Nov 17: Elizabeth of Hungary

My name is Elizabeth.  I was born in Hungary in 1207, I was the daughter of the King of Hungary.  At the age of 14, I was married to Louis of Thuringia (a German principality), whom I deeply loved, and we had three children.

I became aware of a new religious group that started in Italy called the Franciscans that served the poor and sick.  Under the spiritual direction of a Franciscan friar, I led a life of prayer, sacrifice and service to the poor and sick. Seeking to become one with the poor, I wore simple clothing. Daily, I would take bread to hundreds of the poorest in the land, who came to our gate.

After six years of marriage, my beloved husband died in the Crusades, and I was grief-stricken. My husband’s family looked upon me as squandering the royal purse by giving to the poor, and mistreated me, finally throwing me out of the palace. The return of my husband’s allies from the Crusades resulted in my being reinstated because my son was legal heir to the throne.

In 1228, I joined the newly-formed Secular Franciscan Order, spending the remaining few years of my life caring for the poor in a hospital which I founded in honor of St. Francis who was so kind and who had sent a letter to me thanking me for my service to the poor and sick.  

My health declined, and I died before my 24th birthday on November 17 in 1231.  My great popularity resulted in my canonization four years later.  Some of my bones are in Marburg, Germany where they were nice enough to create a shrine for me.   I now watch over Hungary as St. Elizabeth of Hungary.  My feast day of November 17 is celebrated by Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans.

From Wikipedia:

    Elizabeth is perhaps best known for her miracle of the roses which says that whilst she was taking bread to the poor in secret, she met her husband Ludwig on a hunting party, who, in order to quell suspicions of the gentry that she was stealing treasure from the castle, asked her to reveal what was hidden under her cloak. In that moment, her cloak fell open and a vision of white and red roses could be seen, which proved to Ludwig that God's protecting hand was at work.^[15] Her husband, according to the vitae, was never troubled by her charity and always supported it. In some versions of this story, it is her brother in law, Heinrich Raspe, who questions her. Hers is the first of many miracles that associate Christian saints with roses, and is the most frequently depicted in the saint's iconography.

    After her death, Elizabeth was frequently associated with the Third Order of St. Francis, which helped propagate her cult. Whether she ever joined the order, only recently founded in 1221, is not proven to everyone's satisfaction. From her support of the friars sent to Thuringia, she was made known to the founder, St. Francis of Assisi, who sent her a personal message of blessing shortly before his death in 1226. Upon her canonization she was declared the patron saint of the Third Order of St. Francis, an honor she shares with St. Louis IX of France.

    Elizabeth's shrine became one of the main German centers of pilgrimage of the 14th century and early 15th century. During the course of the 15th century, the popularity of the cult of St. Elisabeth slowly faded, though to some extent this was mitigated by an aristocratic devotion to St. Elizabeth, since through her daughter Sophia she was an ancestor of many leading aristocratic German families. But three hundred years after her death, one of Elizabeth'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 Order hand over Elizabeth'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. Elizabeth'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 Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. St Elizabeth'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.