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.
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