St. Elizabeth of Hungary

St. Elizabeth of Hungary was a Hungarian princess and Landgravine of Thuringia who lived from 1207 to 1231 and died at twenty-four. Daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary, she was sent as a small child to the German court at the Wartburg, married Landgrave Ludwig IV at fourteen, and was widowed at twenty when he died on his way to a crusade. She spent her last three years at Marburg, where she used her dower to build a hospital, joined the Third Order of St. Francis, and nursed the sick herself.

Gregory IX canonised her on 27 May 1235, less than four years after her death. Her feast is 17 November.

The Princess of the Poor

St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) was a princess who spent her rank and her money on the poor. Born to King Andrew II of Hungary, she was married at 14 to Ludwig IV, Landgrave of Thuringia. Despite her royal status, she led a simple life, practicing penance and devoting herself to works of charity.

She used her position and wealth to help the destitute. She built a hospital where she personally tended to the sick, feeding them and cleaning their wounds, seeing in them the suffering Christ.

The marriage was arranged when she was a small child and it appears in the sources to have been a happy one. Ludwig, who was about seven years older, is described by the witnesses at her canonisation inquiry as supporting her charity against the objections of his court and his family, which is the single most important fact about the first six years of her adult life. What she was able to do, she was able to do because her husband allowed it.

The scale of it was unusual for a laywoman of her rank. She fed the poor at the castle gate, took food from her own table, and personally handled people whom the household considered beneath handling, including sufferers from leprosy and other diseases that carried social exclusion. The theological reason is stated in her own century and comes from Christ's words about the last judgment: what is done to the hungry, the stranger, the naked and the sick is done to him (Matthew 25:35 to 40). The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists these as the corporal works of mercy at paragraph 2447.

The Miracle of the Roses

One of the most famous stories about her is the Miracle of the Roses. Legend says that while she was secretly taking bread to the poor, her husband (or in some versions, her brother-in-law) stopped her and asked what she was carrying under her cloak. When she opened it, the bread had miraculously turned into beautiful red and white roses, even though it was winter. This confirmed to her husband that her work was blessed by God.

The story is a legend in the strict sense, and the evidence for that is worth setting out, because distinguishing it from the record is more interesting than repeating it.

The best evidence about Elizabeth is very early. She died in 1231 and was canonised in 1235, and the inquiry took sworn testimony from four women who had served her personally, a document known as the Sayings of the Four Handmaids. It is close to her, detailed, and often unflattering. The roses do not appear in it. The story turns up in later medieval accounts and then spreads through art, and by the fifteenth century it is the thing everyone knows about her.

Two further signs point the same way. A very similar tale is told of her kinswoman and namesake St. Elizabeth of Portugal, who lived a century later, and of other saints besides, which is the ordinary behaviour of a travelling legend. And the point the story exists to make, that her husband found her charity blessed rather than objectionable, is already in the early record as plain fact and needs no miracle to carry it.

None of that makes the story worthless. It is a good image of a real woman, and it belongs to the history of devotion. It just does not belong to the history of 1225.

The same holds for the other famous medieval story, in which Elizabeth lays a leper in the marriage bed and Ludwig, pulling back the covers, sees the crucified Christ. It is a thirteenth or fourteenth century tale rather than testimony, and it dramatises something the handmaids describe her doing in earnest.

Widowhood and Franciscan Poverty

Tragedy struck when her beloved husband died of fever while on his way to the Crusades. Elizabeth was only 20 years old. She was eventually driven from the court by her brother-in-law, who disapproved of her generosity. She accepted this humiliation with grace.

Inspired by the early Franciscans, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, becoming one of its first members in Germany. She renounced her royal life completely, working as a seamstress and continuing to care for the sick until her early death at age 24.

Ludwig died at Otranto in southern Italy on 11 September 1227, of fever, before ever embarking with the crusade of the Emperor Frederick II. The witnesses report that when the news reached her Elizabeth said she had lost the world and all its joys at once.

What happened next is the part of her life where the sources are least clear, and this page will say so. The traditional account is that her brother-in-law Heinrich Raspe, regent for her young son, expelled her from the Wartburg in the winter of 1227 for wasting the treasury on the poor. Modern historians read the same material as a dispute about her dower rights and about her intention to live in a way the family found impossible, in which she may have left as much as she was driven out. What is certain is that she left the castle in the winter, that she was in difficulty in Eisenach, and that the matter of her dower was eventually settled with a substantial sum, which she spent on the hospital at Marburg.

On Good Friday 1228, in the Franciscan chapel at Eisenach, she formally renounced her family, her will and her worldly goods, and took the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis. Francis of Assisi had died only two years earlier and the friars had arrived in Germany in her lifetime, so she was taking up something entirely new. She is one of the first members of the Third Order in Germany and is a principal patron of the Secular Franciscan Order today. Our page on St. Francis of Assisi covers the movement she attached herself to, and our page on St. Clare covers the woman who did the same in Italy.

She was not permitted to beg, and she did not enter a convent. She lived as a laywoman at Marburg, working in the hospital she had built, spinning wool for money, and caring for patients other people avoided. She died there on 17 November 1231 at twenty-four, worn out.

A Legacy of Charity

St. Elizabeth is the patron saint of bakers, beggars, brides, charities, and the Third Order of St. Francis. Her life challenges us to see that true royalty lies in service and that no position is too high to bend down and wash the feet of the poor.

The legacy is institutional as well as devotional. Hospitals dedicated to her were founded across German-speaking Europe and beyond within decades of her death, and the pattern she established, of a hospital funded and staffed by lay people under a religious rule, fed directly into the medieval hospital movement. Religious congregations of nursing sisters have taken her name repeatedly since. Catholic charitable organisations in Germany and elsewhere have used her as their patron into the modern period.

Benedict XVI devoted one of his Wednesday catecheses to her in October 2010, and the point he drew out is the one worth keeping: her charity cost her a court, a fortune and, in the end, her health.

Quotable Wisdom

"How could I bear a crown of gold when the Lord bears a crown of thorns? And bears it for me!"

The saying is attached to a story in which Elizabeth, entering a church wearing her coronet, took it off in front of a crucifix. It is attributed to her in the tradition rather than recorded in the depositions of her handmaids, and it should be quoted as her tradition rather than as a transcript.

What the handmaids do record is more ordinary and harder. They describe her at the castle gate feeding people daily, going down to the hospital she had built below the Wartburg, and refusing food that she believed had been taken unjustly from her husband's tenants, which meant she sometimes went hungry at her own table on principle.

Who Elizabeth of Hungary Was

She was born in 1207, the daughter of Andrew II, King of Hungary, and of Gertrude of Merania, a German noblewoman. The place of her birth is given in the sources as Sarospatak or as Pressburg, the modern Bratislava, and the question has never been settled.

She was betrothed as an infant to the heir of Thuringia and sent to Germany at about four years old, with a large dowry, to be brought up at the Wartburg castle above Eisenach in a language and a court she did not yet know. The Wartburg was one of the great centres of German courtly culture. When she was six her mother was murdered in Hungary by rebellious nobles.

The witnesses report that she was not popular at the Thuringian court as she grew up. She was thought excessively pious, insufficiently interested in the manners of her rank, and there was talk of sending her home. Ludwig married her in 1221, when she was fourteen and he about twenty-one, and by all the surviving testimony he defended her from that court for the six years he lived. They had three children. Their third child, Gertrude, was born after her father's death and became abbess of Altenberg.

The Famine of 1226 and the Hospital

The event that shows what she actually did, as opposed to what is told about her, is the famine of 1226. Ludwig was in Italy at the imperial diet at Cremona. Thuringia suffered crop failure and disease, and Elizabeth, acting with the authority she held in his absence, opened the granaries and distributed grain to anyone who came.

She also built a hospital at the foot of the rock below the Wartburg, so that the sick would not have to climb to the castle, and she went down to it herself. The witnesses describe her feeding hundreds daily at the gate and organising work for those able to do it rather than simply handing out bread. Officials of the household objected on the ground that she was destroying the treasury. Ludwig, on his return, is reported to have approved everything she had done.

Later, at Marburg, she repeated the pattern on her own account with the money from her dower settlement, building a hospital dedicated to St. Francis and working in it as a nurse. This is the concrete achievement of her life, and it is documented rather than legendary.

Conrad of Marburg

An honest page has to include Conrad of Marburg, and most short accounts leave him out.

Conrad was a priest of formidable reputation, a preacher of the crusade and later a papal inquisitor in Germany, notorious in his own time for severity. He became Elizabeth's spiritual director around 1226, with Ludwig's agreement, and after Ludwig's death he had charge of her.

The depositions of her handmaids describe what that meant. He dismissed the companions she loved, including the two women who had been with her since childhood, and replaced them with people who would report to him. He required a vow of obedience from her. He used corporal punishment, and the witnesses describe her being struck by his order and bearing the marks. He restricted her charity, forbidding her to give beyond fixed amounts and forbidding her to beg. He was, by the standards of any century, a controlling director.

Elizabeth obeyed him. Conrad himself wrote the account of her life that was sent to Rome and was instrumental in her canonisation. He was murdered in 1233 by men connected with the nobles he had pursued as an inquisitor.

The Church has never held Conrad up as a model, and modern Catholic writing on Elizabeth, including Benedict XVI's catechesis, treats his severity as something she suffered rather than as something that made her holy. It is also a case that illustrates a rule the Church now states plainly: spiritual direction exists to serve the freedom of the person directed, and a director who isolates someone from every other relationship, punishes them, and makes himself the sole channel of God's will is doing harm. Our page on the difference between a demanding community and a controlling one sets out the warning signs.

What the Earliest Sources Say

Elizabeth is exceptionally well documented for a thirteenth-century figure, and the reason is the speed of her canonisation.

The Sayings of the Four Handmaids. The inquiry ordered by Gregory IX took sworn testimony in 1232 and 1235 from four women who had served her, two of them since her childhood in Hungary. Their depositions are the primary source for her life. They describe her charity, her marriage, her treatment by Conrad, her illness and her death. They contain the famine, the hospitals, the food at the gate and the leper she nursed. They do not contain the roses.

Conrad's letter. Conrad of Marburg wrote a short account of her to the Pope. It is early and it is written by an interested party.

The miracle records. The inquiry collected reports of cures at her tomb from a large number of witnesses, which is what canonisation procedure required. These are records of what people testified, and they are historical evidence about the cult as well as about the claims.

Later material. The German lives written from the later thirteenth century onwards, and the illustrated cycles in glass and stone, are where the roses, the crown before the crucifix and the leper in the bed enter. They are evidence of what medieval Christians made of her.

This page does not state the exact circumstances of her departure from the Wartburg, the precise sum of her dower settlement, or the number of cures recorded at her tomb, because the sources do not support a single figure for any of them.

Feast Day, Patronage and Shrines

Feast day

Her memorial is 17 November, the day of her death in 1231. It was kept on 19 November in the calendar in use before the reform of 1969, and some places and religious families retain that date.

Patronage, and where it comes from

She is a principal patron of the Secular Franciscan Order, formerly the Third Order of St. Francis, because she was among its first members in Germany. She is patron of bakers and of beggars, from the distribution of bread; of brides and of widows, from her own life; and of nurses, hospitals and charitable workers, from the two hospitals she built and the work she did in them. She is a patron of Hungary and of Thuringia and Hesse. Catholic charitable organisations in German-speaking countries have used her name for generations.

Marburg and the church built for her

The Teutonic Knights began the church of St. Elizabeth at Marburg in 1235, the year of her canonisation, and it is among the earliest purely Gothic churches in Germany. Her tomb there became one of the major pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe.

The cult was deliberately interrupted. In 1539, during the Reformation, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, a descendant of her own family and a Protestant, removed her relics from the shrine in order to stop the pilgrimages. The church survives and is now Protestant, the shrine remains, and the relics were dispersed. A relic is venerated in Hungary and others elsewhere. The story of that removal is a useful reminder that her memory has been contested rather than simply handed down.

What a Reader Can Take From St. Elizabeth

She used the power she had while she had it. Opening the granaries in 1226 was an act of authority, not of sentiment. She was the Landgrave's wife and she spent the office on people who could do nothing for her.

Twenty-four years, and three of them the real ones. Everything she is remembered for happened between her twentieth and her twenty-fourth birthday, after she had lost her husband, her home and her position.

She did it as a laywoman. No convent, no vows of religion, three children. The Third Order existed precisely so that people with ordinary lives could take the Gospel seriously without leaving them.

A holy person can be badly directed. Conrad of Marburg was harsh to the point of cruelty, and Elizabeth's holiness happened despite that rather than because of it. Obedience is not owed to a director who isolates and punishes.

Check the story against the source. The roses are lovely and late. The famine, the hospital and the nursing are documented, and they are the better story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St. Elizabeth of Hungary?

St. Elizabeth of Hungary was a Hungarian princess and Landgravine of Thuringia who lived from 1207 to 1231. The daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary, she was sent as a small child to the German court at the Wartburg, married Landgrave Ludwig IV at fourteen, and was widowed at twenty when he died of fever on his way to a crusade. She spent her last three years at Marburg, where she used her dower to build a hospital, took the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis, and nursed the sick herself. She died at twenty-four and was canonised in 1235.

Is the miracle of the roses a true story?

It is a legend that appears only in later accounts. The best evidence about Elizabeth is the sworn testimony of four of her serving women, taken for the canonisation inquiry within four years of her death, and the roses do not appear in it. The story turns up in later medieval lives and spreads through art. A very similar tale is told of her kinswoman and namesake St. Elizabeth of Portugal a century later, which is the ordinary behaviour of a travelling legend. Her charity itself is documented in the earliest sources and needs no miracle to support it.

When is St. Elizabeth of Hungary's feast day?

Her memorial is 17 November, the day of her death in 1231. It was kept on 19 November in the calendar in use before the reform of 1969, and some places and religious families retain that date.

What is St. Elizabeth of Hungary the patron saint of?

She is a principal patron of the Secular Franciscan Order, formerly the Third Order of St. Francis, because she was among its first members in Germany. She is patron of bakers and beggars from her distribution of bread, of brides and widows from her own life, and of nurses, hospitals and charitable workers from the two hospitals she built and the nursing she did in them. She is also a patron of Hungary and of Thuringia and Hesse.

Who was Conrad of Marburg?

Conrad of Marburg was a priest, preacher of the crusade and later papal inquisitor in Germany who became Elizabeth's spiritual director around 1226 and had charge of her after her husband's death. The depositions of her handmaids describe him dismissing the companions she had known since childhood, requiring a vow of obedience, using corporal punishment, and restricting her charity. He wrote the account of her life sent to Rome and was instrumental in her canonisation. He was murdered in 1233. The Church has never held his severity up as a model.

Was St. Elizabeth of Hungary really driven out of the Wartburg?

The traditional account is that her brother-in-law Heinrich Raspe, regent for her young son, expelled her in the winter of 1227 for spending the treasury on the poor. Modern historians read the same sources as a dispute about her dower rights and about the way of life she intended to adopt, in which she may have left as much as she was driven out. What is certain is that she left the castle that winter, was in difficulty at Eisenach, and eventually received a dower settlement that she spent on the hospital at Marburg.

How did St. Elizabeth of Hungary die?

She died at Marburg on 17 November 1231, aged twenty-four, worn out by the austerity of her life and by the work of nursing in the hospital she had founded. She was buried at Marburg, and the Teutonic Knights began the church of St. Elizabeth over her tomb in 1235, the year of her canonisation. It became one of the major pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe until Landgrave Philip of Hesse removed her relics in 1539 to stop the pilgrimages.