Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231) was the daughter of King Andrew II and Gertrude of Merania, sent as a child to the Thuringian court and married in 1221 to Louis IV, Landgrave of Thuringia. In 1226, while Louis attended an imperial diet, she managed affairs and distributed alms during a famine.

Louis died on crusade in 1227, leaving her widowed at twenty; she founded a hospital at Marburg and served the sick herself. She died in 1231 aged twenty-four, and Gregory IX canonised her in 1235 after reports of healings at her grave. She is patroness of the Third Order of Saint Francis.