The Charity of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
Artist: Edmund Leighton (1852 – 1922).
Date: 1895.
Collection: Fred and Sherry Ross.
Source/Photographer: Art Renewal Center.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text is from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 15.
Time After Pentecost.
Book VI.
English: Flag of the Kingdom of Hungary
between 21 December 1867 - 12 November 1918.
Magyar: A Magyar Királyság
zászlaja 1867. december 21. és 1918. november 12. között.
Date: 6 August 2008.
Source: Own work, based on Flags of the World - Hungary -
Angels are vectored from Hungary medium coa 1910.png
Author: Thommy
(Wikimedia Commons)
Although the Blessed in Heaven shine each with his own peculiar glory, God is pleased to group them in families, as He groups the Stars in the material firmament.
It is Grace that presides over the arrangement of these constellations in the Heaven of the Saints; but, sometimes, it seems as if God wished to remind us that He is the sole Author of both Grace and Nature; and inviting them, in spite of man’s fall, to honour Him unitedly in His Elect.
He causes Sanctity to become a glorious heirloom, handed down from generation to generation in the same family on Earth.
Among these races, none can compare with that Royal Line which, in the beginning in ancient Pannonia, spread its branches over the World in the most flourishing days of Christendom: “Rich in virtue and studying beautifulness”, as Scripture says, it brought Peace into all the Royal Houses of Europe with which it was allied; and the many names it has inscribed in the Golden Book of the Blessed perpetuate its glory.
Among these illustrious names, and surrounded by them as a Diamond set in a circle of Pearls, the greatest, in the esteem of The Church and of the people, it that of the amiable Saint, who was ripe for Heaven at the age of twenty-four years, and who ascended on this day into the company of Stephen, Emeric, and Ladislas.
Elizabeth was not inferior to them in manly virtues; but the simplicity of her loving Soul added to the heroism of her race a sweetness, whose fragrance drew after her along the path of Sanctity her daughter Gertrude of Thuringia, and her relatives Hedwig of Silesia, Agnes of Bohemia, Margaret of Hungary, Cunigund of Poland, and Elizabeth of Portugal.
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.
Available on YouTube
All the poetry of those chivalrous times appears in the beautiful pages of contemperaneous writers, as they describe to us the innocent child, transplanted like a tender flower from the Court of Hungary to that of Thuringia; and her life of devotedness there, with a bridegroom worthy to witness the ecstasies of her lofty but ingeneous piety and to defend her heroic virtue against her slanderers.
To the Stewards who complained that during the absence of Duke Lewis she had, in spite of their remonstrances, exhausted the revenues upon the Poor, he replied: “I desire that my Elizabeth be at liberty to act as she wishes, provided she leaves me Warteburg and Naumburg”.
Our Lord opened the Landgrave’s eyes to see transformed into beautiful Roses the provisions Elizabeth was carrying to the Poor.
Jesus Crucified appeared in the leper she had taken into her own apartments that she might the better tend him. If it happened that illustrious visitors arrived unexpectedly, and the Duchess having bestowed all her jewels in alms was unable to adorn herself becomingly to do them honour, the Angels so well supplied the deficiency that, according to the German chroniclers of the time, it seemed to the astonished guests that the Queen of France herself could not have appeared more strikingly beautiful or more richly attired.
Statue of Saint Elizabeth,
Saint Francis Xavier Church,
Superior, Wisconsin.
Photo: 20 April 2015.
Source: Own work.
This File is licensed under the
Share Alike 4.0 International licence.
Author: Billertl
(Wikimedia Commons)
The time soon came when she had to give generously without counting the cost.
First, there was the separation from her husband, Duke Lewis, on his departure for the Crusade; then the heartrending scene when his death was announced, just as she gave birth to her fourth child; and, thirdly, the atrocious act of Henry Raspon, the Landgrave’s unworthy brother, who, thinking this a good opportunity for seizing his brother’s estates, drove out his brother’s widow and children and forbade anyone to give them hospitality.
Elizabeth was reduced to begging, and not without many rebuffs, a little bread for her poor children, and of seeking shelter with them in a pig-sty.
Elizabeth was reduced to begging, and not without many rebuffs, a little bread for her poor children, and of seeking shelter with them in a pig-sty.
On the return of the Knights who had accompanied Duke Lewis to The Holy Land, justice was at last done to our Saint. But, Elizabeth chose to remain among the Poor. She was the first professed Tertiary of the Seraphic Order; and the mantle sent by Saint Francis to his very dear daughter became her only treasure.
The path of perfect self-renunciation soon brought her to the threshold of Heaven. The Angels were heard singing as they bore her up to Heaven: “The kingdom of this World have I despised for the love of Jesus Christ my Lord, Whom I have seen, Whom I have loved, in Whom I have believed, Whom I have tenderly loved”.
Four years later, Elizabeth, now declared a Saint by the Vicar of Christ, beheld all the Nations of the holy Empire, with the Emperor himself at their head, hastening to Marburg, where she lay at rest in the midst of the Poor whose life she had imitated.
Her holy body was committed to the care of the Teutonic Knights, who, in return for the honour, made Marburg one of the headquarters of their Order, and raised to her name the first Gothic Church in Germany.
Numerous Miracles long attracted the Christian World to this spot.
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