Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, also called Elizabeth of Thuringia, was the daughter of the king of Hungary, the wife of Louis IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, and the mother of three children. Widowed at the age of twenty, she gave the rest of her short life to the sick and the poor. The Church commemorates her on November 17.

She was born in 1207. Historians dispute the place of her birth. Her father was King Andrew II, and her mother was Gertrude of Andechs-Meran, the sister of Saint Hedwig of Silesia. As a four-year-old child she was sent to Thuringia, to Wartburg Castle near Eisenach, and destined to marry the son of the landgrave there. In 1221, at the age of fourteen, she married Louis, who had taken over the rule of Thuringia after his father’s death.

The marriage was a happy one. Elizabeth bore a son, Hermann, and two daughters, Sophia and Gertrude. The court disliked her simplicity and generosity, but Louis stood up for his wife. Once, in church, she took off her crown and laid it before the crucifix, because she did not want to wear it before Christ crowned with thorns. She visited the poor in their homes, brought them food and clothing, and nursed the sick, and at the foot of the Wartburg she founded a hospital. Tradition tells that when her husband asked what she was carrying in her apron, he saw roses in it instead of bread for the poor.

The couple found spiritual support in the Friars Minor, who came to Thuringia in those years. From Friar Rodeger Elizabeth heard about the conversion of Francis of Assisi, and she desired all the more to follow the poor Christ. Later Conrad of Marburg became her spiritual director. In 1227 Louis set out on a crusade with Emperor Frederick II, and in September he died at Otranto without ever reaching the Holy Land. Their youngest daughter was born after his death.

Louis’s brother then took over the rule of Thuringia, and Elizabeth had to leave the Wartburg with her children. For a time she lived in want. On Good Friday of 1228, in the chapel of the Friars Minor in Eisenach, she renounced her own will and all the vanities of the world. She also wanted to give away all her property, but Conrad dissuaded her for the sake of the poor. She settled in Marburg and built a hospital there, in which she herself waited on the sick and kept watch beside the dying. Together with her companions she wore a gray habit. She is regarded as one of the first Franciscan tertiaries.

She spent the last three years of her life in the hospital she had founded, choosing the lowliest tasks. In November 1231 she came down with a high fever, and on November 17 she died in Marburg. She was not yet twenty-five years old.

The testimonies to her holiness were so many that as early as 1235, four years after her death, Pope Gregory IX declared her a saint in Perugia. Elizabeth is the patroness of the Secular Franciscan Order and of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to her in 2010 and called her a consecrated woman living in the midst of the world.