Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious

Elizabeth was born in 1207, a daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary, and at four was sent to the Wartburg in Thuringia to be raised beside her future husband, Louis, whom she married in 1221. Under the influence of the first Franciscans in Germany she gave lavishly to the poor, and during the famine of 1226 opened the castle's granaries and built a hospital below the Wartburg. Louis died in 1227 on his way to a crusade. Elizabeth left the court with her children and settled at Marburg, where in 1228 she founded a hospital and served the sick herself as a Franciscan tertiary, under her harsh confessor Conrad of Marburg. She died on 17 November 1231, aged 24, and was canonized in 1235. A later legend tells that bread she carried to the poor turned into roses.