In Search of Sanctity: St. Elizabeth of Hungary

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IN SEARCH OF SANCTITY:

ST ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY

Lori Pieper, SFO

Winner of the 1995 O’Callaghan Essay Prize in Medieval Studies

Fordham University

Seminar: Medieval Religion, Society and Culture

Dr. Richard Gyug

April 20, 1995

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Introduction: Thesis and Method

Historians are becoming more aware of the richness of the lives of the saints as historical

source material. Following Pierre Delooz, who made the distinction between the “real” saint, or

the person who actually lived, and the way the saint was “constructed” by others,1 historians

have been studying these “constructions” as a source for the beliefs and perceptions of medieval

people. They have frequently done this through quantitative studies of saints’ lives. However,

because of the smallness of the samples taken by historians, the problem of categorizing saints,

the frequent bias in lists towards Italian saints, and the papal politics involved in choosing saints

to canonize, there are questions about how representative such quantitative studies are of

medieval sanctity.2 A number of other approaches have been tried, and the debate still continues

about how to best use the rich mine of hagiographic material available to us, one that will not

make the saints themselves disappear in the search for their society.3

Elizabeth of Hungary (or of Thuringia) was one of the most popular saints of her day, but

the particular features that drew her contemporaries to her do not stand out in the quantitative

approach. Believing that this approach, while helpful, is limited, and that an approach that

1 Pierre Delooz, “Towards a sociological study of Canonized Sainthood in the Catholic

Church.” In Wilson, Stephen, ed. Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology,

Folklore and History (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 189-216.

2 For a discussion of these problems, see Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country:

Living Saints and the making of Sainthood in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 8-16.

3 For a recent discussion of the historiography on the saints, see Patrick Geary, “Saints,

Scholars and Society: The Elusive Goal,” in his Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca,

New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 9-29.

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emphasizes the saint as an individual can often be more revealing, I propose in this paper to

study Elizabeth as an individual, in order to determine her unique characteristics, those that risk

being distorted or “levelled off” when details from a life are lifted out to serve as evidence in

quantitative studies. My intention is both to draw a portrait of an individual saint, and a picture

of the way others perceived her. These last include both her intimates and medieval society at

large.

This approach also allows some of the hypotheses about the common social

characteristics of medieval women saints to be tested and placed in context. Some features of the

pattern are: an aversion to marriage and a feeling that only the practice of continence led to

perfection, extreme fasting and other severe ascetic practices, charitable activity, visions,

miracles, and devotion to Christ in the Eucharist.

The thesis of this paper, based on the analysis of the sources for her life, is that Elizabeth

displayed a number of departures from the pattern expected of a medieval woman saint. Her

refusal of food has often been seen as fasting for ascetic or even psychological reasons, but was

actually tied up with her concern for justice. Her married life was happy and rewarding, and

Elizabeth felt it might accord well with the type of poor life she wanted to lead. Her relationship

with the poor was based not only on charity, but of a hope for a more just and fraternal Christian

society.

My analysis concentrates on the eyewitness testimonies to Elizabeth’s life, but also

includes the popular devotion to her in Germany in the first years after her death, the “official”

view of her as proposed by Pope Gregory IX in the bull of canonization, and the writings of later

hagiographers, including Caesarius of Heisterbach and Dietrich of Apolda. Different groups in

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medieval society valued Elizabeth for different reasons. Some of the characteristics found in

hagiography and popular devotion to Elizabeth are also found in the eyewitness testimonies.

Others were developed to respond to the needs or perceptions of individuals or groups. Within a

short time after Elizabeth’s death, a process was underway to make her story conform more

closely to the expectations her society had of a saintly woman.

Elizabeth’s Life

Since much of what follows is based on individual testimonies, often not in chronological

order, I am including here a brief summary of Elizabeth’s life.

Elizabeth, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary, and his German wife, Gertrude of

Andechs-Meran, was born in Hungary in 1207. At the age of four, she was betrothed by her

parents to Ludwig IV, who was to succeed his father Hermann as Landgraf of Thuringia, and

was brought to Wartburg castle, near Eisenach in Thuringia, to be brought up with her future

husband. They were married in 1221 when Elizabeth was fourteen and Ludwig twenty-one. They

had three children, Hermann, Sophia and Gertrude. The Wartburg was one of the most brilliant

courts in Europe at the time, but Elizabeth shunned the pomp and frivolity of court life, and

dedicated herself not only to her devotions, but to the relief of the poor of her husband’s

territories.

Elizabeth aided the first group of Franciscans who came to Eisenach around 1224, and

was soon deeply influenced by Franciscan spirituality. A Franciscan lay brother named Rodeger

was her first spiritual advisor. When she needed to find a confessor, her love for poverty led her

to choose Conrad of Marburg, a priest known for his poverty and austerity. She made a vow of

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obedience to him, and also vowed to observe continence should she survive her husband.

Conrad, who remained her director for the rest of her life, subjected Elizabeth to very harsh, even

cruel treatment, including beatings and slaps in the face for not following his orders perfectly. He

also obliged her to the strictest following of her conscience in refusing any food that might have

been unjustly acquired by her husband’s officials.

Elizabeth showed her concern for the poor in a special way during the famine that struck

the country in 1226. She used the authority for charitable works that her husband had given her

to its full extent, emptying the granaries to feed the poor, and arousing resentment among the

officials of the land. She also built her first hospital to serve the poor near the Wartburg.

Elizabeth’s husband set out with Frederick II on his crusade in 1227, but died of a fever

in Italy while waiting to embark for the Holy Land. What happened next is uncertain; historians

do not agree in interpreting the evidence. Ludwig’s brother Heinrich took over the government

of Thuringia until Elizabeth’s five-year-old son Hermann would come of age. Not long

afterwards, Elizabeth found herself on the streets with her children, unable even to get shelter,

and persecuted by many of the powerful in the land. It is believed that she was either expelled

from or left the Thuringian court.

Elizabeth suffered many hardships, and finally, because of her poverty, had to send her

children away to be raised elsewhere. She supported herself by spinning wool, refusing all efforts

by her relatives to make another marriage for her. She desired to consecrate herself to religious

life in some way, but not in the cloister. She made her renunciation of the world in the

Franciscan church in Eisenach on Good Friday, 1228. With the help of Pope Gregory IX, who

appointed Conrad of Marburg as her protector, she was able to receive indemnity for her dower,

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some 2,000 marks, most of which she spent in building a hospital for the poor in Marburg. She

put on religious garb (the “gray habit”), and served the poor at her hospital until her death in

1231, when she was only twenty-four. Almost immediately she was the focus of tremendous

popular devotion, and a number of spectacular miracles were worked at her tomb. She was

canonized by Pope Gregory IX in 1235.

The State of the Question

Elizabeth has been the subject of a number of biographies and historical studies, most of

them in German.4 She has always been celebrated as an example of charity, and much attention

has been devoted to her puzzling relationship with her severe confessor, Conrad of Marburg.5

Recently in Germany, where study of Elizabeth as an individual is very much alive, she has been

hailed as a woman who practiced radical poverty as a sign of her rejection of power in feudal

society.6

4 For the recent bibliography, see Hans-Jürgen Scholz, “1931-1981: Fünfzig Jahre

Elisabethforschung,” in Elisabeth, der Deutschen Orden und ihre Kirche: Festschrift zur

700jahrigen Wiederkehr der Weihe der Elisabethkirche Marburg 83; herausgegeben im Auftrag

der Philipps-Universitat Marburg von Udo Arnold und Heinz Liebing (Marburg: N. G. Elwert

Verlag, 1983), pp. 146-62.

5 Interest in Elizabeth was strongly revived in the nineteenth century through the immensely

popular but uncritical biography by the Comte de Montalembert, Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de

Hongrie (Paris, 1836; numerous editions). Among the best of the twentieth-century biographies

are those by Maria Maresch, Elisabeth von Thuringen (Bonn: Verlag des Buchgemeind, 1931),

and Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie (Paris: Editions Franciscaines,

1947), translated into English as Gold Tried by Fire: St Elizabeth of Hungary (Chicago:

Franciscan Herald Press, 1963); I will cite the French edition unless otherwise noted.

6 See, for instance, the articles in So also, Herr. . Elisabeth von Thüringen (1207-1231). ed. F.

Jurgensmeier (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag J. Knecht, 1982).

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However, relatively little attention has been devoted to Elizabeth as a person in recent

historiography of the saints among English-speaking historians, although many of the works

devoted to the study of the saints as material for social history include her life as a source. Some,

like Weinstein and Bell and Michael Goodich simply include Elizabeth as one of their

“statistics.”7 Others, like Caroline Walker Bynum, deal with her more as an individual. All of

these works, however, treat her as part of the common pattern for female saints described above.

There are different interpretations of the pattern. Weinstein and Bell believe that many of

its features--miracles and other supernatural occurrences, visions, fasting, and other severe

ascetic practices--can be attributed to the private rather than public nature of women’s lives, and

their interiorization of the misogyny of their culture.8 Rudolph Bell discusses the psychological

motives for the fasting of women saints, and finds some similarities in psychology to those of

modern anorexics, though “holy anorexia” had a predominantly spiritual goal.9

Bynum treats Elizabeth as one of many women who practiced extreme fasting and

charitable giving away of food, often accompanied by flagellation, even self-mutilation, and

intense Eucharistic devotion. She attributes medieval women’s fasting to a complex web of

7 Michael Goodich, Vita Perfecta. The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century

(Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982); Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and

Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1982).

8 Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, pp. 228-29.

9 Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

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associations between women and food in medieval culture. Women saw themselves as food for

others, and identified with the flesh of the suffering Christ, which is offered to feed Christians in

the Eucharist.10 In addition to doubts about the interpretation of the pattern, there is a question of

how far it is applicable to all women saints of this time. Bynum, for instance, has been faulted

for fitting female saints into too rigid a pattern.11

Outside of these treatments, which investigate her life as part of a pattern, little attention

has been devoted to Elizabeth in recent hagiographic studies in English. Perhaps one reason is

that historians have recently devoted much attention to the writings of female mystics for clues

to their self-perception, while setting aside those of their (usually male) biographers.12 While

Elizabeth was a mystic, she left no writings, so this type of approach cannot be used with her.13

10 Caroline Walker Bynum. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to

Medieval Women (Berkely: University of California Press, 1987). For Elizabeth, see especially

pp. 135-36, 193, 203-304, 224.

11 For instance, Ulrike Wiethaus criticizes Bynum for not paying enough attention to the

differences between women mystics and downplaying the meaning of their erotic imagery; see

her “Sexuality, Gender and the Body in Late Medieval Spirituality: Cases from Germany and the

Netherlands,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (1991), pp. 35-52.

12 For instance, Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women Mystics in the 13th Century: The Case of

the Nuns of Helfta,” in her Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages

(Berkely: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 170-247.

13 A work called the “Revelations of St. Elizabeth” was attributed to her in the Middle Ages,

but no one now accepts it as hers, attributing it to her great-niece, Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew

III of Hungary, to Elizabeth of Schönau, or to even other women. For a discussion of this

question, see Alexandra Barratt, “The Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Problems of

Attribution,” The Library (Series 6) 14, no. 1(1992), pp. 1-11. An attempt has been made to

approach Elizabeth’s mystical experiences through the scarce surviving accounts of her visions:

Edith Pasztor, “Sant’Elisabetta d’Ungheria nella religiosità femminile del secolo XIII.” Annali

della Facoltá di lettere e filosofia dell’Universitá di Siena 5 (1984), pp. 83-99.

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Yet there are a number of eyewitness testimonies to her life, including those from four women

who were intimate with her, who provide a female perspective on her life.

Sources

Most of the eyewitness testimonies to Elizabeth’s life are found in her canonization

process. The dynamics of this type of record are important for determining its value as a source.

In the thirteenth century, the papacy was encouraging devotion to the saints not so much as

wonder-workers and objects of awed devotion, but more as models of Christian virtue for

imitation by the faithful. This led to an increasingly careful investigation of a saint’s life through

the canonization process, emphasizing the accuracy of biographical details, and the saint’s

practice of the Christian virtues.14

Many historians now tend to believe that the testimonies of witnesses at the canonization

processes for medieval saints are not accurate or reliable because the witnesses were chosen by

the promoters of the cause, and their statements were channeled in a specific direction by a

questionnaire prepared in advance. But André Vauchez finds that this stereotypical character has

been exaggerated, since in a number of cases, witnesses refused to conform to the wishes of the

interrogators. In addition, none of the processes carried out before 1260 used a questionnaire for

the examination of the saint’s virtues, except the one for St. Dominic. In the case of St.

Elizabeth, while there was a carefully prepared questionnaire for the examination of witnesses to

14 André Vauchez, La sainteté in occident aux derniers siècles du moyen age d’après les

actes de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques. (Rome: École Française, 1981), p. 4.

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the miracles, there is no trace of one for the examination of the witnesses to her virtues.15 This

seems to have given the witnesses quite a free rein in giving their own memories of Elizabeth as

they saw her.

There are three parts to the process, two of which provide eyewitness testimony to

Elizabeth’s life. The first is the letter written in August or September 1232 by Elizabeth’s

confessor, Conrad of Marburg, to Pope Gregory IX, who had requested information from him

about Elizabeth’s sanctity.

The second is what is usually called the “Testimonies of the Four Handmaids” (ancillae),

that is Guda, Isentrude, Irmingard and Elizabeth, all of whom lived with Elizabeth at one time or

another. We do not possess these depositions, made in January 1235, in their original form, but

in an adaptation, made into a continuous narrative in rough chronological order, with some of the

more repetitive testimonies perhaps eliminated. There are two versions of the testimonies. The

earlier, shorter version (the Dicta) was completed before 1237, since it was used by Caesarius of

Heisterbach for his biography of Elizabeth, which was completed, at latest, in that year. It seems

to reproduce the original testimonies closely, even giving several passages in the first person

form.16

15 Ibid., p. 5.

16 For a discussion of how the adaptation may have been formed, see G. G. Meersseman, “Le

deposizioni delle compagne di S. Elisabetta di Turingia in un frammento conservato

nell’Archivio di Stato a Friburgo,” in Palaeographica, diplomatica et archivistica: Miscellanea

in onore di G. Battelli I (Rome, 1979), pp. 367-80.

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The longer version (the Libellus) was completed at latest in 1241. The compiler of the

Libellus made some modifications and omitted some things from the Dicta, and also added

several passages with new information on Elizabeth’s life, some from Conrad of Marburg’s

letter, others from the letter written to Elizabeth by Pope Gregory IX, and others from unknown

sources.

Outside of these testimonies, we know very little about the women who lived with

Elizabeth and gave their reminiscences of her. As a group, they are generally referred to as

“ancillae” in the text. But they are of different backgrounds, as will become clear later on.

The third part of the process consists of the large number of testimonies to the miracles

worked at Elizabeth’s tomb from 1231 through 1235, given by the recipients of the cures and

their friends and relatives.

In addition to the canonization process, there is another eyewitness source: the memoirs

of Berthold, Ludwig’s court chaplain (Gesta Ludovici), written shortly after Ludwig’s death in

1227, that is, while Elizabeth was still alive. However, this work also does not survive in its

original form. The Latin text was incorporated into the chronicle of the monastery of

Reinhardsbrunn. There is a fourteenth-century German adaptation; and portions can also be

found in an adaptation of Dietrich of Apolda’s biography of Elizabeth. Berthold makes only a

few scattered references to Elizabeth, but they are important as an independent witness for a

number of points. Historians are agreed that the most authentic information about Elizabeth’s life

comes from these sources.17

17 The best discussion of the sources can be found in the introduction to Ancelet-Hustache,

Sainte Elisabeth, pp. 7-44; see also the translation, Gold Tried by Fire, pp. ix-xxx; this is the

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Yet the question still remains of the reliability of these sources, since the witnesses would

have been affected by the purpose of the testimony: they wanted to show that Elizabeth was a

saint. But they talked not only about her sanctity, but their relationship with her, and even their

conflicts with her; they also spoke about character traits not directly related to her sanctity. All of

these might well show us genuine facets of her personality. The witnesses do not all agree in

interpreting some areas of Elizabeth’s life. But the contradictions in the testimonies can tell us as

much as the agreements, just as the dissonances and harmonies in a musical composition are both

necessary, and both of interest to the listener.

Method

My method of analyzing the sources is based on the idea that there is a unique

relationship between a saint and the community of his or her intimates, and owes much to the

work of Aviad Kleinberg. Because of the many problems with generalizing from samples of

saints, and feeling that each saint has a unique relationship to his or her community, Kleinberg

argues that we need “not a typology of biographical profiles. . .but a repertoire of interactive

models,”18 and has explored the interaction between saint and community. Like Kleinberg, I am

looking at the unique relationship of a particular saint with those around her. However, while I

only good discussion available in English.

18 Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country p. 10.

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use the testimonies as records of personal viewpoints, much as Kleinberg does, I do not put the

emphasis on how the witnesses shaped the sanctity of a holy person, but how they reacted to it.

In their testimony about Elizabeth, the eyewitnesses frequently developed their own

“personal” model of a saint. For some of the witnesses, their idea of what “holy” was based on

what Elizabeth, a person they regarded as holy, said or did. Others found their concept of a saint

at odds with Elizabeth’s actions, and they consequently engaged in a process of adaptation; often

they tried to interpret her actions in a way that would fit their preconceptions. Similar processes

were carried out by the later hagiographers, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the ordinary people

who were devoted to Elizabeth.

The Witnesses

We know only a little about the life and personality of Conrad of Marburg. He seems to

have been born to a well-to-do family in Marburg, and received a university education with the

title of “magister.” He was appointed as crusade preacher in Germany in 1215. Caesarius of

Heisterbach, in his early biography of Elizabeth, describes Conrad as a secular priest, a very

austere man, who inflicted harsh penances on his body. He was also known for his poverty,

refusing all benefices, churches and other ecclesiastical dignities. Renowned as a preacher, he

was surrounded by crowds of people as he traveled around the countryside on a mule.19 Conrad

was attached to the Landgraf’s household and became Elizabeth’s confessor around 1226. He

19 Caesarius of Heisterbach, “Die Schriften des Caesarius von Heisterbach über die heilige

Elisabeth von Thuringen.” Ed. A. Huyskens, in A. Hilka ed., Die Wundergeschichten des

Caesarius von Heisterbach, Bd. 3 (Bonn, 1937), pp. 351-53.

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was a fierce enemy of the heretics in Germany, and his accusations against some highly placed

people led to his assassination in 1233.20

Conrad’s letter, written to accompany the text of the first examination of witnesses to

Elizabeth’s miracles, is quite short, and he certainly must have been very selective in the things

he said. Though he was closely connected with the Landgraf’s household while Elizabeth’s

husband was alive, he says very little about her marriage. He notes that her husband approved of

her charities, but most important was his statement that Elizabeth “lamented that she had ever

been joined in marriage, and that she had not been able to end the present life in the flower of her

virginity.”21

Conrad’s letter indicates that his relations with Elizabeth were not always harmonious.

The greatest disagreement was over her choice of a particular form of religious life after her

husband’s death. Conrad says: “in her desire to attain the highest perfection, she consulted me as

to whether she could acquire more merit as a recluse, or in a cloister, or in some other state.

Finally she conceived of an idea, which with many tears, she begged me to grant her, namely, to

permit her to beg from door to door. When I vehemently refused this, she answered: ‘I will do

this, for you can’t stop me.’ And on Good Friday, when the altars were stripped, she placed her

hands on the altar in one of the chapels of her city where she had established the Friars Minor,

20 For discussion of Conrad’s life, see Matthias Werner, “Die heilige Elisabeth und Konrad

von Marburg,” Sankt Elisabeth: Fürstin, Dienerin, Heilige, pp. 45-69.

21 “ipsam querelosam reperiens, quod aliquando fuerit coniugio copulata et quod in virginali

flore non poterat presentem vitam terminare.” Albert Huyskens, Quellenstudien zur Geschichte

der hl. Elisabeth, Landgrafin von Thüringen (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1908), p. 156.

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and in the presence of some of the brothers she renounced her parents, her children, her own will,

all the pomp of the world, and everything that the Savior of the world counsels us to forsake in

his Gospel.”22 However, he prevented her from renouncing all her possessions, so that she might

be able to continue to give to the poor. After he had fulfilled his role as her protector in regaining

Elizabeth’s dowry, he says, he returned to Marburg, and Elizabeth followed him, “although I was

unwilling.”23

Conrad spends a good part of his letter describing Elizabeth’s relations with the poor.

Even though she had always been the “consoler of the poor,” it was during the famine that she

began to “grow in virtue” by becoming the “restorer of the starving”. Later, at her hospital in

Marburg, she placed the “most wretched and despised” of the sick next to her at her table. When

Conrad criticized her for this, “she answered that she received from them a singular grace and

humility. Like an undoubtedly very prudent woman, recalling to me her past life, she said that it

was necessary for her in this way to treat contraries by contraries.”24

22 “ipsa ad summan tendens perfectionem, utrum in reclusorio vel in claustro vel in aliquo

alio statu magis posset mereri me consultans, hoc tandem in animo suo resedit, quod cum multis

lacrimis a me poposcit, ut eam permitterem hostiatim mendicare. Quod cum proterve ei negarem,

respondit: ‘Hoc faciam, quod me non potestis prohibere.’ Et in ipso parasceve, cum nudata

essent altaria, positis manibus super altare in quadam capella sui opidi, ubi Minores fratres

locaverat, presentibus quibusdam fratribus, parentibus et pueris et proprie voluntati et omnibus

pompis mundi et hiis, que salvator mundi in ewangelio consulit relinquenda renuntiavit.” Conrad

of Marburg, “Summa Vitae” in Huyskens, Quellenstudien, p. 157.

23 Ibid., p. 158.

24 “respondit se ab eis singularem recipere gratiam et humilitatem, et quasi mulier

indubitanter prudentissima vitam suam anteactam michi recolligens dixit, sibi necesse esse taliter

contraria contrariis curare.” Ibid., p. 158.

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Conrad saw that Elizabeth “wanted to make [spiritual] progress,” and described the steps

he took to help her achieve it. He sent all the unnecessary members of her household away,

except for a lay brother and two women: a girl of humble birth and a harsh widow. He believed

that being with the poor girl would increase her humility, and the harshness of the widow would

stimulate her to patience.25

For “the greater exercise [of perfection]” (exercitacionem) Elizabeth took in a paralyzed

orphan boy and cared for him, carrying him many times each night for the necessities of nature,

and washing his soiled clothes. She did the same for a young leper girl, without Conrad’s

knowledge, and performed “all the services of humanity” for her, washing her and feeding her,

and even humiliating herself by kneeling to take off her shoes. When he found out about it, he

says, “I was afraid that she would be infected by the disease, and -- may God forgive me! -- I

punished her very severely.”26 He also threw the leper girl out. Elizabeth later undertook to cure

a young boy of scabies, and succeeded, due to her medical skill.

25 “Ego autem videns eam velle proficere, omnem superfluam ei amputans familiam tribus

personis iussi eam esse contentam, quodem converso. . . virgine religiosa valde despectabili et

quadam nobili vidua surda et valde austera.” Ibid., p. 158. Could these be identified with

Elizabeth and Irmingard? It seems unlikely. Irmingard would show herself, as we see later, afraid

of Conrad, and evidently disliked him. But Irmingard and Elizabeth continued to be with

Elizabeth until the end of her life, so Elizabeth could not have been attended by these harsh

women alone. This is a difficult problem.

26 “virginem sibi leprosam me nesciente assumpsis. . . omne humanitatis officium sibi

impendens, ita quod non solum ad cibandam et ei sternendum, lavandam, sed etiam ad

discalciandam se humiliavit. . . Quo percepto -- parcat michi Dominus! -- quia verebar eam inde

infici, gravissime castigavi.” Ibid., pp. 158-59.

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“In spite of these works of the active life,” Conrad continued, “I say before God that I have

rarely seen a more contemplative woman. For some men and women religious frequently saw

her as she was coming from her secret prayers, with her face wondrously radiant, as though

sunbeams were coming from her eyes. Indeed, very often when she was sent into ecstasy of soul,

for a very long time afterwards, she ate very little or no food.”27

Conrad’s testimony is relatively unemotional. He describes rather cold-bloodedly his

plans to make Elizabeth suffer. Was he ashamed? proud? At one point, he asks the Pope’s

forgiveness for having punished her, but at the same time he defends his treatment of her as the

necessary means to her perfection. We get a picture of Elizabeth’s strong-willed personality, and

her deep attachment to the sick and suffering. According to Conrad, this devotion was based on a

desire for perfection, a kind of ascetic exercise. He approves of Elizabeth’s “prudent” reply to his

question about why she associated with the most despised: because it increased her humility.

When she cares for the leper girl, she humiliates herself. Does he really approve of this deep

devotion to others? He seems to be of a divided mind, since he threw the leper girl out. And is

this really how Elizabeth perceived her life of charity--as a means for achieving perfection?

What was the cause of dissent between them? Did he not approve of her desire to beg only

because it was impractical? But this is only one picture of Elizabeth. We must turn to the others

to learn more.

27 “Preter hec opera active vite coram Deo dico, quod raro vidi mulierem magis

contemplativam, quia quedam et quidam religiosi ipsa a secreto orationis veniente frequentius

viderunt faciem eius mirabiliter fulgentem et quasi solis radios ex oculis eius procedentes. Si

vero, quod factum est sepius, per aliquot horas in excessum mentis raperetur, de nullo vel de

modico cibo postea diutissimi reficiebatur.” Ibid, p. 159.

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The first of the ancillae to testify was Guda, who is described as a “virgin in religious

life.” Guda, the only witness whose testimony about Elizabeth’s childhood survives, was chosen

for Elizabeth’s companion --whether at the Thuringian court or in Hungary is not certain -- when

she was five years old and Elizabeth was four. She was therefore about twenty-nine years old at

the time she testified. Of the four women interviewed, she was with Elizabeth the longest,

remaining with her until after Elizabeth’s husband’s death, when she put on the gray habit with

her.

For Guda, the important thing about Elizabeth’s childhood was that “from her youth

(adolescentia). . .she directed all her desires and actions to God, in her games as well as in

serious matters.” At the age of five, unable to read, she would prostrate herself in front of the

altar, and opening the psalter, she would pretend to pray from it. She often performed

genuflections in secret (recognized then as a penitential as well as devotional practice). She used

many stratagems to avoid being observed in her devotional practices. When she knew she was

being watched, she would run toward the chapel as though trying to race another girl, and jump

in it with bent knees as though in a game, but really to pray with her lips pressed to the floor. Or

hopping on one foot, she would jump into the chapel and kiss the walls. She would pray to win a

game, and promised God if she won to perform some genuflections and to say some Hail Mary’s.

In order to fulfill her promise, she would say to another girl “Let’s measure which one of us is

taller.” She would make several genuflections while making the measurements, as she herself

19

often recalled afterwards as an adult. She gave a tenth part of her winnings to poor girls, and

asked them in return to pray for her.28

Guda goes on to describe Elizabeth’s activities when she was “somewhat grown up”

(aliquantulum adulta). She wanted to obtain John the Evangelist “as the guardian of chastity” for

her apostle. This referred to a game where the noble women and girls (dominae) would write the

apostles’ names on a candle or piece of paper; they would put them on the altar, and each would

draw a saint from the pile. After praying for success, Elizabeth drew St. John’s name three times,

just as she had desired.

But even at this early age, Guda explains, Elizabeth began her ascetic practices: “Every

day she deprived herself of something, breaking her will in something for the love of God.”

When she won anything in a game, she said: “Now in winning, I will stop, for love of God.”

Also, when several girls were dancing in a ring, after completing one round, she said to the

others: “One is enough for me. I will give up the others for love of God.” She promised not to

sew on her sleeves before Mass on feast days, nor to wear gloves on Sunday before noon.29

28 “Elizabeth . . .ab adolescentia religionis studuit, votum et actiones suas in Deum dirigens,

tam in rebus lucris quam etiam seriosis. Cum enim esset quinquennis et litteras omnino ignoraret,

provolvit se frequenter ante altare, expandens coram se psalterium tamquam orans, et ex bone

indolis presagio frequenter genuflexiones in secreto faciebat, multis modis captans oportunitatem

caute intrare capellam. Cum enim observaretur ab ancillis, sub specie ludi, tamqam conans

rapere aliquam puellulam, currebat versus capellam subito insiliens, genibus flexis et complicatis

manibus coram altari orationis instabat . . Item in ludo anulorum et quolibet alio ludo spem

vincendi et lucrandi in Deo ponebat et, ut lucraretur, promittebat Deo aliquot genuflexiones cum

‘Ave Maria’. . .Et sic propter plures genuflexiones faciendas ad terram se prosternens pluribus se

commensuravit, sicut et ipsa postmodum adulta pluribus recognovit.” “Dicta” in Huyskens,

Quellenstudien, p. 112.

29 Ibid., pp. 112-113.

20

Guda testimony provides an opportunity to examine the medieval concept of childhood,

and that of a saint in particular. How does she perceive the stages of Elizabeth’s childhood? It

fact, it is rather difficult to learn everything we would like to know, since her testimony is in no

way systematic. But Guda does describe a period in Elizabeth’s childhood, beginning when she

was about four, when she was interested in children’s games. The girls’ games were not always

sedate -- there was running and jumping. There seem to have been games that were organized

(by adults at court?), with prizes, as well as spontaneous fun. We don’t know when Guda felt the

early period of Elizabeth’s childhood ended, but she describes a period when the saint was

“somewhat grown” she became interested in the pastimes of the “ladies” or women. During this

period, she was also interested in dress and adornment (and was concerned about being too

interested in it). We don’t learn much about stages of childhood other than these, but at any rate

Elizabeth’s adolescence would have been very short, since she was married at fourteen.30

Matters seem to be somewhat complicated by Guda’s use of “adolescentia” apparently to

describe Elizabeth’s entire childhood.

More important for a discussion of sanctity, Guda’s testimony shows her awareness of

the various stages of Elizabeth’s cognitive development in religious faith. It began with her

imitation of adults: for instance, pretending to pray from the psalter before she could read, and

offering ten percent of her “income” to the poor (someone had evidently explained to her about

30 For the concept of adolescence for boys and girls in the Middle Ages, see the introduction

to Barbara Hanawalt Growing Up in Medieval London (Oxford, 1993), and Jenny Swanson,

“Childhood and Child-Rearing in ad status Sermons by Later Thirteenth Century Friars,”

Journal of Medieval History 16 (1990), pp. 309-31.

21

tithing). There were childish features: her prayers were mainly directed toward gaining

something she wanted, like winning a game. Guda was aware that Elizabeth had not yet obtained

an adult faith. She didn’t call these things “childish”, true, but recognized that they were only

“foreshadowings of her future good character.” At the same time, Guda recognized the

beginnings of Elizabeth’s deeper religious feelings, even in earlier childhood: the desire to give

up something in order to give it to God, that is, the beginning of her ascetic awareness. Guda

remembers hearing Elizabeth recall her childhood; perhaps she wanted to do so in order to

measure how she had grown in her religious faith. Reinforcement through shared memories may

be why Guda was able to recall these years in such detail.

Guda’s testimony was cut off here, and though she testified on other matters, the Dicta

reports only her confirmation of Isentrude’s testimony. We cannot tell from her testimony how

she perceived Elizabeth’s spiritual or mental growth as an adult. We must depend on other

testimonies for this.

Isentrude, the next witness, was a religious, a noblewoman, and according to the

additions of the Libellus, a widow.31 She lived with Elizabeth for five years while her husband

was alive (thus she must have joined the household about a year after Elizabeth’s marriage), and

continued to live with her for a year after her husband’s death, sharing her hardships, until

Conrad sent her away. Like Guda, Isentrude is spoken of as an ancilla, but more often as a

pedisseque; both then, were Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting. Isentrude characterizes her

relationship with Elizabeth as an intimate one, for she shared all Elizabeth’s secrets. This is a

31 Huyskens, Libellus, p. 16.

22

claim that none of the other witnesses makes. Her testimony is by far the longest recorded in the

process.

Isentrude describes Elizabeth even during her marriage as “devout, humble, very

charitable, and very devoted to prayer”. She spends a considerable part of her testimony

describing Elizabeth’s married life. Frequently she would get up at night to pray, while Ludwig,

concerned about her discomfort, would hold her hands, begging her to get back in bed. Perhaps

because of his concern, Elizabeth then began to ask her ladies-in-waiting to wake her at night for

prayer while her husband was asleep by pulling her foot. Once Isentrude, in trying to wake her,

pulled Ludwig’s foot by mistake, for he had extended his leg over to his wife’s side of the bed.

He woke up, but “knowing her intention, bore it patiently.”32 Because of the length of her

prayers, Elizabeth often fell asleep on the carpet in front of the bed. When her handmaids found

fault with her for this, and asked why she would not rather sleep with her husband, she answered:

“Although I cannot always pray, I can do violence to my flesh by tearing myself away from my

beloved husband.”33

32 “beata Elizabeth noctibus frequenter ad orationem surgebat marito petente, ne se affligeret.

Et quando que ipse eius unam manum in sua tenebat, quamdiu orabat, rogans eam redire de eius

incommodo sollicitus. Item beata Elizabet petivit frequenter a pedissequis suis, ut eam nocte

excitarent ad orationem, quia singulis noctibus solebat surgere, quandoque viro eius dormiente,

quandoque dissimulante. . . instruxit eas, ut traherent eam per pedicam. Unde contigit, ut dicta

Ysentrudis eam volens excitare traxit dominum per pedicam, qui crus suum in partem domine

direxerat. Qui expergefactus, sciens eius intentionem, sustulit patienter.” Huyskens,

Quellenstudien, p. 116.

33 “Licet non possim semper orare, tamen hanc vim faciam carni mee, quod avellor a

predilecto marito meo.” Ibid., p. 117.

23

Isentrude does not speak only about Elizabeth’s virtues, but about Ludwig’s as well.

These do not seem to be as spectacular as hers, but suited to his situation, such as his patience

and good humor. In fact, Isentrude insisted that Elizabeth and her husband helped each other

become better Christians. They lived their marriage “in a way worthy of praise. They loved each

other with a wonderful affection, gently inviting and strengthening each other in the praise and

service of God. Although her husband’s attention was of necessity directed to the temporal needs

of his principality, in private he always had the fear of God before his eyes. He freely granted

Blessed Elizabeth the authority to carry out all those things which pertained to the work and the

honor of God, and promoting the salvation of souls.”34 Isentrude seems to have looked on

marriage as a positive help toward holiness, an attitude that it would be difficult to find in many

other medieval writings.

Isentrude also reports Elizabeth’s cry from the heart in her grief on meeting her

husband’s remains when they were brought back from Italy for burial:

Lord, I give you thanks for having mercifully consoled me by these bones

of my husband which I have so much desired. However much I loved him, you

know that I do not begrudge the sacrifice my beloved and I offered to you for the

liberation of the Holy Land. If I could have him, I would give the whole world for

him, and go begging with him forever. But I call upon you to witness that I would

not want to redeem his life, even if it cost but a single hair, if it were against your

will. Now I recommend myself and him to your grace. May your will for us be

done.35

34 Ibid., p. 121.

35 “Domine, gratias ago tibi, quia in ossibus mariti mei multum desideratis misericorditer me

es consolatus. Tu scis quod quantumlibet cum dilexerim, tamen ipsum dilectissimum Tibi a se

ipso et a me in subsidium terre sancte oblatum non invideo. Si possem eum habere, pro toto

mundo eum acciperem, semper secum mendicatura. Sed contra voluntatem Tuam Te teste nollem

vitam eius uno crine redimere, nunc ipsum et me Tue gratie recommendo, de nobis Tua fiat

24

Isentrude’s description of Conrad’s famous “Speisegebot” or command to abstain from

certain foods, are important for understanding this question, for hers is the only detailed

statement we have about it. She says that “Master Conrad directed her not to make use of any of

her husband’s goods about which she did not have a clear conscience. She observed this so

strictly that while sitting beside her husband at table, she abstained from everything which came

from offices and the taxes gathered by officials, not using foods unless she knew that they came

from her husband’s own revenues and his legitimate possessions.”36 Elizabeth’s maids joined

with her in this abstention, and when they asked Ludwig whether he would be offended by it, he

answered: “I would gladly do the very same thing, if I did not fear insults from the family and

from others. Nevertheless, God willing, I will soon arrange my state of life differently.”37

Elizabeth provided for herself and her retinue out of the property assigned to her as her dower.

When nothing could be found for sale, she sent messengers to ask the wealthy people who lived

nearby for what was necessary, pretending though she found those things more to her liking than

the foods at court. At the banquets at court, she would often content herself with bread alone, or

some little cakes flavored with honey, or some small roast birds, though she was often

“tormented with hunger and thirst.” Ludwig, who sat next to her, secretly reassured her about the

foods being served.

voluntas.” Ibid., p. 124.

36 “abstineret ab omnibus, que de officiis et questu officiatorum proveniebant, not utens cibis,

nisi sciret de reditibus et iustis bonis mariti provenisse.” Ibid., p. 115.

37 Ibid.

25

It was Elizabeth’s practice to make inquiries of the servants of the estate managers about

the food brought in, and if she found even a little licit food, she said to her handmaids: “You are

going to eat only.” And when she found a little licit drink, perhaps from her husband’s vineyards,

she said, “You are going to drink only.” When she knew that both were, she would clap her

hands merrily and say, “Good for us, now we are going to eat and drink.” Because of this way of

life, both Elizabeth and her husband bore with great patience many insults from their people.

Isentrude adds that even though she abstained from illicit food, wherever she could, Elizabeth

“acquired the means, step by step, to get enough to eat.”38

Isentrude also movingly describes Elizabeth’s works of charity. When caring for the sick,

she would wipe the filth from their mouths, ears and noses, and would not even notice the smell,

even though her handmaids could not bear it. She would personally visit the poorest hovels, and

even milked a cow for a poor person. She would stand with the poorest women during religious

processions. During the famine she took much out of her own mouth for the poor, and when she

poured out a small amount of beer from a jar, there was enough to go around for everyone. When

after the famine the new crop came in, she gave tools and clothes to those who could work, so

they could live off the labor of their own hands. In her hospital she gave special attention to the

sickest and most wretched children, who all called her “mother,” and brought them playthings.

She did all this with the “greatest cheerfulness of soul and face.” She spun wool for the clothes

38 “Unde frequenter querens de serviciis villicorum et quandoque inveniens tantum cibum

licitum dixit ancillis: ‘Modo tantum comedetis.’ Quandoque tantum potum licitum, forte de

vineis mariti, dixit: ‘Modo tantum bibetis.’ Quando vero utrumque scivit licitum, plaudens

manibus cum hilaritate dixit: ‘Bene nobis, modo comedemus et bibemus.’ . . . Ipsa vero, licet

abstineret ab illicite conquisitis, tam, ubi poterat, vim passis satisfieri procurabat.” Ibid., p. 116.

26

of the poor and the habits of Franciscans. She had the greatest affection for poverty, for

sometimes she would wrap a piece of plain cloth around her head and walk around in front of the

handmaids, saying “This is how I will go about when I go begging and bear hardship for the love

of God.”39

Isentrude tells us more about Elizabeth’s relationship with Conrad of Marburg: she made

a vow of obedience to him, with reservations for her husband’s rights, and also promised to

observe continence after her husband’s death.40 She sometimes flagellated herself at night when

her husband was asleep. Previously, she had done this on Fridays and during Lent, now she did it

more frequently under Conrad’s direction.

After Ludwig’s death, Elizabeth “was ejected from her castle and all the possessions of

her dowry, by some of her husband’s vassals, her husband’s brother being still young.”41 So she

went into the city situated below the castle, and found shelter in a poor building in the courtyard

of an inn where the pigs were kept. When it was time for Matins, she went to the church of the

Franciscans, and asked them to sing the “Te Deum”, to thank God for her tribulation.

The next day no rich man would take her in. She finally sought shelter with a priest,

asking him to have pity on her and her expelled children. She had to move from one place to

another, and bore many indignities, being treated as insane or a fool by the nobility. Once she

39 Ibid., pp. 119-21.

40 Ibid., p. 115.

41 “eiecta fuit de castro et omnibus possessionibus sui dotalicii a quibusdam vasallis mariti

sui, fratre ipsius mariti adhuc iuvene existente.” Ibid., p. 121.

27

met a poor sick women who had received alms from her in the past, who pushed her in the mud,

but Elizabeth only laughed at it.

Isentrude speaks with great feeling about Elizabeth’s sufferings as a mother. When she

was expelled, she did not know where to lay her children’s heads, even though the town

belonged to them by paternal inheritance. And because she “persecuted by her husband’s men

without cause, and deprived of her property, she was forced by her poverty to send her children

to different remote places” to be raised.42 “And because Master Conrad had persuaded her to

have contempt for all things, she begged God. . . to take away her love of her children.” Later she

told her handmaids that God had heard her prayer: “as God is my witness, I am no longer

worried about my children, I love them as I love any other neighbor. I have entrusted them to

God; let him do with them what he will.”43 The amount of detail given indicates that Isentrude

probably shared this period of Elizabeth’s life with her, including her expulsion from the castle,

and her testimony brings out her bitterness over these sufferings.

Nor does Isentrude hide her resentment of some things Master Conrad did to Elizabeth.

He sent both Isentrude and Guda away from Elizabeth, fearing they would remind her of her past

life. He had her live with women who spied on her and reported on her to him, and because of

42 Ibid., pp. 121-22.

43 “Deum teste pueros meos non curo, tamquam alium proximum diligo, Deo commisi eos,

faciat de eis, quod sibi placet.” Ibid., p. 126.

28

their accusations, she received “many beatings and slaps from Master Conrad, which she desired

to bear in memory of the blows in the face Our Lord received.”44

It is from Isentrude that we have the only detailed eyewitness account of a vision of

Elizabeth. It was during the period of poverty and suffering shortly after her expulsion. Elizabeth

had been in church, and was so weak she had to lean against the wall. On returning to her poor

hovel, she ate a little food, but sweating, she fainted in Isentrude’s arms. Isentrude sent everyone

else away, and sat with Elizabeth. After a time, Elizabeth opened her eyes and began to laugh

gently. After a time, she closed her eyes and wept. She continued to alternate between tears and

laughter until Compline, when, after a period of silence, she suddenly said, “So then, Lord, You

want to be with me and I want to be with You and I never want to be separated from You.”

When she came back to herself, and Isentrude asked to whom she had been speaking, she

answered, “I saw the heavens open and sweet Jesus my Lord bending down towards me and

consoling me for the many difficulties and tribulations which surrounded me, and when I saw

Him, I was filled with joy and I laughed. But when he turned his face away, as if he was about to

withdraw, I wept. Taking pity on me, he again turned his most serene face towards me, saying,

‘If you want to be with me, I want to be with you.’“ And it was then, she explained, that she had

spoken as she had done. Isentrude asked her to tell her about the vision she had in church “when

the host was raised,” but Elizabeth would not do so.45

44 Ibid., p. 127.

45 “Vidi celum apertum et illum dulcem Jesum dominum meum inclinantem se ad me et

consolantem me de variis angustiis et tribulationibus que circumdederunt me, and cum vidi eum,

iocunda fui et risi, cum vero vultum avertit, tamquam recessurus, flevi. Qui misertus mei iterum

vultum suum serenissimum ad me convertit dicens: ‘Si tu vis esse mecum, ego ero Tecum.’“

29

Isentrude’s testimony gives us the most varied information, from an articulate woman

who does seem to have known Elizabeth’s secrets well. The portrait she gives of Conrad is very

different from Conrad’s own. This spiritual director seems to have been a cruel monster who beat

her and made her suffer--another viewpoint to be put beside his.

The next witness, Irmingard, by her own testimony was of poor and humble birth. She

first joined Elizabeth at her hospital in Marburg, and like the other women who worked at the

hospital, wore the gray habit. The status of these women is uncertain: were they servants or

religious? At any rate, Irmingard remained with Elizabeth at the hospital until her death.

Irmingard displays a variety of reactions to Elizabeth, and portrays different stages in

their relationship. At first, she seems to have been puzzled about this noblewoman who had

chosen poverty and a little suspicious about her motives. She recalls how Elizabeth did not want

to be called “Lady” by her ancillae, who were of very humble birth, but wanted them to use the

familiar singular “Thou,” or simply “Elizabeth.” She would even have them sit next to her and

eat from the same dish, a sign of familiarity. One day Irmingard said to her, “You acquire merit

for yourself through us, but you don’t pay any attention to our misfortune, that we might become

proud because we are eating with you and sitting beside you.” Elizabeth quickly replied: “Well,

then, thou must sit in my lap,” and she made Irmingard sit in her lap.46

Ibid., p. 123.

46 “Noluit se vocari dominam ab ancillis eius, que omnino pauperes et ignobiles erant, sed

tantum numero singulari: ‘Tu Elizabet’. Et fecit ancillas suas sedere ad latus eius et de scutella

sua manducare. Quadam vice dixit Irmingardis ancilla: ‘Vos meritum Vestrum Vobis in nobis

procuratis, sed casum nostrum non attenditis, que possumus efferri, quia Vobiscum commedimus

et ad latus Vestrum sedemus.’ Ad hec ipsa beata Elizabet: ‘Ecce oportet Te sedere in sinu meo;’

et fecit ipsam Irmingardim sedere in sinu suo.” Ibid., p. 136.

30

Irmingard’s artless words say much more than they do at first glance. The story isn’t

obviously edifying. Elizabeth answers not by words, but by a bit of high-spirited nonsense. But

by it, she was indicating to Irmingard that she wanted to eliminate any distance between them.

She wanted not only equality, but intimacy, she wanted the freedom to romp with her.

Irmingard sometimes showed a lack of understanding of Elizabeth’s spiritual views. In

the hospital, when Elizabeth was bathing the poor and covering them with linen cloth, she said to

Irmingard: “How good for us, that we can bathe and cover Our Lord in this way.” Irmingard

answered: “Good for us when we do things like this? I don’t know if it’s like this for others.”47

Longer acquaintance with Elizabeth led her to some insight into her behavior. Later in

her testimony, she stated why Elizabeth had not wanted to live with in-laws:

After her husband died, Blessed Elizabeth was temporarily not allowed to

use her husband’s property, being prevented from doing so by her husband’s

brother. She could have received some sustenance from her husband’s brother,

but she did not want to receive her nourishment by theft and by taxing the poor, as

was so often the practice at the courts of princes. She chose to be abject and to

earn her bread by the work of her hands like a day-laborer.48

By now, Isentrude had come to an understanding of Elizabeth’s motives that satisfied her:

she had given up a great deal out of a real dedication to justice for Irmingard and those like her.

47 “‘Quam bene nobis est, quod Dominum nostrum sic balneamus et tegimus.’ Et respondit

ancilla: ‘Nobis bene est, cum facimus huiusmodi?! Nescio si aliis sic est.’“ Ibid., p. 128.

Irmingard certainly seems to be speaking about herself here, although the text says only “the

servant”.

48 “Mortuo marito ipsius non fuit beate Elizabet permissa ad tempus uti bonis mariti sui

prepedita a fratre mariti sui; poterat quidem sustentationem habuisse cum fratre mariti sui; sed de

preda et exactione pauperum, que sepius in curiis principum fiunt, noluit victum habere et elegit

abiecta esse et opero manuum eius velud questionaria victum acquirere.” Ibid., p. 129.

31

She also recalled how Elizabeth told her about her reasons for the life she had chosen: “The life

of the sisters in the world (sorores in saeculo) is the most despised, and if there were a more

despised life, I would have chosen it.”49

Elizabeth also confided in Irmingard about her relationship with Conrad: “I could have

promised obedience to some bishops or abbots, who had possessions, but I thought it better to

promise it to Master Conrad, who does not have anything, but who is a complete beggar, so that I

might have absolutely no consolation in this world.” Coming directly after her statement about

her despised form of life, her choice seems like a further form of rejecting the world in order to

be despised for Christ’s sake. Yet Irmingard found that Elizabeth was afraid of Conrad, for she

once said: “If I fear a mortal man so much, how much Almighty God should be feared, who is

the Lord and Judge of all.”50 Perhaps she intended this as a lesson for Irmingard on the fear of

God.

Irmingard also recalls that once Conrad ordered Elizabeth to come to Altenburg, where

he was to advise her about her form of life; he might have been planning to place her in a

recluse’s cell. When the cloistered nuns there heard Elizabeth was coming, they asked Conrad to

give her permission to enter the cloister so that they might see her. Conrad answered, “Let her

enter, if she wants to,” though he believed she would not enter. When Elizabeth heard of his

words, she confidently entered the cloister to talk to the nuns. But when Conrad heard of it, he

ordered both her and Irmingard (who had opened the cloister door) to be beaten with a thick rod

49 Ibid., p. 135.

50 Ibid., p. 135.

32

by Brother Gherard while Conrad sang “Miserere mei Deus.” After three weeks Irmingard still

had the marks of the beating, and “Blessed Elizabeth, who had been more severely beaten, had

even more.” This is a shocking and almost inexplicable story (Did Conrad trick her? Or was

there a misunderstanding? Did Conrad believe Elizabeth wanted to enter this cloister as a nun

and was his permission actually for this?).

Yet Irmingard also recalls Elizabeth’s serene words to her after this beating: “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 pressed down and the flood waters 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. So too at times we must bend and humble ourselves, and afterwards

stand up joyfully and gladly.”51 Irmingard also recalls how Elizabeth would get around Conrad’s

commands: he forbade her to give more than one coin to the poor in alms at a time, so when she

handed them out, she gave them one by one. Irmingard also recalled that Elizabeth sought the

advice of a doctor about her health, so that her deprivations might not make her ill.

Even though Irmingard did not venture to claim intimacy with Elizabeth, her testimony

indicates that the saint actually seems to have confided a great deal to her, and that Irmingard

eventually came to know her well.

The final witness, Elizabeth, was also of humble birth, and was one of the ancillae in the

hospital. She tells of only a few events, but tells them at greater length than other witnesses. She

tends to concentrate on giving a multitude of details.

51 Ibid., pp. 135-36.

33

For instance, she tells at great length how Elizabeth prayed for a worldly young man, and

how, after feeling the heat of her prayer in his body, he was converted. She describes how

Elizabeth gave away the money she had received in recompense for her dower, but interrupts it

in the middle by a long story about a girl named Hildegund, who Elizabeth converted that day to

religious life in the hospital. But many of her details pay off, for she then describes the following

beautiful scene:

On the night of the day when the 500 marks was generously given as alms,

there was a clear and shining moon, and when the stronger of the poor people had

left, many of the weaker and the sick remained lying next to the fence enclosing

the hospital and in the corners of the courtyard. When Blessed Elizabeth entered

the courtyard and saw them, she said to those with her, ‘Look, the weaker ones

have remained; let us give them something more.’ And she ordered that six

Cologne deniers be given to each one, and she did not want the children to be

given less. 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 let

fires be lit for them.” And for a long while she had fires prepared, and the feet and

nails of many were washed and anointed with oil. And the poor people began to

sing and to enjoy themselves. When she heard this, Blessed Elizabeth said: “You

see, I told you that we must make people happy.” And she herself rejoiced with

those who were rejoicing.52

Elizabeth also gives another lengthy account of how the saint cared for a poor pregnant

woman by arranging shelter for her in a shed next to her own house, and caring for her for four

weeks after the birth. When the woman was ready to leave, St. Elizabeth gave her some flour,

bacon and lard, money and new clothes, and had her servant Elizabeth remove her fur sleeves to

wrap the child in. The woman’s husband also received some shoes (there is no explanation for

where he was during her pregnancy). Very early the next morning, the woman and her husband

52 Ibid., p. 132.

34

left secretly, abandoning the child in the house where she had stayed. When the servant Elizabeth

entered the house and found the child alone, she went to tell the saint, who called on the city

magistrate to look for the culprits, but to no avail. The servant Elizabeth begged the saint to pray

for the return of the child’s mother. “For she was afraid of Master Conrad, for he would be

disturbed at this kind of thing.” But she saint replied calmly, “I am not able to ask for anything

else from God, except that His will be done.” Shortly thereafter, the father did return and

confess, indicating that he had been unable to go on, and had returned as if by force. The mother

confessed the same when she was found and begged forgiveness. The bystanders insisted that the

woman be punished by having the clothes St. Elizabeth had given her taken away, since such

things should not be used “by someone with a bad reputation.” St. Elizabeth said, “Do what you

think is right.” The clothes were taken away, but St. Elizabeth, taking pity on the woman,

immediately gave her some other clothes.53

Clearly the servant was more afraid of Conrad than the saint. Unlike Irmingard, she does

not seem to have challenged the saint, but looked at her for protection. She seems to have been

content to observe; in fact, she observed very closely, and was able to detect many aspects of

Elizabeth’s compassion, especially for a woman others despised.

Elizabeth shared Irmingard’s amazement that Elizabeth wanted to have a close

relationship with those who were called her servants, who she always called “with very merry

words” things like “dear” or “friend.” But it was evidently hard for the servant Elizabeth to

53 Ibid., pp. 133-34.

35

achieve the same intimacy, for she always continued to call the saint “my lady” up until the day

of her death.54

Although Berthold’s Gesta Ludovici was concerned largely with the public career of her

husband Ludwig, he was an eyewitness to much of Elizabeth’s public as well as private life. His

work, completed while she was still alive, was not written with an aim to making her a saint, but

rather to praise her husband. Berthold describes the birth of Elizabeth’s children, her journeys

with her husband, and their tearful farewell as Ludwig sets out for the Holy Land. Most

interesting is his portrayal of Elizabeth’s open affection for her husband, when greeting him on

his return from a journey. “His most noble wife Elizabeth, daughter of the king of Hungary,

known rightly for her wonderful devotion, gloriously received her beloved with a thousand

kisses pressed on him with her heart and her lips.”55

Comparison of Viewpoints

By no means are all canonization processes alike. The witnesses in Elizabeth’s process

express her sanctity in modest, indirect terms. They largely describe her actions, for the most part

simple actions of everyday life. Surprisingly little attention is paid to the miraculous in the

women’s testimony. For instance, the story about the little bit of beer that was enough for a large

54 Elizabeth’s testimony here is one of several passages in the first person: “Domina mea

beata Elizabet semper iocundissimis verbis nobis ancillis loquebatur, vocans nos dilectas vel

amicas.” Ibid., p. 138.

55 “Cronica Reinhardsbrunnensis,” ed. O. Holder-Egger, Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Scriptores, Vol. 30, part I, (1896), p. 606.

36

number of people is told without special emphasis, in the middle of other details of Elizabeth’s

charity. Elizabeth’s virtues were clearly more important to these witnesses than miracles. The

servant Elizabeth speaks most about the power of the saint’s prayers.

The testimonies of the witnesses for Elizabeth can instructively be compared with those

for another canonization process close to hers in time, that for Clare of Assisi, held in November

1253, only a few months after Clare’s death. This is another case of largely female witnesses.

Fifteen of Clare’s fellow sisters at San Damiano testified, along with several townspeople. The

sisters often expressed Clare’s sanctity in extravagant terms. Sister Benvenuta said that “she did

not believe there had ever been another woman of greater holiness than the Lady Saint Clare,

other than Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary.”56 Sister Filippa described her as “without stain,

with no darkness of sin.”57 Nearly all the nuns repeated that her holiness was so great it was

impossible to describe. They also place a great deal of emphasis on the miraculous.58 Perhaps

the sisters felt that they could make extravagant claims for Clare because of her virginity (which

they often stress), or because of the strong community consensus, in which the opinion of Clare’s

sanctity by one woman is strengthened by that of all the others. Community ties would perhaps

have been weaker for the women in the grey habit at Elizabeth’s hospital, and there were fewer

56 Regis Armstrong, OFM Cap. ed. Clare of Assisi: Early Documents (St. Bonaventure, NY:

Franciscan Institute, 1993), p. 173.

57 Ibid., p. 153.

58 Ibid., pp. 147, 154, 175, etc.

37

of them. At any rate, it shows us that we should examine very carefully the role of group

dynamics in canonization processes.

The witnesses frequently describe their relationship with Elizabeth in terms of

disagreement or conflict, in ways that seem to be in accordance with their position or personality.

Isentrude was more like an equal to Elizabeth, scolding her for sleeping on the floor instead of

with her husband. Irmingard offered challenges to her, hoping to discern her motives for her way

of life, and often failing to comprehend it. According to his own testimony, as well as that of

others, Conrad also found himself in conflict with Elizabeth, on her religious vocation and her

practice of charity. On the other hand, the servant Elizabeth indicates her dependence on the

saint. The personalities of the witnesses don’t disappear; they stand out more clearly through

their reaction to Elizabeth.

When compared with those of the other witnesses, Conrad’s statements are often

puzzling. He says nothing about several things mentioned by the others: Elizabeth’s vow of

obedience to him, her married life, his command to obey her conscience in not eating illicit

foods, and her expulsion from the castle and lands of her dowry.

Some have expressed surprise at Conrad’s omission of Elizabeth’s vow of obedience,59

but the omission was most likely a strategic one. He included her defiance of him, which pointed

up the personal nature of her choice of religious life in obedience to a divine inspiration; but it

59 One historian even claimed that since Conrad failed to mention it, there was no such vow,

even implying that Isentrude lied under oath; Wilhelm Maurer, “Zum Verstandnis der hl.

Elisabeth von Thuringen.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 65 (1953-54), pp. 16-64.

38

would have been more uncomfortable to admit that in doing so she was actually disobeying the

one to whom she had vowed obedience. In addition, since he was writing to Gregory IX, who

had appointed him Elizabeth’s protector precisely because he had been her confessor, and who

no doubt knew some details of her life already, including the vow, he didn’t need to stress it. At

any rate, the vow is certainly implied in Conrad’s statement that Elizabeth asked him for

permission to beg from door to door.

There are differences in the way the witnesses express Elizabeth’s virtue. Conrad places

great importance on Elizabeth’s “desire for highest perfection,” which he repeats several times.

He also emphasizes Elizabeth’s combination of the active and contemplative life, terms familiar

to theologians and spiritual writers.

The women expressed Elizabeth’s virtue by comparing her to themselves: she did things

they could not do, such as bear the smell of the sick, or things they could not understand. Even

Isentrude, the most articulate of the witnesses, describes her virtues in somewhat conventional

terms: devout, humble, very charitable. Yet the actual picture that comes out in her testimony,

however modest, is that of a woman who was unusually heroic.

It is on the issue of marriage that the most striking difference occurs. Isentrude (who may

have been married herself), stressed Elizabeth’s married happiness. Conrad insisted that she

would rather not be married. This may well be due to his awareness that a desire for the chaste

life was traditionally considered more appropriate for a saint. It is important to note that

Berthold, an eyewitness who was also a cleric, but not particularly concerned with pushing

Elizabeth’s sanctity, confirms Isentrude’s testimony about the joy Elizabeth found in her love for

her husband.

39

The women often stress Elizabeth’s humor and cheerfulness. She often did things

“hilariter;” Elizabeth speaks of her “iocundissimis verbis.” Conrad doesn’t include anything like

this, perhaps because it didn’t fit in with his personality or view of sainthood, or perhaps because

she never showed this side of her character to him.

Elizabeth Petroff finds that in descriptions of female saints, particularly by medieval male

writers, there is a tension between the ideas of a “good woman” -- meek, submissive, dutiful --

and a “saint”: a person inspired by God, active, courageous, stronger than other people.60 This

tension is confirmed in a way by all the witnesses. Conrad seems anxious to show that Elizabeth

was a strong personality, and this shaped his testimony in some ways. He admits that he

punished her, though, not surprisingly, he doesn’t mention any slaps or beatings. He may have

been ashamed of them, or perhaps his purpose of showing Elizabeth’s strength made him

unwilling to admit he tried to dominate and intiminate her. Interestingly, he is almost the only

one of the contemporary male writers who spoke of Elizabeth’s life who did not make some

reference to the “fragility” of her sex. He seems to have felt that she was tough enough to take

any of the harsh ascetic practices he imposed on her. This shows his respect for her strength of

character; unfortunately it does not tend to endear him to us. Elizabeth had originally appealed to

him for advice as to her state of perfection, as was natural; he was a male, a cleric, an authority

figure, and she was under obedience to him. Yet she refused to take his advice about her state of

60 Elizabeth A. Petroff, Consolation of the Blessed (New York: Alta Gaia Society, 1979), esp.

pp. 1-13.

40

life. Conrad portrays what seem to be strange switches in her behavior: from tearful pleas to

sudden defiance.

Conrad’s statements about Elizabeth certainly cannot all be fitted into either the category

of “good woman” or of “saint” as it would have been if he were truly in control of his portrait of

her. The dislocated quality of his testimony suggests an inner conflict. He didn’t know exactly

how to portray her. Something the same could be said of the women. They too, stressed the

differences between themselves and Elizabeth to bring out her sanctity. Yet there is the same

contradiction. They portrayed Elizabeth as a strong personality, but also as being afraid of

Conrad. Yet, as in Elizabeth’s testimony, she was often calmer than her maids at the thought of

his wrath, and she told Irmingard how to handle his rough treatment: by bowing down only until

the flood passed over. She even cleverly got around his commands.

All the witnesses are agreed about Elizabeth’s strength of character, her vigorous way of

speaking, her tireless devotion to the poor, her willingness to give the utmost of herself. And all

the women are agreed about her sense of humor and her gift for friendship.

All of these portraits of Elizabeth, then, contain many features that are not at all like the

conventional picture of a saint, where all the rough edges are smoothed over. All give the

impression of a strong-minded, contradictory, complex woman.

But the emphasis on certain of Elizabeth’s traits, such as her gaiety, generosity, and

boldness of spirit, immediately raises the question: aren’t these the conventional characteristics

of a noble and courtly lady, and weren’t the witnesses unconsciously attributing them to

Elizabeth as a matter of course? These traits were certainly conventional, but they were not

necessarily imaginary; Elizabeth actually would have exhibited many of them, because she

41

would have been taught from her childhood that these were qualities she must have. At the same

time, Isentrude and the other witnesses go out of their way to show how Elizabeth was different

from other noble ladies, even at the moment when she expresses gaiety. Isentrude, for instance,

seems to have been annoyed with some of Elizabeth’s exuberant actions that seemed to lack the

decorum expected of a lady, such as running to church ahead of her handmaids. And her

boldness was exhibited in unusual ways, as when she showed the friendship of an equal rather

than the condescension of a superior to the poor girls.

Portrait of Elizabeth

Analysis of these testimonies, which show a number of distinct features of Elizabeth’s

life and personality, and understanding the personalities of the witnesses, help us to define more

clearly her personality, her spiritual interests, and the choices she made in her religious life.

Guda’s testimony is often dismissed as the typical pious stories about a saint’s

childhood.61 But her testimony is richer and more complex than that. She presents Elizabeth as a

lively child who liked games, and displayed a type of piety appropriate to her age. This has little

in common with the typical presentation of a saint’s childhood in hagiography, where the future

saint is present as an old man or woman in miniature, often given to extreme asceticism at an

61 Schwind, Fred, “Die Landgrafschaft Thüringen und der landgräfiche Hof zur Zeit der

heiligen Elisabeth,” Sankt Elisabeth: Furstin, Dienerin, Heilige. Aufsatze, Dokumentation,

Katalog (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1981), pp. 29-44.

42

early age, and rejecting childish ways.62 Nothing Guda tells us is unlikely; indeed it presents a

convincing portrait of Elizabeth’s faith in childhood.

Even in her childhood, there is evidence of a recurrent theme in Elizabeth’s life: how

much of herself should be given to the world and how much to God? This problem was raised for

her especially by the tension between a life with her husband and children she loved and

devotion to God. This is a very real tension, which is often expressed in saints’ lives. Yet the

women’s testimonies do not exactly give us the typical features: for instance, a vow of chastity

taken very early as a child or adolescent. Guda’s reference to Elizabeth’s love for chastity is

almost an aside, it doesn’t lead to any vow. Nor do the witnesses show any awareness that

Elizabeth might have wanted to dedicate her life to God as a virgin; Conrad only says that she

regretted her marriage later. Was it perhaps that Elizabeth was influenced by this belief, so

prevalent at the time, and felt that she had to make it part of her desire for perfection when she

discussed the subject with Conrad? For her, the real choice was that raised by her love of her

husband and need to share his life, and the injustices sometimes connected with this way of life;

her love for her family and her love for others, especially the poorest.

Compared to Conrad’s brief statement, there is abundant testimony about Elizabeth’s

love for her husband, especially in Isentrude’s testimony. Elizabeth’s experience of sexuality

does not seem to have induced the revulsion in her that it apparently did for some women saints.

Her own statement that tearing herself away from her beloved meant tearing her own flesh shows

very graphically the depth of her feeling, not just emotional but physical, that she and her

62 See the discussions in Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, pp. 29-30.

43

husband were “one flesh.” Elizabeth also put continence off until after her husband’s death, a

striking difference from other married saints or pious women of her time, like Mary of Oignies.

In fact, as Isentrude presents Elizabeth’s moving prayer at meeting her husband’s

remains, her dream was that she might have fulfilled her wish to live a life of poverty, even of

begging, and to still have Ludwig with her. And might not God have granted it after all? Could

she have been able to combine the Gospel life and the married life? Elizabeth seems to have felt

so.63

Conrad’s relationship with Elizabeth has always been perhaps the most controversial

element of her life. The hardest thing to take has been his seeming cruelty to her. One German

writer, a student of Freudian psychoanalysis, spoke confidently of Conrad’s obsession with

Elizabeth as a sado-masochist relationship.64 Today, we might think of the problems of battered

women. However, these labels are too easy, since both Conrad and the maidservants indicate that

63 Most modern historians agree that Elizabeth’s marriage was a happy one; but they believe

that it was a cause of inner conflict for her because of the medieval perception of the

incompatibility of sexuality and sanctity. They feel that Elizabeth desired, as Conrad said, to be

released from marriage, and that she saw her widowhood as a golden opportunity to lead the

religious life she wanted. For instance, Ancelet-Hustache says: “Elisabeth sait que le mariage est

un état bení de Dieu. . . Mais chaque fois que la chair a sa part, un âme chrétienne, surtout au

Moyen Age, demeure toujours un peu en défiance: est-il du destin de l’homme connaître les

douceurs du Jardin, comme si Adam et Eve n’avaient jamais pêché?” (Sainte Elisabeth, p. 154).

She believes that Elizabeth regretted her marriage in the sense that it prevented her from leading

a more perfect life, and renounced intercourse from time to time to show that she loved God

above all. Elizabeth clearly must have felt this conflict, especially since Church writers stressed

the superiority of virginity. But historians have tended to ignore evidence from the sources

showing that Elizabeth attempted to reconcile in her mind her marriage and her aspiration to

sanctity.

64 Elisabeth Busse-Wilson, Das Leben der hl. Elisabeth von Thüringen: Das Abbild einer

mittelalterlichen Seele (München: C. H. Beck, 1931).

44

Elizabeth was not totally weak or passive in her relationship with him. Elizabeth, after all, chose

him personally for her confessor. She explained to Irmingard that she admired his poverty, and

chose him above bishops who had possessions. Perhaps she was seeking in him a strong ally in

her desire to practice poverty, for much as Ludwig loved her, he couldn’t completely share this

ideal, not without renouncing his own power and rule.

This tension seems to be reflected in a story told by Caesarius of Heisterbach, Elizabeth’s

earliest biographer. This story may also go back to eyewitness testimony, for Caesarius received

it from Dietrich, the Archbishop of Trier, supposedly a confidant of Ludwig. One night when

they were lying awake together in bed, Elizabeth said to her husband, “I have been thinking

about the good life, the life necessary to us, by which we can usefully serve God.” When the

Landgraf responded: “What is that life?” she continued:” “I would like us to have only one

aratrium65 of land and two hundred sheep; you could cultivate the land with your own hands and

I would milk the sheep.” At these words the Landgraf, “smiling and rejoicing at her simplicity,”

said jokingly, “Ah! sister, if we had one aratrium of land and two hundred sheep, we would not

be poor, but rich.” Caesarius expresses a somewhat patronizing attitude towards Elizabeth’s

“simplicity”, but what he says about the conversation fits in well with Elizabeth’s expressed

desire to live a poor life with her husband--only she did not characterize it as a poor life, perhaps

because she was aware of how impossible it was for her husband to give up his position.

65 Literally a “plough” of land; the English version, a carucate, measures from 60 to 160

acres.

45

Therefore she expressed her ideal life of poverty in a mitigated form. But Ludwig understood her

real meaning, even if he tried to dismiss it with a joke.

Conrad not only supported Elizabeth’s desire for poverty, but supported her conscience in

the matter of food. (Conrad is often seen as controlling this situation: but it should be stressed

that Elizabeth’s conscience, logically, must have been formed before Conrad’s urging that she

must follow it). Historians have long argued how to interpret this case of conscience. Wilhelm

Maurer believes that Elizabeth was influenced by Conrad’s strict views on the proper use of

worldly goods, as developed by the Cistercians and other twelfth-century reform movements.

Conrad’s strict obliging of Elizabeth’s conscience was also his way of allowing Elizabeth to

participate spiritually in the coming crusade.66 Maria Maresch sees the refusal of illicit foods as

Elizabeth and Conrad’s reaction to the enormous increase in taxation needed to support the

Landgraf’s wars for territorial expansion, and his gradual encroachment on the lands of the

Church. Ludwig was, in fact, engaged in frequent struggles with the Archbishop of Mainz over

the ownership of some lands. Elizabeth felt that these increased taxes, which were often taken in

kind, and which financially hurt the poor peasants, were unjust.67 André Vauchez sees

Elizabeth’s action as a protest either against the injustices of the feudal regime or the rising

territorial state. To him, Isentrude’s statement that Elizabeth was concerned about whether the

66 Wilhelm Maurer, “Zum Verstandnis der hl. Elisabeth von Thuringen,” Zeitschrift für

Kirchengeschichte 65 (1953-54), p. 16-64.

67 Maresch, Elisabeth von Thuringen, pp. 160-62.

46

food came from her husband’s “legitimate possessions” meant that she supported the idea that a

prince should live from his own hereditary possessions, not those of the state as a whole.68

The usurpation of Church lands as a motive for Elizabeth’s abstention from certain foods

is never mentioned directly by any of the eyewitnesses, even Conrad, who could have used it in

his letter to the Pope to stress that Elizabeth was a defender of the Church. However, it may well

have been a factor influencing Elizabeth’s judgment about the legitimacy of certain foods

coming from these usurped lands. It may have subtly influenced the awareness of the

eyewitnesses, especially Isentrude’s reference to “legitimate possessions”. On the other hand, we

have Irmingard’s testimony about her motives: “she did not want to receive her nourishment by

theft and by taxing the poor, as was so often the practice at the courts of princes.” The reference

to the taxes of the poor is very clear, but the meaning of “theft” is less clear. It might refer to

Ludwig’s unlawful usurpation of episcopal lands. In fact, as Maresch’s analysis shows, the two

questions were closely intertwined. Certainly, as Isentrude’s testimony shows, Elizabeth’s action,

and Ludwig’s support for it, were violently opposed by his family and the other nobles, who

insulted them to the face over it. A very important question of the policy of the ruling family was

involved.

However it is interpreted, Elizabeth’s abstaining from illicit foods was a matter of

conscience, and due to a commitment to justice. Here again, Elizabeth does not fit the pattern of

compulsive starvation that some historians have recently drawn, for, as Isentrude’s testimony

68 André Vauchez, “Charité et pauvreté chez Sainte Elisabeth de Thuringe, d’apres les actes

du proces de canonisation,” in Mollat, Michel, ed., Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté (Paris,

1974), I, pp. 163-73.

47

demonstrates, Elizabeth was relieved and delighted when she and her maids could eat legitimate

food. During this period of her life, Elizabeth’s abstaining from certain foods was a conscious

choice, not a psychological compulsion.69

After her husband’s death, and the beginning of her life in poverty, we hear very little

about Elizabeth fasting, though we do hear that she ate poor food (according to the Libellus, if

she ate insipid meals, it was because she was a poor cook).70 We do hear from Conrad that she

frequently could not eat after a vision, but this is about all that is mentioned by any witness about

Elizabeth fasting during the last part of her life. Irmingard even tells us that she consulted a

doctor about her way of life, afraid that her deprivations might be hurting her--but this seems to

be deprivation due to poverty.

Elizabeth’s choice of Conrad, then, was based on what she felt was his understanding of

her desire for poverty, though in reality they seem to have had different views of it. Nor when

she set out, did she know what cruel means Conrad would use in helping her toward perfection.

The need she felt for him probably shaped her dependence on him. Yet at the same time, she

showed considerable strength in resisting him in pursuit of her own vision of religious life.

69 Bynum, Holy Feast, p. 135-36, and 224, gives this interpretation. Bynum’s other

suggestion -- that Elizabeth rejected food from table at court as a way of rejecting her husband’s

family, also is not in accordance with the evidence. Bynum did devote some space in an earlier

article to Elizabeth’s concern for justice as a possible motive, (“Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The

Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women,” Representations 11 (1985), pp. 1-16), but

this disappears from her later work--a good example of the “levelling” process at work.

70 “Cibos. . . preparabat. . . insipidos tamen et insulsos, quia nec artem preparandi nec

materiam habebat.” Huyskens, Libellus, p. 52.

48

What was this form of religious life? Elizabeth has often been identified as a Franciscan

tertiary. Isentrude mentions Elizabeth’s aid to the Franciscans, and she made her renunciation of

the world in the presence of the Franciscans in a Franciscan church. She had earlier had a

Franciscan lay brother named Rudeger for her spiritual director, according to the Franciscan

chronicler Giordano of Giano, who says that Rudeger taught Elizabeth chastity, humility and

patience, prayer and the works of mercy.71 For some this means that she was a member of the

Third Order, but this has been questioned, for lack of direct evidence.72 For some, Elizabeth’s

statement that she was a “sister in the world” means that she is to be identified with the semi-

religious state of the beguines. Like them she engaged in manual labor to earn her living, did not

live in community or follow any particular rule, and served the poor.73 The “gray habit” that

Elizabeth wore has usually been taken to be the Franciscan habit, but some have asserted that

this was also worn by the Beguines.74 It is very difficult to settle this question, especially since

the dividing lines between the Beguines and tertiaries were still very fluid in the thirteenth

71 “[erat] magister discipline spiritualis beate Elyzabeth, docens eam servare castitatem,

humilitatem et pacienciam et orationibus invigilare et operibus misericordie insudare;” Chronica

Fratris Jordani, ed. H. Boehmer (Paris 1906), quoted in Sankt Elisabeth, p. 379.

72 See Servus Gieben, “I patroni dell’ordine della penitenza,” Collectanea Franciscana 43

(1973), pp. 229-45.

73 Kaspar Elm, “Der Stellung der Frau in Ordenswesen, Semireligiostum und Häresie zur Zeit

der heiligen Elisabeth,” Sankt Elisabeth, pp. 7-28.

74 Gieben, “I patroni,” p. 238, n. 37. Gieben quotes A. Mens, Oorsprong en betekenis van de

Nederlandse Begijnen- en Begardenbeweging (Antwerp, 1947), under the heading habijt, van

ongeverfde wol. Mens finds that the gray habit was worn by wandering preachers of the twelfth

century, as well as the Waldensians, the Humilitati, and the Beguines and Beghards, both

orthodox and heretical.

49

century. However, the evidence for Elizabeth’s attachment to the Franciscans in strong, and she

was certainly affiliated to the order, though perhaps not formally.75

The question of Elizabeth’s vocation is bound up with her view of poverty, and why she

chose to live it. Several authors have linked Elizabeth with a new view of the poor as practiced

by the Franciscans and others in the poverty movement. In monasteries, individual poverty had

long been reconcilable with corporate wealth, but now those who sought Gospel poverty wanted

to share the actual lot of the poor, living by manual labor, subject to the same risk of hunger as

the other poor.76 As one historian explains it, Elizabeth’s poverty was a scandal to her class, but

she was happy to be thought mentally deficient (a common conception of the poor), and rejoiced

at being a fool for Christ.77 Certainly, Elizabeth’s giving aid to the Franciscans, who were

frequently treated as heretics, was a courageous choice.

75 The early history of the Franciscan tertiaries is very uncertain and complex. For instance,

Thomas of Celano, St. Francis’ first biographer, implies that the saint founded the Third Order

very shortly after the papal confirmation of the Friars Minor in 1909, but there is no evidence for

the existence of fraternities of Franciscan tertiaries living under a rule in Italy until 1221 (See

Thomas of Celano, First Life, no. 37, in Marion A. Habig, ed., St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and

Early Biographies: An Omnibus of Sources [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973], p. 260).

Evidently during the early period, the lives of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance were regulated

very informally, if at all. It is possible that many people lived as tertiaries without the rule. Fra

Elemosina, a fourteenth-century Franciscan chronicler seems to imply this about Elizabeth when

he says: “She put on the gray-colored clothing of penance, and girded herself with a cord out of

reverence for blessed Francis. Although she did not have the rule of the continent [i.e. tertiaries],

she always preserved true continence in her heart and her body” (Gieben, “I patroni,” p. 243).

Such “tertiaries” might well have been indistinguishable from the Beguines.

76 See Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History (New Haven

Conn. and London, 1978); for the Franciscan concept of poverty, see pp. 119-34.

77 Otto Gerhard Oexle, “Armut und Armenfürsorge um 1200: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis

der freiwilligen Armut bei Elisabeth von Thüringen,” in Sankt Elisabeth, pp. 78-100.

50

Much of the discussion on Elizabeth’s choice of her particular form of religious life is

tied up with the question of exactly how and why she began to live in poverty. Two historians

from earlier this century took opposite positions. Karl Wenck considered the tale of the

expulsion a legend developed from a misunderstanding of Isentrude’s testimony; it was designed

to augment Elizabeth’s sanctity by having her undergo a symbolic martyrdom.78 On the other

hand, Huyskens suggested that Elizabeth must have been expelled by the vassals not from the

Wartburg, but from the castle in Marburg, because this, according to the Libellus, was her dower

property.79 Most modern biographers believe that Elizabeth left the Wartburg voluntarily,

because Heinrich did not allow her free use of the property her husband had left her for her

dower, and of which she was supposed to have usufruct during her lifetime. Because she was not

free to control her own resources, she would have had to live only on what was served at the

table at court, and would not be able to obey her conscience in eating. This is an attractive

hypothesis to some, since it makes Elizabeth’s life of poverty a deliberate choice rather than an

accident of life.80 The only problem with this interpretation is that Isentrude states very

explicitly that Elizabeth was physically expelled from a castle (eiecta fuit de castro).81 The

78 Karl Wenck, Die heilige Elisabeth (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1908), p. 20-21.

79 Huyskens, Quellenstudien, pp. 53-67.

80 This is the view held by Ancelet-Hustache, Sainte Elisabeth, pp. 241-62; Maresch,

Elisabeth von Thuringen, pp. 181-84; Wenck, “Quellenuntersuchungen,” pp. 427-502, and

others. Historians who take this view base their conclusions on the work of legal historian E.

Heymann, “Zum Ehegüterrecht der hl. Elisabeth,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für thuringische

Geschichte N. F. 19 (1909), pp. 1-22.

81 Wenck believed that the story of the expulsion arose from the “awkward and inaccurate

wording” of Isentrude’s statement as it was taken down by the clerk of the minutes, who

51

authors who accept the hypothesis of a voluntary abandonment of the Wartburg are also unable

to provide answers to the many questions this hypothesis raises. Why, for instance, would

Elizabeth have been forced to take shelter in a pigsty, if she was able to arrange her departure

beforehand? Why would all the people have been afraid of giving her shelter, unless she was

openly being persecuted or threatened with violence? Therefore, I find Huyskens’ hypothesis the

most convincing: the expulsion was from Marburg castle. Certainly, if she had been expelled

from anywhere but Marburg, she would have been able to take refuge there, because those lands

and castle belonged to her dower.

Irmingard’s testimony is sometimes treated as though it were in opposition to Isentrude’s

because she says that Elizabeth might have received sustenance from her brother-in-law but

refused to do so. But there is no contradiction. Irmingard did not say that there was no expulsion.

Nor does she say that Elizabeth left the castle because she did not want to rob the poor. Rather

she seems to be refusing to go back there after her expulsion from Marburg, when her brother-in-

law offered her shelter at the Wartburg, because she wanted to obey her conscience in eating, and

because she had decided on poverty. Irmingard seems to have been trying to explain to herself

why Elizabeth, a noble lady, chose to live among the poor. She was not addressing the question

confused Elizabeth’s leaving the castle with her being deprived of the income from her estate,

combining them in one statement. Wenck felt that the development of the full-blown expulsion

story by later medieval writers was due to “the ascetic needs of hagiography.” (Wenck, Die

Heilige Elizabeth, pp. 20-21). However, Isentrude speaks clearly about the expulsion not just in

one place, but in several: Elizabeth asks the priest to have pity on her and her “expelled children”

(pignoribus expulsis); she was “deprived of her property” (bonis privata) by the vassals

(Huyskens, Quellenstudien, pp. 121-22). Rejecting one such statement would mean rejecting the

whole of Isentrude’s testimony about this period of Elizabeth’s life, which even Wenck did not

want to do.

52

of the original motive for Elizabeth’s choice of a life of poverty, but why she did not leave it

when she was able to. Irmingard says that Heinrich prevented Elizabeth from using her dower,

but this may just mean that he refused to recover it for her. He may not have been directly

responsible for Elizabeth’s expulsion, but his failure to act decisively might be taken as

complicity. Isentrude, a noblewoman, may have been unwilling to say anything against Heinrich,

the present Landgraf, especially since as a long-time member of the household she had probably

known him well personally.

Most modern historians believe that Elizabeth’s prayer to God to take away love of her

children was also a necessary part of the renunciation of all her past life required by her new way

of life as one of Christ’s poor, or to achieve a broader spiritual motherhood.82 However,

Isentrude stresses that Elizabeth did not abandon her children voluntarily, but because of her

poverty. This again raises the question about Elizabeth’s poverty.

To treat her poverty as a conscious choice or an aspiration would be attractive to any

biographer, medieval or modern, who wanted to stress that she was divinely inspired, but in this

way too, her life might been much closer to that of the “involuntary” poor than any biographer

has yet admitted. Elizabeth lost power and status in a real way with her husband’s death, and like

most medieval women, was dependent on that dower as her lifeline. Loss of her status put her in

the same circumstances as other poor women. Like many other women, medieval and modern,

82 See, for instance, Maresch, pp. 163-69; Clarissa Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian

Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 165-

69.

53

she had to give up custody of her children because of poverty, and has often been as harshly

criticized for it as they. This gives a special poignancy to Elizabeth’s treatment of the poor

woman who had abandoned her child; she was much more compassionate toward her than

anyone around her, perhaps because she understood what the woman was suffering. This by no

means diminishes the fact that Elizabeth desired to “share the lot of the poor”, but I think it

brings the real meaning of the phrase into sharper focus.

Isentrude and Irmingard’s testimonies show that Elizabeth wanted not only the

obliteration of social distinctions, but intimacy and friendship with the poor, including her

servant girls, and also show how hard a time they had adjusting to this. Irmingard’s accusation

(even if only joking) that Elizabeth was simply using her to gain merit for herself shows a keen

awareness of the usual attitude of rich almsgivers to the poor.

Elizabeth’s own attitude toward charity could be summed up by her words, “We must

make people happy,” and her rejoicing in the community she shared with the poor. Like St.

Francis, she saw poverty as a way to a more fraternal Christian society. But this society should

be defined clearly. Vauchez, for instance, sees Elizabeth’s protest against the society of her time

as a purely personal and moral one; while she had a clear conception of injustice, she did make

any effort to actually change feudal society at large.83 It is true that Elizabeth’s means were not

political, but personal, and her aim was not to start a revolution in feudal society. The fraternal

society she sought was on the level of a personal community, a fraternal bond formed between

herself and others that completely bypassed social barriers.

83 Vauchez, “Pauvreté,” pp. 172-73.

54

Conrad, whose approach was one of complete rejection of “the world,” including all

loves except God, saw Elizabeth’s work with the poor as her progress in personal perfection,

which seemed to be more important to him than the poor themselves. He seems to have been a

representative of older view of charity as a way for the almsgiver to obtain merit. (Irmingard’s

accusation that Elizabeth was “gaining merit” for herself at the expense of her ancillae, is almost

a caricature of his attitude). However, there is no strict dichotomy between Elizabeth and

Conrad. According to Conrad’s statement, Elizabeth found that the poor could cure her pride.

She received grace and humility from them, so in a way this was an ascetic exercise. But her

humility was not only “humiliation,” as Conrad saw it; it was a desire to share her life with the

humble by becoming one of them.

Yet for Elizabeth, asceticism seems to have always acted as a kind of substitute for the

poor life she wanted to live. She practiced flagellation frequently during her married life, under

Conrad’s direction, but after she actually began to live in poverty, we hear no more from the

handmaids about her practicing flagellation (except for the blows Conrad imposed on her as a

punishment). Conrad’s emphasis on complete renunciation was shared by Elizabeth, though in a

different way, because renunciation and her mystical experiences were closely related.

We can learn very little about Elizabeth’s mystical life from Isentrude’s account of one

vision, but it is clear that in appearing to her during her period of tribulation, and asking if she

wanted to be with him, Christ was asking her to follow His own path of suffering.84 Did she also

84 Edith Pasztor, “Sant’Elisabetta,” pp. 83-99, believes that this must have been a vision of

Christ in glory, and therefore remote from the Franciscan conception of the suffering Christ, but

the invitation by Christ to “be with him” indicates otherwise.

55

have the visions of Christ in the Eucharist that are common to other women saints? Isentrude

mentioned a vision that Elizabeth had in church “when the host was raised.” This is possibly a

vision of Christ in the Eucharist, but we learn no details.

Elizabeth, of course, had a number of traits in common with other women saints of her

time. One whose life was in many ways similar to Elizabeth’s was her maternal aunt: St. Hedwig

(c. 1178-1243), who was brought up at the Benedictine monastery of Kitzingen, married to Duke

Henry I of Silesia and the mother of seven children. The documents for her canonization process

(1267) are lost, and we possess only later materials.85 Studying these documents, Robert Folz

concludes that Hedwig showed many of the same characteristics as Elizabeth: her humility and

love of the poor. But she did not have the experience that Elizabeth did of being left on her own

to live like the poor, nor did she identify herself as completely with them.86 Hedwig’s marriage,

like Elizabeth’s was an arranged one; but Hedwig, according to her biographer and the bull of

canonization by Clement IV, did everything she could to restrict sexual activity in her marriage;

after the birth of her seventh child, she and the duke vowed mutual continence, and Hedwig went

to live a semi-monastic life at the monastery of Trzebnica.

85 These sources are the Legenda maior and the Legenda minor, both by an anonymous priest,

written about 1300, and edited in AASS Oct. t. VIII, 200-202 and 224-246, who based his work

on the dossier of Hedwig’s canonization process as well as other sources; this work shows the

later view of Hedwig after her canonization, and ignores many of the everyday details of her life;

see Robert Folz, Les saintes reines du moyen âge en occident (vie-xiiie siecles) (Bruxelles:

Societé des Bollandistes, 1992), pp. 129-39.

86 Ibid, p. 167; “[Elizabeth] fut ainsi, avec François d’Assise, l’artisan de la “Révolution de la

Charité” sur laquelle s’ouvre le xiiie siècle.”

56

Perhaps it is impossible to penetrate all the mysteries of Elizabeth’s life or show why she

was different from some other women saints. The fact that Elizabeth seems to have loved her

husband from the beginning, and was even passionately devoted to him, was an experience

perhaps not often repeated in a society were arranged marriages among the nobility were a rule,

and love came, if at all, after marriage. Perhaps Elizabeth’s asceticism was less severe than that

of many other women because she had an active life in the world, rather than the enclosed life

typical of many religious women. Yet a number of the Beguines practiced severe asceticism.

Were women’s obsessions with chastity and body-denying practices due, as some have

suggested, to a “deep aversion to mature sexuality?”87 Perhaps Elizabeth’s more positive

experience of sexuality was reflected in her less severe practice of asceticism. None of these

individual characteristics of Elizabeth disprove the accepted patterns for women saints, but they

do show that it is not as universal as many seem to think.

Reception

From the eyewitnesses to Elizabeth’s life, we can learn why they considered her a saint.

How does this compare to the image of her in popular devotion? The various ways in which

ordinary people in Germany viewed Elizabeth in the first years after her death is vividly

displayed in the testimonies of those who were healed at her tomb, and in some other individual

testimonies.

87 Petroff, Consolation of the Blessed, p. 41.

57

According to Michael Goodich, who analyzed the social status of the witnesses to her

miracles in the canonization process, Elizabeth, as a member of a ruling dynasty, was a

“national” saint who appealed to all classes. Of the over six hundred people testifying to her

miracles, almost a third were women. Most of the witnesses came from small villages in the

dioceses of Mainz and Trier, with several from Wurzburg, Halberstadt, Paderborn, Liege and

Cologne. Most were probably of peasant background. Only eighty were identified by occupation,

and of these twenty-eight were clergy and sixteen were nobles or knights. Six were servants, and

two judges, five were hospital officials and a few were artisans; nine were described as cives,

these were mostly from Marburg.88 The impression given by these testimonies is of a saint

popular with all classes, but perhaps most with women and the poorer people.

Frequently these people spoke of the saint as a lady, and called on her in their prayers, as

the “lady Elizabeth.”89 Their perceptions of a lady, particularly those of the poor, were not

developed from the intimate knowledge of Elizabeth that Isentrude and the other eyewitnesses

had, and are rather conventional. For instance, a nine-year-old girl named Beatrice from

Budingen, suffering from a hump on her back and a scrofulous tumor on her chest, went to

88 Michael Goodich, “The Politics of Canonization in the Thirteenth Century: Lay and

Mendicant Saints,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and

History, ed. Stephen Wilson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 172-73.

Another possible indicator of the social status of the witnesses, which Goodich did not use,

would be to measure the worth of gifts promised to Elizabeth’s tomb; for instance, one woman

who sought healing for her young son promised if he were cured to carry to Elizabeth’s tomb

“the child’s weight in wheat, bread, incense, myrrh, linen, money, wax and the child himself.”

(No. 7 of the deposition of 1233; Huyskens, Quellenstudien, p. 169).

89 For instance, Huyskens, Quellenstudien, pp. 163, 170, etc.

58

Elizabeth’s tomb with her mother and stepfather. She did not receive her cure, and on the way

back, her mother grumbled that she would discourage others from going to the tomb. When

they stopped to rest, the little girl fell asleep, and on awakening, said that in her sleep “she had

seen a lady coming to her, with a radiant face and slender white hands, who anointed her body in

the back and chest and said ‘Rise and walk!’“ She was cured. Her dream vision of Elizabeth,

with its emphasis on slender white hands, gives us some idea of a young girl’s concept of a

lady.90

People had strong memories not just of Elizabeth, but of her husband, and this noble

couple became legendary. A fifty-year-old woman named Matilda of Beidenkopf, of the diocese

of Mainz, who had been blind in one eye, testified that as she was on her way to Elizabeth’s

tomb, “she heard people singing a German song about the separation of a tearful Elizabeth from

her husband, the Landgrave Ludwig, as he was about to leave for the Holy Land. This song

moved Matilda to tears; while she was weeping, she recovered the sight in her eye.”91

Troubadours and minnesingers composed a number of such “farewell” songs during the period

of the Crusades. In one, Count Otto of Botenlauben wrote: “if the reward of Christ were not so

sweet, I would not leave my beloved lady whom I salute many times in my heart. . . “92 The song

90 No. 3, 1233; Huyskens, Quellenstudien, p. 169.

91 “audivit homines cantantes Teutonice de separatione flebili E[lizabet] et mariti sui

Ludewici lantgravii in terram sanctam ituri. Quo audito predicta Mathildis mota est ad lacrimas

et, cum lacrimaretur, visum oculi recepit.” No. 84 of the deposition of 1233; Huyskens,

Quellenstudien, p. 225. Verses that may be part of this song are preserved in the German version

of the Life of Ludwig; see Ancelet-Hustache, Sainte Elisabeth, pp. 345-46.

92 Ancelet-Hustache, p. 229.

59

that the pilgrims sang on their journey to Elizabeth’s tomb showed another side of their view of

Elizabeth as a courtly lady, and also as a loving wife, as she bids an agonizing farewell to her

husband leaving for the crusade.

The monks of Reinhardsbrunn preserved a story, found in the additions to Dietrich of

Apolda found at the monastery, about one of their monks and his relationship with Elizabeth,

which seems to have come ultimately from the monk himself. It repeats some themes found in

other eyewitness testimonies. While visiting her husband’s tomb at the monastery, and dressed in

her poor clothes, Elizabeth met a lay brother named Volkmar, and “quickly extended charity and

communion by holding out her hand and accepted from the man, although he resisted, his

humble pledge of fraternity. For the good peasant (rusticus) blushed at touching the hand of that

most illustrious and holy woman.”

Some time later Volkmar, who worked as a miller at the monastery, had his arm caught in

the mill works and broken. The arm did not heal properly, and caused him great pain. On the

night Elizabeth died in Marburg, as he was praying for release from his pain in the monastery

church, Elizabeth appeared to him dressed in royal garments radiant with indescribable

brightness, and asked him sweetly, “How are you doing, brother Volkmar? And how is your

health?” Trembling with amazement, he said: “O Lady, you used to dress in such humble

clothes, how is it that you are now wearing such beautiful garments?” Elizabeth answered, “I

have changed my condition.” Then she took his right hand, the one with which they had pledged

fraternity to each other and which the mill had broken, in hers. At her touch, feeling pain, the

60

brother panicked, woke up, and found his arm healed.93 It is easy to detect the lay brother’s

feelings of confusion. Elizabeth upset his expectations by her poor clothing and her forthright

friendliness. But even when Elizabeth was dressed as a poor woman, he considered her a lady. In

his vision of her in heavenly glory, she is transformed into the role and dress he thought proper

for her, though he felt the same awe on both occasions.

Many mothers prayed for and received healing for their children at Elizabeth’s tomb.

Healings for children form a large proportion of the recorded miracles. Elizabeth healed mothers

too. A woman witness at the canonization process prayed to Elizabeth to mitigate her sorrow at

her child’s death.94 Did the woman know of the sorrows that Elizabeth had experienced because

of her own children?

The popular view of Elizabeth has many facets. She was honored, loved and understood

by the people as a loving and sorrowing wife, and a mother. They identified with her human

qualities, but at the same time they looked up to her as a noble and powerful intercessor.

In promoting Elizabeth’s cult, Pope Gregory IX, who canonized her, promoted the

“official” view of her. Gregory, who had taken an interest in Elizabeth’s fate and appointed

Conrad of Marburg as her confessor, also wrote a letter to encourage her in her religious life.

Gregory was in the habit of writing to several holy women, including Clare of Assisi and Agnes

93 Dietrich of Apolda, Die Vita der heiligen Elisabeth des Dietrich von Apolda, ed. Monika

Rener (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1993 (Veroffentlichen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen,

53), pp. 127-28.

94 “Tunc autem pro una filia sua defuncta dolens mater et lugens cepit dominam Elizabet

valde suppliciter invocare, ut dolorem suum pro defuncta filia mittigaret.” Huyskens,

Quellenstudien, p. 195.

61

of Bohemia (Elizabeth’s cousin), about spiritual matters.95 In his letter to Elizabeth, as with the

other women, Gregory stresses the spiritual and mystical life. “Our spirit is all on fire in thinking

of the purity and holiness, and the chastity of heart and body in which, with so much ardor, you

desire to bear the marks of Our Lord’s passion. Therefore daughter, hasten to follow your divine

Bridegroom wherever He goes, until He brings you to his marriage bed in the innermost chamber

of his house.”96

After Elizabeth’s death, her canonization was encouraged by Elizabeth’s brother-in-law

Conrad, who had joined the Teutonic Knights. (This support seems rather strange, in view of the

conflict between Elizabeth and her in-laws, but Conrad had a reason for insinuating himself into

the Pope’s good graces: he had recently had to do penance for his violation of Church lands).

Such canonizations of queens and other members of royal dynasties are often seen as a reward

for a ruling line’s adherence to the papacy (the case of St. Louis IX seem to have been an

exception).97 This consideration is part of what determines who is canonized. But what other

considerations were there in Elizabeth’s case?

The bull of canonization by Gregory IX show what features of female sanctity he was

eager to encourage. One was her love for the poor. “From her most tender age,” he wrote, “she

wanted to be their protector and friend, knowing that the reward of eternal life is acquired

95 Gregory’s letters to Clare and Agnes are translated in Armstrong, Clare of Assisi, pp. 101-

104, and 366-76.

96 The letter is printed in Karl Wenck, “Die heilige Elisabeth und Papst Gregor IX,”

Hochland 5 (1907), pp. 129-47.

97 Goodich, “The Politics of Canonization,” pp. 170-71.

62

through the merits of the poor, the friends of God, so that their condition, naturally despised by

the pride of the world, was a pleasure to her.” Elizabeth was also an example of orthodoxy.

Because of her practice of the Gospel Beatitudes, the heretics “see these vast regions of Germany

which they have tried to poison by their doctrine of death exult in many ways in the embrace of

heavenly doctrine.”98

The Pope, then, stressed Elizabeth’s devotion to the poor, and her mystical life. He also

saw her as an orthodox answer to the criticisms of the Church raised by heretical movements of

the time. Perhaps he sought to separate her view of poverty from the heretical views; many were

suspicions of the Beguines and Franciscans, and the papacy had to offer its support for them to

be considered orthodox.

Unlike the bull for St. Hedwig by Pope Clement IV, which describes her marital

continence at length,99 there are only the most glancing references to Elizabeth’s marriage in her

bull; she is not held up as an example of a holy married life.

There is not space here to devote to all the developments of Elizabeth’s legend. I will

limit myself to discussing how her marriage is treated by later writers. The first is Caesarius of

Heisterbach, a Cistercian monk at Valle Sancti Petri, who had been asked by Conrad of Marburg

to write a life of St. Elizabeth even before her canonization. After Conrad’s assassination, Ulrich,

98 Bull Gloriosus in Maiestate (June 1, 1235), ed. L. Santifaller, in Dietrich, Vita, pp. 136-37.

99 Bull exultet cunctorum fidelium, March 27, 1267; see Folz, Les saintes reines, pp. 138-39.

63

the prior of the Teutonic knights asked him to carry out this work, supported, no doubt, by

Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Conrad.

Caesarius takes some hints from the testimonies of the maidservants to make it seem as

though Elizabeth wanted to vow virginity in childhood, in conformity with the usual picture of a

saint. For instance, he repeats Guda’s words about Elizabeth as a young girl wanting John the

Evangelist as “her” apostle and adds that she wanted to imitate him, although God willed

otherwise. She drew John’s name, “which proves that the holy Lord had granted fulfilled the

virgin’s pious desire.”100 However, she was married to Ludwig “against the desire of her

heart”.101

By far the most popular medieval treatment of Elizabeth’s life is the Vita by a Dominican

friar, Dietrich of Apolda (a town in Thuringia). He entered the Dominicans about 1247. His Vita

of Elizabeth seems to have been a labor of love for him, for he wrote it at the same time he was

working on a life of St. Dominic, a commission he received from the Minister General of his

order between 1286 and 1288.102

Dietrich tells us in his prologue that he began his research with the testimonies of the

handmaids (he knew only the later version, the Libellus) and with Conrad of Marburg’s letter,

100 Caesarius of Heisterbach Vita, no. 3, lines 19, 24-25, in “Die Schriften des Caesarius von

Heisterbach,” p. 350.

101 Ibid., no. 5, p. 353.

102 Matthias Werner, “Die Elisabeth-Vita des Dietrich von Apolda als Beispiel

spätmittelalterlicher Hagiographie,” Geschictsschreibung und Geschichtsbewusstsein im späten

Mittelalter (Vorträge und Forschungen 31), herausgegeben von. H. Patze (Sigmaringen: Jan

Thorbecke Verlag, 1987), pp. 523-541.

64

but though they contained the “pure and simple truth,” they were unsatisfactory because they did

not provide enough details about people and places, and the information was not in any kind of

order. He carried out a long search for other sources, looking at chronicles in various

monasteries, questioning “very old and truthful persons,” and sending letters to many places. He

began writing in 1289, but did not complete the work until 1297.

What was the purpose behind this labor of many years? What did Dietrich want the

biography to accomplish? He lays great stress on the theme of married love that is a marked

feature of Elizabeth’s life. Taking his cue from some hints in the Libellus,103 Dietrich portrays

Elizabeth as a kind of Cinderella, persecuted by unnamed members of the Landgraf’s family. She

did not even get much sympathy from her future mother-in-law, Lady Sophia, or her sister-in-

law, Ludwig’s sister Agnes, who loved the vanities of the world, and were out of sympathy with

her piety. Sophia scolded Elizabeth for treating her maids so familiarly, and told her “you belong

not among ladies, but among servant girls.”104 (Much later authors would carry this to the point

of making Agnes and Sophia rude and obnoxious to Elizabeth).

103 The Libellus adds to Guda’s testimony: “Cum vero facta esset viripotens et nubilis, graves

et manifestas persecutiones passa est a proximis et vassallis atque consiliariis sponsi sui futuri

mariti quem inducere modis omnibus conabantur, ut ipsam repudiatam patri suo regi remitteret. .

. sponsum suum meroris et tristicie in omnibus habuit consolatorem occultum.” Libellus, p. 15.

104 “Non in principum dominantium sed in servarum famulantium numero fuisse debueras,

Elyzabeth, computata.” Dietrich of Apolda, Vita, pp. 130-31.

65

Because, as the Libellus says, the Landgraf’s family wanted a larger dowry, they made

plans to send Elizabeth back to her father. Even Sophia urged her to enter a community of nuns.

But Elizabeth fled to the Lord, and was consoled by him by the gift of Ludwig’s love, for God

“secretly, by his inspiration, had so effectively inclined the love of the prince, her betrothed, to

the exiled queen, that in solitude he spoke gently to her heart of their secret and mutual love.”

Walter of Vargila, a knight who had been Elizabeth’s protector since he had personally brought

her from Hungary as a child, took her part. He even put a question bluntly to Ludwig one day on

a hunting trip: “Tell me, I implore you, what you propose to do with the king’s daughter. Are

you still going to take her as your wife, or will you send her back to her homeland?”

Pointing to a high mountain in the distance, Ludwig said, “Truly, if this mountain, which you

see, were gold from top to bottom, I would more easily and rather hold it in complete contempt

than refuse to marry Elizabeth. Let others think and speak as foolishly as they like; I love

Elizabeth, and there is nothing I prefer to marrying her.”

He then gave Walter a double-sided bronze mirror, mounted in silver, one part plain

glass, the other bearing an image of the Crucified Christ, and told him to take it to Elizabeth as a

sign of his love. When Walter presented it to Elizabeth, she laughed with joy. Things ended

happily when Ludwig now began to firmly oppose the plotters among his relatives, and persisted

until he was able to marry Elizabeth.105

It is difficult to imagine anything more different from the pattern that has so often been

noticed in the lives of medieval women saints; distaste for marriage and fighting against relatives

105 Dietrich, ed. Rener, pp. 30-32.

66

to enter a convent. In Elizabeth’s case, there is conflict, but of a different kind. She is rescued

from pressure to enter a convent. Dietrich has written a quite exciting spiritualized romance,

which leaves the reader in suspense: will Ludwig and Elizabeth be able to marry or not?

Dietrich also describes their tender love after marriage. “And so, moved by this

sweetness of chaste love and mutual companionship, they could not bear to be apart from each

other very much or very long. Therefore the lady frequently followed her husband through rough

ways (Bar 4:26), and through great distances and through harsh, wild winds, led by sincere rather

than carnal affection.”106 In stressing the theme of love and a holy marriage, even perhaps taking

some elements from chivalric romances, Dietrich may have been inspired by the same motives as

some other members of the mendicant orders, concerned about pastoral matters, who wrote

model sermons on the holiness of marriage, and stressed marital companionship.107

At the same time, Dietrich shows almost an obsession with the idea of “marital chastity,”

typical of the views of clerics of the time. He describes how Isentrude pulled Ludwig’s foot by

mistake and repeats Elizabeth’s statement that she wanted to “do violence to my flesh by tearing

myself sometimes away from my beloved.” He then adds, which is not in Isentrude’s testimony:

“She would flee from the delights of the flesh and therefore from a soft bed and avoided the most

intimate relations with her husband, as much as she could. Although she continued to feel the

most heartfelt love for him, she lamented however, sorrowing, that she had not been worthy of

106 Ibid., p. 34.

107 See the sermons by Humbert of Romans and Gilbert of Tournai in David D’Avray,

“Marriage Sermons in ‘ad status’ Collections of the Central Middle Ages,” Archives d’histoire

doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge 47 (1980), pp. 71-119.

67

preserving the glory of the flower of virginity.”108 In fact, Isentrude had stated that Elizabeth left

the bed only after husband was asleep; logically, then, most likely not in order avoid sexual

relations. The best interpretation of Isentrude’s statement seems to be that Elizabeth felt that

merely sleeping beside her husband was a great joy, and that she was depriving herself of this.109

Dietrich’s work was the source for a number of lives or legends of St. Elizabeth in

German in the later Middle Ages.110 Elizabeth’s popularity is also demonstrated by the fact that

she is one of only four contemporary saints--and the only contemporary woman--whose story is

told by Jacobus de Voragine in his Legenda aurea. It is interesting to note that of the twelve

saints married to Christians, she was one of only six who enjoyed normal marital relations, and

108 loc. cit., p. 35.

109 Dietrich takes over Isentrude’s testimony almost completely, except for the sentence about

how Ludwig “extended his leg over to his lady’s side of the bed,” which is not in the Libellus,

the only version of the testimony that he had. This passage (which was omitted in a number of

early manuscripts which were read in Cistercian monasteries, evidently because it was too

suggestive), seems to imply that sexual activity had perhaps already taken place between them.

Raoul Manselli suggests that the words “surgens a viro” in Isentrude’s testimony might indicate

“rising after intercourse” (“Furstliche Heiligkeit und Alltagsleben bei Elisabeth von Thüringen:

das Zeugnis der Dienerinnen,” Elisabeth, der Deutsche Orden, p. 11).

But other early biographies evidently interpreted Isentrude’s statement in the same way

that Dietrich did: in the early life, about 1250, called “Vas admirabile,” Elizabeth is said to have

“fled her husband’s embrace,” (viri fugiebat amplexus); and “desiring to be joined to Christ her

bridegroom, she began to turn away from intercourse with her earthly husband” (Christo sponso

cupiens copulari, terreni sponsi coepit declinare consortium); Catalogus codicum

hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Nat. Paris, (1889), Vol. I, p. 355; on the other hand, an early life

from the monastery of Zwettl says: “she engaged in intense prayer as much as she could, without

offense to the marriage debt” (Orationibus. . .quantumcumque sine debiti maritalis offensa

poterat, constanter instabat); Anon. “Vita sanctae Elisabeth, landgraviae Thuringiae, auctore

anonymo, nunc primum in lucem edita,” ed. Diodorus Henniges, OFM, Archivum Franciscanum

Historicum 2 (1909), p. 253.

110 For a number of these tales, see Montalembert, Histoire de Sainte Elizabeth, passim.

68

all but Elizabeth were martyrs. Four of the six who lived in spiritual marriages survived

martyrdom and were honored as confessors. Yet the account in the Legenda aurea also stresses

that Elizabeth was married against her will.111 A study of thirteenth-century French texts by

Brigitte Cazelles shows how Elizabeth’s life was made to fit the view of women common in the

French romances of chivalry; but her marriage almost disappears here as well.112 Clearly, for

many medieval writers, a saint who married willing was difficult to accept, and there was

suspicion of a saint who had a normal sexual life with her husband.

Conclusion

Elizabeth’s life is both like and unlike that of many holy women of her age. She was part

of a widespread movement of people who desired poverty as the true Gospel life; at the same

time she was aware of poverty as a social problem. Elizabeth was part of a spiritual current of

her time, but her response was a truly original one, marked by her own personality: bold, friendly

and eager to break down barriers, as well as humble and charitable in the usual sense, she made a

profound impression on those around her. Rather than engage in severe fasting, as many women

did, sometimes as a form of protest against family pressures to marry, she chose to reject food

111 Dyan Elliot, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 173-74.

112 [Vie sainte Elysabel], in Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A collection of French

Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1991), pp. 152-69 and comment, pp. 71-74.

69

from illicit sources, as a protest against the evil in society. Her experience of marriage was also

unusual for a saint, and shows an awareness of the holiness of marriage unusual for her time.

The “levelling” of Elizabeth’s life began early. Pope Gregory IX conformed her to

ecclesiastical needs for orthodoxy, as well as a support for a new type of poverty. Dietrich was

interested in using Elizabeth for pastoral needs, to support moral preaching on marriage. The

popular legend has its own view of Elizabeth: a powerful lady, a protector, a tragic romantic

figure. Each view still preserves some features of her life, transformed to serve the needs of the

audience of the legend.

Many medieval historians have assumed that saints lives’ are not reliable, and use them

largely as evidence for the common perception of sainthood in society. Others have assumed that

the saints’ characteristics are genuine ones, and attempt to use them to probe the psychology of

saints. But in many of the latter cases, there is no clear method for separating truth from legend.

Many are too pessimistic about the possibility, for the problem of perception is not limited to

medieval hagiography, but is a problem common to all biography. I believe that I have shown

that methods can be developed to separate the saint from the legend.

The “leveling” process for Elizabeth began early among her medieval biographers, but

modern historians have also been guilty of it in their own way. The best way to recover a saint’s

personality seems to be giving the most careful attention to what the documents really do tell us,

rather than our own prejudices.

Perhaps to say that other saints for whom we do not possess eyewitness testimony as we

do for Elizabeth conformed to the pattern of medieval saints simply means that their biographers

70

wanted it that way. More explorations of those canonization processes which contain eyewitness

testimonies to the lives of the saints might lead to a better understanding of medieval sanctity.

71

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