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Elizabeth

Princess of Hungary, 1231

Elizabeth's charity is remembered in numerous hospitals that bear her name throughout the world. She was born in 1207 at Pressburg (now Bratislava), daughter of King Andrew the Second of Hungary, and was married in 1221 to Louis the Fourth, Landgrave of Thuringia, to whom she bore three children. At an early age she showed concern for the poor and the sick, and was thus attracted to the Franciscans who came to the Wartburg in 1223. From them she received spiritual direction. Her husband was sympathetic to her almsgiving and allowed her to use her dowry for this purpose. During a famine and epidemic in 1226, when her husband was in Italy, she sold her jewels and established a hospital where she cared for the sick and the poor. To supply their needs, she opened the royal granaries. After her husband's death in 1227, the opposition of the court to her "extravagances" compelled her to leave the Wartburg with her children.

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