Our School is Named after St. Elizabeth of Hungary
Princess Elizabeth was born the daughter of King Andrew of Hungary in 1207 in Presburg, Bratislava (in modern Czechoslovakia). When she was four years old her father betrothed her to the elder son of Duke Hermann I of Thuringia (western Germany). She went to the Castle of Wartburg (in central Germany), where she and the young duke were educated together. The plan for the marriage was frustrated by the boy's death at an early age. Elizabeth was then betrothed to his younger brother, Louis IV.
When Elizabeth was fourteen she married the twenty-one year old, Prince Louis of Thuringa. The charitable Elizabeth built a hospital at the foot of the mountain on which her castle stood and tended to the sick herself. Her family and courtiers opposed this, but she insisted she could only follow Christ's teachings, not theirs. Once when she was taking food to the poor and sick, Prince Louis stopped her and looked under her mantle to see what she was carrying; the food had been miraculously changed to roses.
The marriage ended in 1227, when Louis died while on a crusade to the Holy Land. Upon Louis' death, Elizabeth sold all that she had, and worked to support her four children. Her gifts of bread to the poor, and of a large gift of grain to a famine stricken Germany, led to her patronage of bakers and related fields. At the age of twenty, she joined the Third Order of St. Francis and spent the four remaining years of her life serving the poor. She died in 1231 at Marburg and was canonized, through the petitions of those who had personal knowledge of her virtue, on May 27, 1235 by Pope Gregory IX at Perugia, Italy.
Elizabeth is one of the most illustrious examples of medieval Christian womanhood. Her relics, including her skull wearing a gold crown she had worn in life, are preserved at the convent of Saint Elizabeth in Vienna, Austria.
Patronage:
bakers; beggars; brides; charitable societies; charitable workers; charities; countesses; death of children; exiles; falsely accused people; hoboes; homeless people; hospitals; in-law problems; lacemakers; lace workers; nursing homes; nursing services; people in exile; people ridiculed for their piety; Sisters of Mercy; tertiaries; Teutonic Knights; toothache; tramps; widows
History of Our School
Our school's land was provided by Mr. and Mrs. Felix Dauw and was given in loving memory of their daughter, Elizabeth. The school was built in 1957 by the MAC Construction Company.