St. Elizabeth of Hungary

St. Elizabeth of Hungary was born in 1207, a daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary. Betrothed in infancy for reasons of state, she was sent as a small child to the court of Thuringia in central Germany and at fourteen married Ludwig IV, the young landgrave. Their marriage, though arranged, became a genuine and tender partnership; Ludwig supported his wife's piety and generosity, and the couple had three children. Even as a princess living amid the splendor of the Wartburg castle, Elizabeth lived with striking simplicity and gave herself to the poor. Influenced by the ideals of St. Francis of Assisi, whose friars had recently arrived in Germany, she distributed alms lavishly, and during a famine in 1226 she emptied the castle granaries to feed the hungry and established a hospital below the Wartburg where she nursed the sick herself. A famous legend relates that bread she was carrying to the poor was transformed into roses—a story cherished in devotion, though it belongs to later tradition rather than history. Her life broke apart in 1227 when Ludwig died of fever on his way to the Crusade. The young widow, harassed at court and determined to follow Christ in poverty, left the Wartburg and placed herself under the severe spiritual direction of Conrad of Marburg. On Good Friday of 1228 she formally renounced the world, becoming one of the first members of the Third Order of St. Francis in Germany. With her dowry she built a hospital at Marburg dedicated to St. Francis, where she spent her remaining years caring for the sick and destitute with her own hands. Worn out by austerity and labor, Elizabeth died at Marburg on November 17, 1231, at only twenty-four. Miracles at her tomb led Pope Gregory IX to canonize her in 1235, and the great Gothic church of St. Elizabeth in Marburg rose over her grave. Her feast is kept on November 17, and she is venerated as a patroness of charitable works and charitable organizations, of bakers, and of widows—an enduring image of royalty spent entirely in service of the poor.