Elizabeth of Hungary: Beloved Sister in a Troubled World

May I tell you the story of a woman who was married at 14 and dead at 24? Does that sound like the making of a tragedy? What if I told you she left home and family not once but twice? Sounds troubling, doesn’t it? What if I said she was a person who longed to follow Jesus as a Franciscan, but had to carve out her own way of doing it? May I add that it appears everyone who met her was struck by the joy she radiated? 

Meet Elizabeth of Hungary (or Thuringia, depending on where you’re from), a laywoman whose brief life was contemporaneous with Francis and Clare of Assisi. I am always surprised that so few people know her. Perhaps it is because there are questions around her identity as a Franciscan. Perhaps it is because she left no writings. Yet all over the world women and men who themselves identify as Franciscan claim her as one of their own. You can, too. 

Who was Elizabeth?

To begin with an introduction, here is the rather bare outline of Elizabeth’s life as it appears in the Liturgy of the Hours Proper Office for her Feast on November 17:

Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew, king of Hungary, was born in the year 1207. As a young girl she was given in marriage to Louis [Ludwig] the Landgrave of Thuringia and bore him three children. She was assiduous in meditating on the things of heaven and after her husband’s death embraced a life of poverty. She erected a hospital in which she served the sick. Her death occurred in Marburg [Germany] in the year 1231.

Let’s be clear about a few things before we go on. By all accounts, Elizabeth’s arranged marriage was a very happy, loving one, and her widowhood was emotionally devastating to her. When circumstances made it impossible for her to keep her children, she did not—as was expected—remarry or enter a convent. It’s hard to convey just how radical Elizabeth’s decision was at the time. She had met the Franciscans in Germany, and she wanted what they had. But unlike Clare of Assisi, she was not a virgin and no bishop handed her a palm signaling approval for the new life she proposed for herself. Unlike Francis, if she had stripped in a public square, no bishop would have covered her with his cloak. What could Elizabeth do? Even her beloved Franciscan friars seem to have distanced themselves, leaving her in the care of a cruel spiritual director whose brutality leaves historians groping for words. 

Do you think a person like this has anything to show us today? I do. Elizabeth’s conversion, loss of status, banishment, and movement from one country to another feels like Gospel life to me. So does her apparently irrepressible joy. She is neither a female mystic like Clare nor a male mendicant like Francis, though she has qualities in common with both. Clare was free, though bounded by the walls of San Damiano. Elizabeth insisted on some freedom, though bounded by the will of a male confessor. And her decision—not to enter a cloister upon widowhood, but to build a hospital and serve the poor in the streets—was as radical as anything Francis did.

Radical and Unique

Even among early lay Franciscans, Elizabeth looks a bit unique. For example, the reasons she gave for fasting. This practice, sometimes severe, was certainly not unusual among holy people of her time, but why she refrained from eating bears serious reflection. Unlike some other female penitents, Elizabeth did not fast in order to alter her female body. In fact, the sources say she spent a great deal of energy trying to feed her body! She simply would not eat food that came from the exploitation of the poor, and while she lived in a royal household this left her with very few options for sustenance. To me, this conveys a strikingly modern sense of what we now call social justice.

I pause here to learn from Elizabeth. Where does my food come from? Whose suffering was involved in bringing it to my table? Once I know the answers to those questions, what foods am I willing to give up? 

And while I’m at it, let me close the distance between Elizabeth and us even more. If I am being totally honest with myself, the thought that she was European royalty while I am not doesn’t even make sense. I write this on a computer in a warm, well-lit room in North America. I have indoor plumbing. My children and grandchild are relatively protected from awful diseases. And so on. My life—by almost any accounting—is more privileged than hers ever was. St. Elizabeth, pray for me!

I believe she will pray for and with me, if I ask her to. Relationships mattered to her. For all that seems singular about her, of course Elizabeth was surrounded by others. She had lifelong friends along with those her were drawn to her at that hospital in Marburg (the first one ever named for the new saint, Francis). The four women closest to her are often referred to as the “Four Handmaids” or the “Four Evangelists.” Their names were Guta, Isentrude, Elisabeth, and Irmingard. The story they tell here was collected during what may be Western Christianity’s first attempt at a scientific canonization process. As you read what her friends relate, try to picture the scene:

She called together the poor and weak within the area twelve miles from Marburg and ordered that 500 marks be distributed at one time. And so that everything might be done conveniently and in an orderly way, Blessed Elizabeth herself, with her clothes girded up, went around asking the people to sit down, so that she might pass among them and serve them, following the example of the Lord….Afterwards she had loaves of bread brought and distributed them to them. When this was done, she said: “We want to make their joy complete, so light some fires for them.” And for a long while she had fires prepared, and the feet and nails of many people were washed and anointed with oil. And the poor people began to sing and enjoy themselves. When she heard this, Blessed Elizabeth said, “You see, I told you we must make people happy.” And she herself rejoiced with those who were rejoicing.

Here we glimpse how Elizabeth enacted her own understanding of the Gospel. It is Elizabeth performing Elizabeth. It is impossible to mistake the scene. It is Matthew 6, the feeding of the five thousand. Christ’s disciple was who she wanted be, so that others’ joy might be complete. 

‘Sister in the World’

Images of Elizabeth are often lovely, but incomplete. Bread and roses often feature. One person, or perhaps a few people receiving alms from her. The real image, as Elizabeth arranged it, is actually panoramic. Not one poor person, but many, many of them, from miles around, should be there. They should be seated in groups, with Elizabeth moving among them like Jesus.

If you happen to belong to a Franciscan parish that celebrates the Feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, do you know what Gospel reading you will hear? Matthew 25. It is perfect. May it be proclaimed loud and clear for Elizabeth: “…For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you came to visit me….” 

As I have gotten to know Elizabeth over many years, I am struck by her self-description as “a sister in the world.” When I ponder her hands-on care for sickest and the poorest around her, I can only imagine that she really was encountering Christ Jesus. What else could possibly explain her joy? A beloved sister in a troubled world. A girl who had yearned to live as a virgin, but was married at fourteen; a princess who starved, not as form of asceticism, but because she refused to eat food requisitioned from the poor; an earnest believer who was brutally beaten by her own spiritual director. We do not have her own words to describe these realities. We have accounts about Elizabeth from others—many of them. We have bits of her body—many of those, too. Her relics are popular. We have nothing whole from Elizabeth. Yet what does come to us speaks clearly of an inherent integrity, a wholeness. This closing passage about grass that the river cannot shred comes to us from Irmingard, one of the four handmaids. In the midst of trouble, Elizabeth is quoted as saying:

We must bear such things gladly, for it is with us as it is with the grass growing in the river: when the river is rising, the grass is beaten down and flattened, and the floodwaters pass over it without doing it any harm. When the flood is over, the grass stands upright and grows in its vigor, joyfully and delightedly.

The flood is long over for the Franciscan Elizabeth. I invite you to spend time with her. Then we can honor her with new images and new prayers, filled with vigor, joy and delight.

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