What Kind of King's Kid Was She?
To look at her, you would not have guessed that Elizabeth was the daughter of a king and wife of a prince. In place of the gold-cloth dresses of her youth, she wore the plain gray robe of a Franciscan. Rather than be waited on, she washed lepers with her own hands. Instead of rich meats and pastries, she ate bread with a little honey, or a dry crust with a small glass of wine. She worked wool like any peasant girl. A Magyar knight, who saw her sitting by her little cottage, exclaimed in astonishment, "Whoever has seen a king's daughter spinning before?"

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Well might he be astonished. Elizabeth von Thuringia was born in 1207 in the royal castle of Pozsony (Bratislava, Czechoslovakia). Her mother, Gertrude, was a committed Christian from a long line of Christians, and she imparted the faith to her daughter. Elizabeth's father, Andrew II, fought valiantly in the crusades but was not an exemplary king. His nobles forced him to sign Hungary's Magna Carta, the so-called Golden Bull. Two aunts and an uncle set examples of faith for their niece. Aunt Hedwig founded a convent for lepers, Aunt Mechthild became abbess of Kitzingen, and Uncle Egbert was bishop of Bamberg.

When she was not yet two, Elizabeth was pledged in marriage to the son of a Hungarian nobleman in Thuringia, then part of the German Empire. When she was four years of age, Elizabeth was sent to live with her prospective in-laws to be raised according to their customs at the Wartburg Castle.

Her Mother Killed
Gertrude was murdered in a political assassination when Elizabeth was seven. The grieving daughter was old enough to understand that she had a comforter in God, and she knelt with her troubles in the Wartburg chapel, praying for the souls of the murderers, although she experienced a terrifying dream in which she saw her mother's gory body. Shortly after, Elizabeth's fiancee also died. So her status in Thuringia became cloudy. However, Ludwig, the brother of her deceased fiancee, said he would like to marry her.

Her Dream Day
So when Elizabeth was just fourteen, her dream day came. In spite of attempts by Ludwig's family to send the beautiful olive-complexioned girl away, declaring her too holy to make a suitable bride, she was married to him as planned in a ceremony held in St. George's Church in Eisenach. Elizabeth listened well as the bishop read the ceremony and understood that, although she was entering a union with her husband, she could in some sense also experience a mystical union with Christ. In time she would. Meanwhile, Ludwig and she bound themselves to rule justly and to open their home in hospitality to monks and nuns. Ludwig was a young man of noble mind who took as his motto "Piety, Chastity, Justice." Elizabeth adored him.

Elizabeth brought great wealth to the marriage and now possessed more. She had the choice of five castles to live in and so she was called "Elizabeth of many castles." But wealth did not impress her. Although she dressed handsomely, in brocade dresses with round necks and sleeves that flared from her elbows, or bright flowing Hungarian silks that hugged her womanly figure, she said she did so only to please her husband. They lived at first on the Danube, and Elizabeth rode across the shattered nation with Ludwig, viewing firsthand the devastation left by the Golden Bull revolt of the Hungarian nobles. But when she became pregnant, she moved to Kreutsberg castle.