St. Elizabeth of Hungary

A Hungarian princess married at fourteen to the Landgrave of Thuringia, Elizabeth bore three children and was widowed at twenty when her husband died on the Fifth Crusade. She gave away her fortune, founded a hospital, and personally tended the sickest patients. She died at twenty-four — already a Franciscan tertiary — and was canonized within four years.

Even as a young bride at the Wartburg, Elizabeth was known for carrying bread to the poor in the surrounding countryside. The famous miracle of the roses — bread turning to flowers when her suspicious in-laws demanded to see what she carried — has been told for eight centuries as a sign that God blessed her reckless charity.

After her husband's death his family expelled her from the castle, and she placed herself under the austere direction of her confessor, Conrad of Marburg. She spent her last years in a simple hospital she built at Marburg, washing and feeding the destitute with her own hands. Her swift canonization in 1235 made her one of the most beloved saints of medieval Europe.