Elisabeth of Hungary

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Infobox

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Saint
Born	1207, Presburg, Hungary
Died	1231, Vienna
Canonized	1235, Perugia, Italy
Feast	November 17(formally November 19
Attributes	Crown, Roses, Tending to Beggers
Patronage	hospitals, nurses, bakers, brides, countesses, dying children, exiles, homeless people, lacemakers, tertiaries and widows

St. Elisabeth (Erzsébet) of Hungary (b. 1207 – 17 November, 1231) was the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary (1175–1235) and his wife Gertrude of Andechs-Meran (murdered in 1213). Elisabeth was widowed while still young, relinquished her wealth to the poor, built hospitals, and thus became a symbol of Christian charity. At the age of four, Elisabeth was betrothed to the Blessed Ludwig IV of Thuringia, son of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia, and was raised at the magnificent court kept at Wartburg. This betrothal embodied a great alliance against Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor, a member of the house of Welf, who had quarreled with the Roman Catholic Church. Some have suggested that Ludwig's brother Hermann was in fact the eldest, and that she was first betrothed to him until his death in 1216, but this is doubtful. An event of this magnitude would almost certainly be mentioned at least once in the many original sources at our disposal, and this is not the case. In addition, the only source document that might support this by putting Hermann's name before Ludwig's relates to a monastery in Hesse which supports the theory that Hermann was the younger of the two, as Hesse was traditionally the domain of the second son. It would therefore be normal to put his name first, as this document deals with his territory.

Elisabeth married Ludwig in 1221 and the marriage appears to have been happy. Ludwig was not upset by the distribution of his wealth to the poor believing that his wife's charitable efforts would bring eternal reward; he is venerated in Thuringia as a saint. Ludwig was a staunch supporter of the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. In the spring of 1226, when floods, famine, and plague wrought havoc in Thuringia, Ludwig represented Frederick II at the Diet at Cremona. Elisabeth assumed control of affairs and distributed alms in all parts of their territory, even giving state robes and ornaments to the poor. Below the castle at Wartburg, she built a hospice with twenty-eight beds and visited the inmates daily to attend to them. It was also about this time that the inquisitor Konrad von Marburg — a harsh man and a true product of his age — became her spiritual director. Elisabeth's life changed irrevocably when Ludwig died of the plague on September 11, 1227, at Otranto, Italy en route to join the Sixth Crusade.

Image:Elisabethkirche2.jpg Image:ElizabethkircheMarburgDG453.jpg With Ludwig's death, his younger brother Henry assumed the regency during the minority of Elisabeth's eldest son, Hermann II landgrave of Thuringia (1222–1241). After bitter arguments over the disposal of her dower, Elizabeth left the court at Wartburg. The popular tradition is that she was cast out by Henry, but this does not stand up to critical examination. After unsuccessful attempts to force her to remarry, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, a lay Franciscan group, and built a hospice at Marburg for the poor and the sick.

Elisabeth is perhaps best known for the legend which says that whilst she was taking bread to the poor in secret, her husband asked her what was in the pouch; Elisabeth opened it and the bread turned into roses. Whilst impressive, this story has no basis in fact. This miracle is commemorated with a statue in Budapest, in front of the neo-Gothic church dedicated to her at Roses' Square (Rózsák tere) [1]. The architect of the church was Imre Steindl, architect of the Budapest Parliament.

Sophia (1224-1284), Elisabeth's second child, married Henry II, Duke of Brabant and was the ancestress of the Landgraves of Hesse, as in the War of the Thuringian Succession she won Hesse for her son Heinrich I, called the Child. The Blessed Gertrude (1227-1297), Elisabeth's third child, was born several weeks after the death of her father; she became abbess of the convent of Altenberg near Wetzlar.

Elisabeth died in Marburg, either from physical fatigue or from disease, at only 24 years of age. She was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1235. Her body was laid in a magnificent golden shrine — still to be seen today — in the Elisabethkirche in Marburg. It is now a Protestant church, but has spaces set aside for Catholic worship. Marburg became the centre of the Teutonic Order, which adopted St. Elisabeth as its second patroness. The Order remained in Marburg until its dissolution by Napoleon I of France in 1803.

Elisabeth's shrine became one of the main German centres of pilgrimage of the entire 14th century and early 15th century. During the course of the 15th century, the popular cult of St. Elisabeth slowly faded. However, this was to some extent replaced by an aristocratic devotion to St Elisabeth, as through her daughter Sophia she was an ancestor of many leading aristocratic German families.

Three hundred years after her death, one of Elisabeth's many descendants, the Landgrave Philip I "the Magnanimous" of Hesse, a leader of the Protestant reformation and one of the most important supporters of Martin Luther, raided the church in Marburg and demanded that the Teutonic knights hand over Elisabeth's bones, in order to disperse her relics and thus put an end to the already declining pilgrimages to Marburg.

Philip also took away the crowned agate chalice in which St. Elisabeth's head rested, but returned it after being imprisoned by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The chalice was subsequently plundered by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War and is now on display at the National Museum in Stockholm. St Elisabeth's skull and some of her bones can be seen at the Convent of St Elisabeth in Vienna; some relics also survive at the shrine in Marburg.

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