Princess Elizabeth of Hungary refused to wear the bejewelled crown of gold on her wedding day. “How can I, when our dear Lord wears but a crown of thorns.”
She was 14 and Louis (Ludwig IV), the groom, was 20. He was heir of Herman, who ruled the Landgravine of Thuringia in central Germany. Although his mother Sophia and sister Agnes expressed their dislike for Elizabeth, Louis loved her and would not exchange her, even for a “mountain of gold.”
To Lord Gauthier, Louis said: “Let them think or say of her what they please. I say this: that I love her, and love nothing better in this world. I will have my Elizabeth, she is dearer to me for her virtue and piety than all the kingdom and riches of the Earth,” Joan Carroll Cruz narrated in Secular Saints.
Fullness of charity
Elizabeth was four years old when her parents, King Andrew II of Hungary and Queen Gertrude of Merania, sent her to live in the Thuringian Castle of Wartburg. For political alliance, she was betrothed to be the future wife of Louis, who was then 10 years old.
Although not wholeheartedly welcomed by the royal family, she was kind, patient, modest and fervent in prayer life. She and Louis grew up as good friends.
When the Franciscans arrived in Eisenach, she tried her best to lead a life of generosity, kindness and penance, and follow the ideals of Saint Francis, who then was still alive.
Elizabeth was the first German to become a member of the Third Order of Franciscans. Since Wartburg Castle was on a steep rock, and the old and sick cannot climb the knee-smasher place, she would go at the base of the rock and feed and care for the sick herself.
Cruz wrote that Elizabeth “fed 900 daily at her gate, who came from different parts of the country. But idleness was not tolerated among the abled poor. She assigned them to do tasks according to their physical capacities.” Louis tolerated her generosity to the needy. He would defend her that “her charities will bring upon us divine blessings.”
Charles Forbes Rene de Montalembart in the Hagiography of the Saint narrated how Queen Sophia was horrified when Elizabeth laid leper Helias of Eisernach in the bed that the couple shared. She called for his son to show the unspeakable scene.
Instead of a leper, Louis saw a “figure of Christ crucified on the bed” that left the queen speechless.
Elizabeth’s genuine concern for the needy intensified when Germany suffered famine and plague in 1225. People flocked to the hospital she built at the foot of the rock where the castle was located. She exhausted even the grains of the palace, which made the court members complain.
‘The world is dead to me’
The Crusades organized by the church to free the Holy Land from Islam had been raging for more than a century. When Frederick II, emperor of Germany, joined the fifth Crusade in 1227, Louis, a vassal of the emperor, was duty-bound to join.
Louis did not reach the Holy Land. He died of the plague in Otranto, Italy, on September 11, 1227. Elizabeth learned about it only in October after the birth of their second daughter. In sorrow, “the world is dead to me,” she cried.
Louis’s brother, Henry, acted as regent for his son Herman, who was only five years old. Elizabeth was accused of exhausting the money of the kingdom, and thus was dispossessed of all properties.
With her two children, Elizabeth sought refuge with her Aunt Matilde, Abess of Kitzengen. Her uncle Eckembert, Bishop of Bamberg, offered the Castle of Pottenstein for their shelter.
When Louis’s body arrived, Elizabeth went to see his body unconsoled in her grief. He was buried in the Abbey Church at Reynhartsbrunn, which he has chosen to be his burial ground.
Reconciliation followed with Henry. Financial provisions were provided for Elizabeth and her children. Bishop Eckembert forced her to remarry, but she adamantly answered no. She even threatened to cut her nose to discourage men from pursuing her.
Life of ascetism
Elizabeth lived in austerity in a cottage beside a hospice she built to care for the poor, sick and aged.
Conrad of Marburg, Inquisitor of Heretics assigned by Pope Honorius as her spiritual adviser when her husband was alive, remained as her spiritual guide. He replaced her two ladies in waiting dear to her, one of them Guda, who was with her since childhood, and substituted two harsh females.
Conrad stopped her from begging for for alms and caring for leprous people to avoid infection. Isentrude, her attendant, reported: “Master Conrad tried her constancy in many ways, broke her will in all things and clung to God alone.”
Two years after, her health deteriorated and she died on November 17, 1231, at the age of 24 For three days her body was on the chapel of the hospice that she built, where many miracles took place.
Saint Elizabeth is the patron of beggars, bakers and brides.
She was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1235. Her relics were transferred to the church of Saint Elizabeth in Marburg, built by her brother-in-law.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons