Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary: The Solidarity Queen
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia was the daughter of Andrew II of Hungary and Queen Gertrude of Andechs-Meran, a descendant of the family of the counts of Andechs-Meran. On her mother’s side, she was the niece of Saint Edwiges, aunt of Saints Cunegonde (Kinga) and Margaret of Hungary, and great-aunt of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal. On her paternal side, cousin of Saint Agnes of Bohemia.
Marriage to Duke Louis of Thuringia
She married Duke Louis of Thuringia, son of Landgrave Herman I and Sophia of Bavaria, ruler of one of the richest fiefdoms in the Holy Roman Empire. The engagement took place at Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, capital of the Duchy of Thuringia. Isabel was just 4 years old and Luís was 11.
An exemplary marriage
The two princes had three children and, really, fell in love and lived a great and intense love story. They had an exemplary marriage, which attracted the jealousy of her mother-in-law, Duchess Sofia, and other relatives of her husband.
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary: The Solidarity Queen
The Franciscan influence in your life
It was strongly influenced by Franciscan spirituality, whose order emerged at that time. I wanted to live total voluntary poverty. However, she was advised against it by her spiritual director, Conrad of Marburg, who advised her to live the virtues of her state.
The provisions for the poor that became flowers
It is said that, once, when she was carrying some provisions for the poor in the folds of her cloak, she met her husband, who was returning from hunting. Amazed to see her bent under the weight of her load, he opened the cloak that she was clutching against her body and found nothing more than beautiful red and white roses, even though it was not the season for flowers. Telling him to continue on his way, he picked up one of the roses, which he kept for the rest of his life.
The image of Christ Crucified
In another situation, warned by his mother that his wife had taken a leper to her own bed, Louis IV rushed there, but the eyes of his soul were opened, and he beheld an image of Christ Crucified . Louis IV supported and helped his beloved wife in her great works of charity. However, such lavishness towards the poor irritated his brothers-in-law, princes Henry and Conrad of Thuringia.
Husband’s death
When leaving for the crusades accompanying Emperor Frederick II, Louis IV died of the plague in Otranto, which caused enormous pain to Saint Elizabeth, who had received news of his death in October, after the birth of her third daughter, Gertrude. This pain, however, was compounded by even greater hardships when her brothers-in-law, freed from the fear they had for their older brother, expelled her from the castle with her children, in the middle of winter, without money or food, and even forbidding the people from warm her and her children.
Entrance to the Third Order of Saint Francis
The habit
Later rescued by her aunt Matilda, Abbess of the Cistercian Convent of Ktizingen, Isabel preferred to entrust the education of her three children to her relatives – Herman, Sofia and Gertrude – and wanted to take the habit of the Third Order of Saint Francis, together with her two faithful ladies-in-waiting, Jutta and Isentrude.
The request for forgiveness from Saint Elizabeth
His confessor and Master, some time later, together with the knights who had accompanied the Duke of Thuringia on the crusade, courageously faced the Princes, brothers of the deceased Duke, and exhorted them for the cruelty practiced against his own brother’s widow and against his nephews. The princes could not resist the words of the knights and asked Saint Elizabeth for forgiveness and restored her to her goods and properties.
The hospital
Master Conrado de Marburg guided her in a life of renunciation, not without himself imposing on her a rigid and suffocating discipline that needed the intervention of her friends to be softened. She used part of her fortune to build a hospital in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi in Marburg.
The holiness that manifested itself
At this time in her life, Elizabeth’s holiness manifested itself in an extraordinary way, and her name became famous throughout the mountains of Germany. It was said that Saint John the Baptist personally came to bring her communion and that countless times she was visited by Jesus Christ himself and the Virgin Mary, who consoled her in her suffering.
The faith and passion of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary allowed her to levitate
Levitations
One of her friends testified during the canonization process that she surprised the saint several times in the air, more than a meter above the ground, while she contemplated the Blessed Sacrament, absorbed in contemplative ecstasy. When asked once what she wanted to do with the inheritance that belonged to her, she said: “My inheritance is Jesus Christ!”
Easter
In Marburg, he provided direct assistance to the poor and sick, where he died a few years later, in 1231, aged just 24. She was buried with great honors. In Germany, her husband Louis IV and her daughter Gertrude are also honored as saints.
Way of sanctification
She was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1235. On the occasion of the VII Centenary of her birth (November 20, 2007), Vatican City issued an extraordinary stamp commemorating the event with 300,000 complete series, with 10 stamps per sheet. She is the patron saint of the Secular Franciscan Order.
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary lived with the poor
Pope Benedict XVI on Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
Cardinal Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich, Pope Benedict XVI said of her: “What he did was really live with the poor. He personally performed the most basic services of caring for the sick: he washed them, helped them with their most basic needs, dressed them, wove them clothes, shared their life and destiny and, in recent years, had to support themselves only with the work of their own hands (…)”.
God was real to her. He accepted it as reality, and that’s why he dedicated part of his time to it, allowed Him and His presence to cost him something. And as she had truly discovered God, and Christ was not a distant figure for her, but the Lord and Brother of her life, she found, from God, the human being, the image of God. This is also the reason why he wanted and was able to bring divine justice and love to men. Only those who find God can also be authentically human. (From the homily in the church of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in Munich, on December 2, 1981).
Source 2:
When Isabel passed away, at the age of 24, she was considered a “Saint” by many. She was a bride at 14, a mother at 15 and a widow at 20. Having been left alone, she chose the Franciscan poverty of the Third Order. He visited and assisted the sick, even the fetid ones, despite his sovereign lineage from the throne of Hungary.