![[Saint Elizabeth of Hungary]](sainte01.jpg "33kb jpg century old holy card of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, artist unknown, date unknown; please do not write to ask about the image")
Elizabeth of Thuringia Elisabeth of Thuringia Elisabeth of Hungary
1231 at Marburg of natural causes her relics, including her skull wearing a gold crown she had worn in life, are preserved at the convent of Saint Elizabeth in Vienna, Austria
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woman wearing a crown and tending to beggars woman wearing a crown, carrying a load of roses in her apron or mantle
Google Directory New Catholic Dictionary Patron Saints for Girls Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Saints, by Matthew Bunson, Margaret Bunson, and Stephen BunsonTwice a day, in the morning and in the evening, Elizabeth went to visit the sick. She personally cared for those who were particularly repulsive; to some she gave good, to others clothing; some she carried on her own shoulders, and performed many other kindly services. Her husband, of happy memory, gladly approved of these charitable works. Finally, when her husband died, she sought the highest perfection; filled with tears, she implored me to let her beg for alms from door to door.
On Good Friday of that year, when the altars had been stripped, she laid her hands on the altar in a chapel in her own town, where she had established the Friars Minor, and before witnesses she voluntarily renounced all worldly display and everything that our Savior in the gospel advises us to abandon. Even then she saw that she could still be distracted by the cares and worldly glory which had surrounded her while her husband was alive. Against my will she followed me to Marburg. Here in the town she built a hospice where she gathered together the weak and the feeble. There she attended the most wretched and contemptible at her own table.
Apart from those active good works, I declare before God that I have seldom seen a more contemplative woman.
Before her death I heard her confession. When I asked what should be done about her goods and possessions, she replied that anything which seemed to be hers belonged to the poor. She asked me to distribute everything except one worn-out dress in which she wished to be buried. When all this had been decided, she received the body of our Lord. Afterward, until vespers, she spoke often of the holiest things she had heard in sermons. Then, she devoutly commended to God all who were sitting near her, and as if falling into a gentle sleep, she died.
from a letter by Conrad of Marburg, spiritual director of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary