On the Day September 11 1277

On the Day September 11 1277

The End of a Love Affair

Khen Lim

On this day in 1227, Elizabeth’s life changed forever. Her beloved husband Ludwig was en route to join the Sixth Crusade when he died of fever in Otranto, Italy but she already had premonition of this. Just before he left, she had this hunch that she would never see him again. 


On hearing his death, a pregnant Elizabeth reportedly said, “He is dead. He is dead. It is to me as if the whole world died today.”

Interment of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (Image source: bobandpennylord.com)

A month before that, in August, Ludwig was crossing the mountains between Thuringia and Upper Franconia, passing through Swabia and Bavaria before traversing the Tyrolian Alps. It was after he reached Brindisi and then Otranto in the Kingdom of Sicily that he succumbed to a plague and soon was given the last rites by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Bishop of Santa Croce. 

He died shortly thereafter. A few days following his death, his wife gave birth to their daughter, Gertrude.

“We could serve God better if we weren’t so rich. Instead of seven castles, all we need is enough land for a single plough and a couple hundred sheep,” said Elizabeth.

Her husband, Ludwig, Count of Thuringia (now Hungary) listened amusingly and then with a laugh, replied, “At any rate, there would still be plenty of people to say we were far too well off.”

This is a story that many might mistake for a fairy tale but these were real people. Elizabeth was well known for her saintliness and in fact less than four years after her death at the age of only twenty-four in 1231, she was canonised by Pope Gregory IX. Although Ludwig was never made a saint, he was widely considered one by his people and on this day, he was best remembered till today.

Ludwig never saw a reason not to be supportive of his wife’s charities. His was a wholehearted devotion and he did much good out of his heart because he understood love from the moment he met her for the first time. In 1211, a four-year-old Elizabeth was originally betrothed to his brother Hermann who died five years later in 1216 before she could marry him.

After Ludwig ascended to the Thuringian throne following the death of his father in 1217, he waited until he was aged twenty that he married Elizabeth who was by then fourteen years old. Even so, some in his family felt that the young girl was way to pious for his good and tried to separate them but it was this trait of hers that appealed so much to him.

In their love story, they were virtually inseparable. They rode all over the countryside together, ravaged by recent wars because they saw in themselves great opportunities to help ease their people’s misery. For Ludwig, his concerns for his people were to seek justice for them. In fact when he realised his merchants were robbed in Poland, he actually took an army with him and rode to Lubitz demanding that their citizens make restitution.

Elizabeth of Hungary, c.1895 by Edward Leighton (Image source: en.wikipedia.org)

During the time when Ludwig was away helping Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250) in 1226, loneliness struck Elizabeth especially in the harsh of winter. At the same time, she realised her people were suffering so much from floods, famine and plague that they survived largely by eating tree bark. 

The urgency to help was so great that she took control of affairs at home raided the treasury and distributed alms to all parts of their kingdom. She even gave away state robes and ornaments to the impoverished. She also used the treasury to set up food lines to feed them. Beneath Wartburg Castle where they lived, Elizabeth built a hospital, installing twenty-eight beds. There she visited the patients daily in servitude to them.

And for all of this, the treasurer accused her for being ‘extravagant’ to which Elizabeth in her own defence, said, “I gave to God what was His and God has kept for us what was ours.” When the complaint reached Ludwig, he simply said, “Let her do good and give God whatever she will, so long as she leaves me Wartburg and Neuenburg.”

In another episode, Ludwig’s mother sought his attention and in her anger, she dragged him to his room where he found a leper – Helias of Eisenach – in the bed he shared with his wife. Indignant by what he witnessed, he was set to confront Elizabeth about this matter when suddenly, “the Almighty God opened the eyes of his soul and instead of a leper, he saw the figure of Christ crucified stretched upon the bed” (see endnotes). 

Transformed by the miracle, Ludwig turned the whole thing around and decided to do all he could to help his wife establish Europe’s first leprosarium as well as first ever orphanage in Central Europe.

Statue of Elizabeth of Hungary and Ludwig IV of Thurungia in Hungary (Image source: pinterest.com)

It was said that while he was nearing his death, he saw his room filled with white doves above him and he said, “I must fly away with these white doves.” When he died, his remains were returned to Elizabeth in 1228 where he was then interred at the Abbey of Reinhardsbrunn.

Even though he was never canonised like his wife, his deeds were never forgotten. He was widely acclaimed as Ludwig der Heilige (Ludwig the Saint) and also Blessed Ludwig of Thuringia.

Note: Ludwig of Hungary was also known as Ludwig, Landgrave of Thuringia, Louis IV of Hungary, Ludwig IV der Heilige (the Saint)

Note: This story is featured in composer Franz Liszt’s 1862 oratorio about Elizabeth called ‘The Legend of Saint Elizabeth’ (Die Legende von der Heilingen Elizabeth)