Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

A princess betrothed before she could choose

Elizabeth of Hungary was born in 1207, probably in Pressburg, present-day Bratislava, the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and Gertrude of Merania. She was betrothed in infancy to Louis IV, son of the landgrave of Thuringia, and raised at his family's court; the two married when Louis succeeded his father in 1221.

Widowed at twenty

Louis died of plague in 1227 in Otranto, Italy, while en route to the Sixth Crusade, leaving Elizabeth a widow at just twenty years old. Rather than remain within the wealth and status her marriage had afforded her, she left her position entirely to join the Third Order of St. Francis, a lay Franciscan movement — a decisive break from the royal life she had been raised into.

A hospice built with her own hands

She then built a hospice in Marburg and devoted herself fully to serving the poor and the sick there, living out the years remaining to her in direct, hands-on charity rather than the ceremonial distance typical of her earlier station. She died on November 17, 1231, at just twenty-four years old, and was canonized only four years later, in 1235.

A legend that outlived its original saint

The best-known story attached to her name, the Miracle of the Roses — in which loaves of bread she carried for the poor turned to roses when her husband's hunting party confronted her — is absent from her earliest biographies and was originally told about a different saint, Elizabeth of Portugal. It was only later attributed to Elizabeth of Hungary, a testament to how thoroughly her reputation for charity absorbed stories associated with sanctity more broadly. She is remembered today as the patron saint of bakers, beggars, brides, charities, the homeless, hospitals, and widows.