St Elizabeth of Hungary: Life, Prayer and Feast Day

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) was a king's daughter who became landgravine of Thuringia, a loving wife and mother, and then, widowed at twenty, a Franciscan tertiary who gave herself entirely to the poor, the sick and the lepers. She died at Marburg before she was twenty-four and was canonized only four years later. The traditional Roman calendar keeps her feast on 19 November; here is her life as the early witnesses tell it, what she is patron of, the prayer of her feast, and her own words.

Who was Saint Elizabeth of Hungary?

Elizabeth was born in 1207, at Pressburg (Bratislava) or at Sárospatak, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and of Queen Gertrude of Andechs-Meran, sister of St Hedwig, Duchess of Silesia. An alliance with the powerful house of Thuringia was arranged while she was still in the cradle, and at about four years old the little princess was brought to the castle of the Wartburg, near Eisenach in Germany, to be raised alongside her future husband. That is why the Germans call her St Elizabeth of Thuringia, and the English-speaking world St Elizabeth of Hungary: Hungary gave her birth, Thuringia her whole life.

At court she met with a good deal of unkindness from those who found her piety tiresome, but the young Louis (Ludwig), son of the landgrave, grew ever more attached to her. When he travelled he always brought her back a present, a knife, a purse, gloves or a coral rosary, and she would run out to meet him. When advisers urged him to send her back to Hungary as an unsuitable bride, he answered that he would rather cast away a mountain of gold than give her up.

Wife of Louis of Thuringia

In 1221, Louis being twenty-one and already landgrave, and Elizabeth fourteen, they were married. Their wedded life lasted only six years, and it was a happy and holy one. A witness describes her as "serious in her ways, modest, of kindly speech, fervent in prayer and most generous to the poor, always full of goodness and divine love." They had three children: Herman, Sophia, who became duchess of Brabant, and Gertrude, who became a nun and is venerated as Blessed Gertrude of Altenberg.

Louis put no obstacle in the way of her prayers, her mortifications or her alms. Her ladies-in-waiting later testified that she rose at night to pray, and that her husband would beg her to spare herself and come back to rest, holding her hand all the while.

Her charity: the Wartburg, the famine and the hospitals

In 1225 a terrible famine struck the country while Louis was away. Elizabeth emptied her own treasury and distributed the whole store of corn to the starving. On his return the officers of his household complained of her prodigality. Louis asked only whether she had given away any of his lands. "No," they said. "As for her charities," he answered, "they will bring upon us the divine blessing. We shall not want so long as we let her relieve the poor as she does."

The Wartburg stands on a steep rock which the sick could not climb, so she built a hospital at its foot, fed the patients with her own hands and made their beds even in the stifling heat of summer. She provided for orphans, founded a second hospital, and fed some nine hundred poor every day at her gate. Her charity was not blind: those able to work were given work suited to their strength rather than kept in idleness. She took literally the words of Our Lord: "As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me" (Matthew xxv. 40). This is the charity St Paul describes in Love is patient, love is kind: not a feeling, but a life given away.

The miracle of the roses and her other miracles

The best-known story about St Elizabeth tells that one winter day she was carrying bread to the poor in the folds of her mantle when she was stopped and ordered to show what she was hiding; she opened her cloak, and there was nothing in it but roses in full bloom. The story is late: it does not appear in the testimonies of her handmaids nor in the earliest lives, and a similar tale is told of her great-niece, St Elizabeth of Portugal. It has nonetheless given her her best-loved emblem, and it says something true: God covered with flowers a charity that men wanted to blame.

The early biographer Dietrich of Apolda relates a different and more sober wonder. Elizabeth had laid a miserable leper in the very bed she shared with her husband. Louis, told of it, rushed into the room and pulled back the covers, "but at that instant Almighty God opened the eyes of his soul, and instead of a leper he saw the figure of Christ crucified stretched upon the bed." Later writers turned this vision of faith into a bleeding crucifix; the original account is the finer one.

After her death, the miracles at her tomb in Marburg were so numerous that they were gathered in sworn depositions and sent to Rome for her canonization.

Widowhood, poverty and Conrad of Marburg

In 1227 Louis took the cross to join the crusade of the Emperor Frederick II. He parted from Elizabeth on the feast of St John the Baptist, and on 11 September he died of the plague at Otranto, before he could sail. The news reached her in October, just after the birth of their last daughter. "The world is dead to me," she cried, "and all that was joyous in the world."

According to one of her ladies, Isentrude, her brother-in-law Henry, regent for her young son, drove her and her children from the Wartburg that winter; other accounts differ. She found refuge with her aunt, the abbess of Kitzingen, and then with her uncle, the bishop of Bamberg, who wished to arrange a second marriage. She refused: she and Louis had promised each other never to marry again. On Good Friday 1228, in the Franciscan church at Eisenach, she solemnly renounced the world, and she later took the grey habit and cord of the Third Order of St Francis of Assisi, who had died only two years before.

Her director in these years was Master Conrad of Marburg, a priest of great austerity who sought to break her will in everything. He forbade her to beg from door to door or to strip herself of all her goods at once, which was prudent; he also dismissed her dearest companions and punished her harshly, which even her defenders find hard to justify. She bore it with humility and with humour. She compared herself to the sedge in a stream in flood: the water bears it down flat, but when the rains are gone it springs up again, straight and unhurt.

At Marburg she built a small house and, beside it, a hospice dedicated to St Francis for the sick, the aged and the poor, where she served with her own hands, spinning wool to earn a little more for her poor. When a Hungarian nobleman sent by her father found her at the spinning-wheel in her grey gown, he crossed himself in astonishment: "Whoever saw a king's daughter spinning before?" He offered to take her home to Hungary; she would not leave her children, her poor and her husband's grave.

How did St Elizabeth of Hungary die?

Worn out by labour and penance, she fell ill in November 1231 at Marburg. As she lay in bed her attendant heard her singing softly; a little bird, she said, had been singing so sweetly beside her that she had to sing too. At midnight before her death she said: "It is near the hour when the Lord was born and lay in the manger. He came to redeem the world, and He will redeem me." She died on the evening of 17 November 1231, not yet twenty-four years old. Her body lay for three days in the chapel of her hospice, where she was buried.

When was St Elizabeth of Hungary canonized?

Pope Gregory IX canonized her in 1235, barely four years after her death. In 1236 her relics were solemnly translated in the presence of the Emperor Frederick II to the great church of St Elizabeth at Marburg, built by her brother-in-law Conrad, before a throng "of divers nations, peoples and tongues" such as Germany had scarcely ever seen. That church was the great shrine of St Elizabeth of Hungary for three centuries, until in 1539 the Protestant landgrave Philip of Hesse removed her relics to an unknown place.

What is St Elizabeth of Hungary the patron saint of?

St Elizabeth of Hungary is the patron saint of:

• the Third Order of St Francis, of which she is the first great saint;
• widows;
• the poor and the hungry, and all works of charity;
• hospitals and those who nurse the sick;
• bakers, because of the bread she carried to the poor.

Countless hospitals, sisterhoods and charitable societies have been placed under her name, as have the many parishes called St Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church.

The prayer of St Elizabeth of Hungary

The Church's own prayer on her feast is the collect of the Roman Missal of 1962, which asks the very grace her life displays: to despise the prosperity of the world and to rejoice in the consolation of heaven.

Collect of the feast, 19 November

Tuorum corda fidelium, Deus miserator, illustra: et, beatae Elisabeth precibus gloriosis, fac nos prospera mundi despicere, et caelesti semper consolatione gaudere. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

O God of mercy, enlighten the hearts of Thy faithful; and, by the glorious prayers of blessed Elizabeth, make us to despise the prosperities of the world and evermore to rejoice in heavenly consolation. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Nine days of prayer to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

For nine days of prayer leading up to her feast, beginning on 11 November, see the novena to St Elizabeth of Hungary in our page on the novena to St Elizabeth, which also distinguishes her from the other saints of that name.

St Elizabeth of Hungary quotes

Her sayings come down to us chiefly through the sworn testimony of her four handmaids:

• On learning of her husband's death: "The world is dead to me, and all that was joyous in the world."
• On the fear of God: "If I am so afraid of a mortal man, how awe-inspiring must be the Lord and Judge of the world!"
• On obedience: "We are like the snail, which withdraws into its shell when it is going to rain. So we obey and withdraw from the way we were going."
• On her deathbed, at cock-crow: "It is now the time when He rose from the grave and broke the doors of hell, and He will release me."

Symbols of St Elizabeth of Hungary

In paintings and statues she is shown as a young queen or princess, often with a crown on her head or laid at her feet as a sign of the world she renounced, wearing the grey Franciscan habit or a royal mantle, and carrying roses in her apron or cloak, loaves of bread, a basket or a pitcher for the poor; sometimes a beggar or a leper kneels at her side. For the same reasons she is a favourite choice among children dressing as a saint for All Saints' Day: a simple crown, a plain cloak and an armful of roses and bread make her at once recognisable.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the feast day of St Elizabeth of Hungary?

In the traditional Roman calendar of 1962 her feast is on 19 November, a feast of the third class, with the Mass Cognovi of holy women. The calendar reformed in 1969 moved her to 17 November, the day of her death; the traditional books keep 19 November. You will find it in our traditional Catholic calendar.

Where was St Elizabeth of Hungary born?

In the kingdom of Hungary, in 1207, either at Pressburg (today Bratislava) or at Sárospatak; the early sources do not settle which.

Where did St Elizabeth of Hungary live?

From the age of four at the Wartburg, the castle of the landgraves of Thuringia above Eisenach; as a widow, briefly at Kitzingen and Pottenstein, and finally at Marburg in Hesse, where she built her hospice and died.

How old was St Elizabeth of Hungary when she died?

She was not yet twenty-four. Born in 1207, she died on 17 November 1231.

What did St Elizabeth of Hungary do?

As landgravine she fed the hungry during the famine of 1225, founded hospitals and cared for orphans; as a widow she became a Franciscan tertiary, built a hospice at Marburg and served the sick and lepers with her own hands until her death.

How did St Elizabeth of Hungary become a saint?

By a life of heroic charity, confirmed by many miracles at her tomb. Conrad of Marburg collected sworn testimonies, including those of her four handmaids, and Pope Gregory IX canonized her in 1235.

Is St Elizabeth of Hungary the same as the St Elizabeth in the Gospel?

No. St Elizabeth in St Luke's Gospel is the mother of St John the Baptist and the kinswoman of Our Lady, of the first century. St Elizabeth of Hungary lived in the thirteenth century; she was, however, named after her, as were many saints in our page on the Catholic saints.

The Iter Fidei app carries the prayers to the saints, the novenas, the Roman Missal of 1962 and the traditional calendar with the feast of St Elizabeth on 19 November. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 19 November (St Elizabeth of Hungary, Widow). Dietrich of Apolda, Life of St Elizabeth; Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum (depositions of her four handmaids). Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 19 November. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, Matthew xxv. 40.