule, but in 1031 the young prince was killed while hunting. Later both he and his father were numbered among the saints. John Paul II called Stephen, Gisela and Emeric the first saintly Hungarian family.

Stephen died in 1038. Under his successor, Peter Orseolo, the widowed queen lost her property and was held captive for a time. Some years later she left Hungary and returned to Bavaria; historians give the year as 1042 or 1045. She joined the Benedictine nuns at Niedernburg in Passau and in time became abbess of the monastery.

She died there on May 7, but the year of her death is not certain: it is most often given as around 1060, and some studies give 1065. She was buried in the monastery’s Church of the Holy Cross. In the fifteenth century a Gothic tomb was raised over her grave, and since then pilgrims have come to it, above all from Hungary. A relic of hers is also kept in Veszprém Cathedral.

Gisela was never canonized. For centuries she has been venerated as blessed, and the Roman Martyrology commemorates her today with that title. Popes Paul VI, John Paul II and Francis, speaking of the holiness of King Stephen’s family, have called her blessed.