OTT GECSER

The Feast and the Pulpit

Preachers, Sermons and the Cult
of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1235-ca. 1500

FONDAZ IONE
FONDAZIONE

C E NTR O I TA LI ANO DI S TUDI

CENTRO ITALIANO
DI STUDI SULLALTO MEDIOEVO
S ULLALTO M E DIOE VO

SPOLETO
S POLE TO
2012
2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations ................................................................... page

VII

Introduction .....................................................................

IX

1. EMERGENCE OF THE CULT ................................................

1. Formation of the main vitae of St. Elizabeth .......
1.1. The Summa vitae and the testimonies of the
four handmaids ................................................
1.2. The first biographies .......................................
1.3. The Dominican legendae novae .....................
1.4. The Franciscan tradition of Elizabeths life ..
1.5. The Life of St. Elizabeth by Dietrich of Apolda
1.6. The transformation of Elizabeths image ......
2. Pilgrimage to Marburg ...........................................
3. Ecclesiastical institutions dedicated to St. Elizabeth
4. Elements of the liturgical cult ...............................
4.1. The observance of the feasts of St. Elizabeth
4.2. The calendars of religious orders and their
promotion of the cult .......................................
4.3. The mass celebrated on 19 November ...........
4.4. The rhymed offices Laetare Germania and
Gaudeat Hungaria ...........................................

1
1

2
4
15
19
26
30
32
37
50
51

54
64

68

73
73

78
83
84
107

2. PREACHING ABOUT ST. ELIZABETH .....................................

1. Authors, compilers, redactors, and scribes ...........
2. Geographical and religious affiliation of sermon
authors .....................................................................
3. Sermons on St. Elizabeth in their local contexts .
3.1. The emergence of preaching about St. Elizabeth
3.2. Later developments .........................................

VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

4. Diffusion and reception of sermons on St. Elizabeth page

5. Sermons on St. Elizabeth in the fifteenth century:
Decline of the cult? .................................................

139
144

3. RHETORIC AND REPRESENTATION IN THE SERMONS ..............

1. Homilies, sermons, and sermons on saints ...........
2. The choice of themata ............................................
2.1. Liturgical models .............................................
2.2. Literal application ...........................................
2.3. Typology ...........................................................
2.4. Imitating other sermons .................................
3. Patterns of interpretation .......................................
3.1. Division ............................................................
3.2. Distinction ........................................................
3.3. Distinctions and structural metaphors ..........
4. Patterns of representation ......................................
4.1. Holy life-span ...................................................
4.2. Virgins, wives, and widows ............................
4.3. Vita activa vita contemplativa .....................
5. Argumentation and illustration ............................
5.1. Authorities and enthymemes .........................
5.2. Exemplum, similitudo, figura .........................

151
151
153
154
157
159
160
161
162
165
171
176
176
180
189
191
193
196

CONCLUSION ........................................................................

201

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................

205

APPENDIX 1: A REGISTER OF ST. ELIZABETH-SERMONS WRITTEN

BEFORE CA. 1500 ............................................................
APPENDIX 2: THEMATA OF THE SERMONS .................................
APPENDIX 3: TEXTS ...............................................................

233
299
303

INDEX ..................................................................................

451

Introduction
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (or of Thuringia) was born in 1207 to King
Andrew II of Hungary and his wife, Gertrude of Andechs-Merania. She
was betrothed to the future Landgrave Ludwig IV of Thuringia and
transferred to the Wartburg court in 1211. Their marriage took place in
1221, and the couple had three children, Hermann, Sophia, and Gertrude.
Ludwig apparently sympathized with Elizabeths inclination to charity,
and in 1226 they founded a hospital together in Gotha. In the same year,
Elizabeth took a vow of post-marital chastity and obedience to Conrad of
Marburg, an ascetic preacher of the crusade with papal licence, whose
possible affiliation with a religious order is unknown, and who acquired
some influence in the court of the Ludowings. Under Conrads surveillance, Elizabeth adopted an exceedingly modest or even austere way of
life entirely different from the courtly norm. Not independently of Conrads
activity, perhaps, Ludwig took up the cross in 1227, and died in Otranto
on the way to the Holy Land. Ludwigs relatives were less prone to
finance Elizabeths charitable activity, and refused to return her dower.
But Elizabeth firmly declined any proposal for a second marriage and, on
Good Friday of the same year, solemnly renewed her vow of chastity and
obedience to Master Conrad, renouncing all worldly aspirations. After
the ensuing rupture with her husbands family, she lived in precarious
conditions in Eisenach until Conrad of Marburg, who in the meantime
had been appointed her guardian by Pope Gregory IX, succeeded in
recovering (a part of) her dower. This sum of 2000 marks was largely
used to found a hospital in Marburg dedicated to St. Francis. Elizabeth
spent the remaining part of her life in this hospital caring for the poor
and the sick. She died in 1231 1.

A recent overview of Elizabeths life is M. WERNER, Elisabeth von Thringen eine

INTRODUCTION

Conrad of Marburg proposed her canonisation to Pope Gregory IX

already in 1232, sending a preliminary survey of her miracles to the curia
together with a short description of her life, and it was he who headed the
first official commission which examined her miracles. But in the course
of the following year, Conrad was assassinated by someone against
whom he conducted investigations in matters of heresy. The cause of
sanctification was taken up by another Conrad, Elizabeths brotherin-law, Conrad of Thuringia, and on 27 May 1235 Elizabeth was
inscribed in the catalogue of saints by Pope Gregory in Perugia 2. Her
canonisation was quick but not exceptionally so by the standards of the
first half of the thirteenth century 3. Nevertheless, the importance of her
figure for contemporaries is suggested by the fact that Emperor
Frederick II, barefooted and dressed in a simple grey tunic, participated
at the ceremony of her translation in Marburg, on 1 May 1236 4.
Although the edition of saints lives in the Acta Sanctorum, which
proceeds in the order of the ecclesiastical calendar, has yet to reach 19
November, St. Elizabeths main feast-day, some of her most important
medieval vitae appeared in print from the seventeenth century
onwards 5. The writer who discovered her for a modern public beyond
the circles of antiquarian historiography was Charles Forbes Ren,

europische Heilige des 13. Jahrhunderts, in M. MIKULICOV P. KUBN, eds., Sbornk

Katolick teologick fakulty, svazek VI., Prague, 2004, pp. 297-318. For a detailed biography,
see E. BUSSE-WILSON, Das Leben der heiligen Elisabeth von Thringen. Das Abbild einer
mittelalterlichen Seele, Munich, 1931; J. ANCELET-HUSTACHE, Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie,
Paris, 1946; and I. SZ. JNS, rpd-hzi Szent Erzsbet (Saint Elizabeth of Hungary),
Budapest, 1989.
2
See the literature in ch. 1, . 1.1-2 below.
3
Homobonus of Cremona died in 1197 and was canonised by 1199; St. Francis of Assisi
died in 1226 and was canonised by 1228; St. Anthony of Padua died in 1231 and was
canonised by 1232; St. Peter Martyr died in 1252 and was canonised by 1253; St. Clare of
Assisi died in 1253 and was canonised by 1255. See the data collected by A. VAUCHEZ, La
Saintet en Occident aux derniers sicles du Moyen ge daprs les procs de canonisation et
les documents hagiographiques, 2nd ed., Rome, 1988, pp. 295-298.
4
See ch. 1, . 1.2 and 2 below.
5
H. CANISIUS, Theoderici Thuringi O. P. libri octo de S. Elizabeth Andreae regis
Hungarorum filia, Ludovici Landgravii Thuringiae, Principis Hassiae et Saxoniae comitis
Palatini uxore, Ingolstadt, 1604; J. BASNAGE, Thesaurus monumentorum ecclesiasticorum et
historicorum, vol. 4: Theoderici Thuringi O. P. libri octo de S. Elizabeth, Amsterdam, 1725;
J. B. MENCKE, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum praecipue Saxonicarum, vol. 2, Leipzig,
1728; G. Pray, Vita S. Elisabethae viduae Landgraviae Thuringiae nec non B. Margaritae
Virginis, quarum illa Andreae II, haec Belae IV Hungariae regum filia erat, Trnava/
Nagyszombat, 1770.

INTRODUCTION

XI

Comte de Montalembert (1810-1870), whose Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth

appeared in 1836 6. The success of Montalemberts biography gave a new
impetus not only for her cult but for further research into her life and
personality as well 7.
In contrast to the great attention paid to her life, the study of her cult
in the Middle Ages has ostensibly remained much less attractive to
scholars, with the notable exceptions of Gbor Klaniczay, Ortrud Reber,
and Matthias Werner 8. And, in spite of the fact that this kind of source
material is among the best preserved and its impact was comparable to
images alone, sermons written for her feast day have been a particularly
neglected area within the history of the Elizabeth-cult 9.
Of course, the secondary position of the cult as compared to the life of
the saint, and the even less favourable position of sermons are not unique
to the historical research concerned with St. Elizabeth. The study of a
saints cult, especially in its initial phase, presupposes a thorough

6
Histoire de sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie, duchesse de Thuringe (1207-1231), par le
comte de Montalembert..., Paris, 1836. Cf. H.-J. SCHOLZ, Elisabethforscher von Justi bis
Busse-Wilson, in 700 Jahre Elisabethkirche in Marburg, 1283-1983. Ausstellungen 30.
April - 31. Juli 1983, 7+1 vols., Marburg, 1983, vol. 7, pp. 39-41 and 145-156.
7
For reviews and analyses of the scholarly literature, see H. HERMELINK, Ein
Jahrhundert Elisabethforschung, in Theologische Rundschau, n.s. 4 (1932), pp. 21-38; M.
HAJABTS, rpdhzi Szent Erzsbet hagyomnya a nmet irodalomban (The tradition of
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary in German literature), Budapest, 1938; H.-J. SCHOLZ,
1931-1981. Fnfzig Jahre Elisabethforschung, in U. ARNOLD H. LIEBING, eds., Elisabeth, der
Deutsche Orden und ihre Kirche. Festschrift zur 700-jhrigen Wiederkehr der Weihe der
Elisabethkirche Marburg 1983, Marburg, 1983, pp. 146-162; and A. KORNYI, Die heilige
Elisabeth von Thringen und Ungarn im Spiegel der wissenschaftlichen Forschung des 20.
Jahrhunderts, PhD diss., Evanglikus Hittudomnyi Egyetem, Budapest, 2004.
8
See in the first instance, O. REBER, Die Gestaltung des Kultes weiblicher Heiliger im
Sptmittelalter. Die Verehrung der Heiligen Elisabeth, Klara, Hedwig und Brigitta,
Hersbruck, 1963; M. WERNER, Mater Hassiae Flos Ungariae Gloria Teutoniae. Politik
und Heiligenverehrung im Nachleben der Heiligen Elisabeth von Thringen, in J.
PETERSOHN, ed., Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter, Sigmaringen, 1994, pp.
449-540; G. KLANICZAY, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. Dynastic Cults in Medieval
Central Europe, Cambridge, 2002; D. BLUME M. WERNER, eds., Elisabeth von Thringen
eine europische Heilige. Aufstze, Petersberg, 2007; and IID., eds., Elisabeth von Thringen
eine europische Heilige. Katalog, Petersberg, 2007.
9
Apart from the 1997 mmoire de maitrise by A. LAUTEZ Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie
dans la prdication des XIIIme-XIVme sicles (1237-vers 1350), Universit Paris-Sorbonne,
Paris IV which was generously put at my disposal by her supervisor, Nicole Briou, I have
only found a few text editions (see Appendix 1, sermons XII, XXVIII, XLVI-XLIX, LIII, LVI,
LXX, LXXVI, XCIX), without substantial analyses.

XII

INTRODUCTION

knowledge of her life, or at least of the earliest accounts of her life,

otherwise it is difficult to interpret the intentions of its promoters, who
tend to modify the emphases of the earlier representations of the saints
vita et conversatio. As to sermons in general, most of them are unedited,
and sermons on saints (sermones de sanctis) constitute one of the least
researched areas of the study of medieval sermons 10. Although sermons
have been more and more frequently referred to in histories of cults, few
such histories have given a central place to sermons among the sources
they rely on 11.
The goal of the present book, which is based on my doctoral
dissertation 12, is to understand the contribution of sermons as a chief
medium of mass communication in the period 13 to the cult of St.
Elizabeth from her canonisation in 1235 to the end of the Middle Ages. It
is centred on 103 Latin sermons listed and described in Appendix 1. The
limitation of the source material in linguistic terms is justified by the far
greater number of sermons which have survived in Latin than in the
vernaculars, and by the possibility of collecting systematically sermons
for a particular liturgical occasion thanks to Johann Baptist Schneyers
Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters 14. The cause of
the greater number of surviving Latin sermons lies in the medieval
practice of combining Latin written transmission with vernacular
delivery. That is, sermons were composed and copied mostly in Latin, a
practice that made them easy to distribute across linguistic boundaries,
but they were delivered, at least to the laity, in the vernaculars. Even

10
See, first of all, B. M. KIENZLE et al., eds., Models of Holiness in Medieval Sermons,
Louvain-La-Neuve, 1996), and the literature in the next footnote and in ch. 3.
11
These few include N. BRIOU, La Madeleine dans les sermons parisiens du XIIIme
sicle, in Mlanges de lcole franaise de Rome. Moyen ge, 104 (1992), pp. 269-340; K. L.
JANSEN, The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle
Ages, Princeton, 1999; C. GAPOSCHKIN, The Making of Saint Louis. Kingship, Sanctity, and
Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, Ithaca, NY, 2008; and S. KUZMOV, Preaching Saint
Stanislaus. Medieval Sermons on Saint Stanislaus and Their Role in the Construction of
His Image and Cult, PhD diss., Central European University, Budapest, 2010.
12
O. GECSER, Aspects of the Cult of St. Elizabeth of Hungary with a Special Emphasis on
Preaching, 1231-c.1500, PhD diss., Central European University, Budapest, 2007.
13
Cf. D. L. DAVRAY, Printing, Mass Communication, and Religious Reformation: The
Middle Ages and After, in J. C. CRICK A. WALSHAM, The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700,
Cambridge, 2004, pp. 50-70.
14
J. B. SCHNEYER, Repertorium der lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters fr die Zeit
von 1150-1350, 11 vols., Mnster, 1969-1995; and L. HDL W. KNOCH, Repertorium der
lateinischen Sermones des Mittelalters 1350 bis 1500, CD-ROM, Mnster, 2001.

INTRODUCTION

XIII

reportaciones, notes taken down from hearing, of vernacular deliveries

have usually been preserved in Latin 15.
It was clear right from the beginning of my research that the only
context which is specific enough for the interpretation of sermons is
provided by the other vehicles of the cult. If not seen in this context,
sermons on St. Elizabeth do not differ enough from other sermons, and
the analysis of their message would require the comparison of thousands
of unpublished texts about diverse subjects and for various occasions.
The other vehicles of the cult are relevant, above all, in two respects. In
the one place, they furnished the preachers with a corpus of hagiographic
material they could select from when composing sermons and they also
contributed to the formation of a background knowledge on behalf of the
audience which the preachers had to take into consideration. In addition,
they signal for the modern observer the intensity of the cult at specific
places and in specific social milieus information which is crucial for
explaining the production and transmission of sermons bound to these
places and milieus.
In Chapter 1, I reconstruct the emergence of the cult of St. Elizabeth
as the context of preaching and sermons in the above sense. I concentrate
on the vitae and the liturgy since these two vehicles were responsible, in
the first place, for providing the material for preaching and signalling the
intensity of the cult. As an addition to the study of the latter phenomenon, I
also survey the rise of the Marburg pilgrimage site and the ecclesiastical
institutions dedicated to St. Elizabeth. Given the fact that the majority of
preachers who composed sermons for her feast-day were Dominicans and
Franciscans, I pay particular attention to her cult in these two religious
orders.
The contribution of preaching and sermons to her cult is the subject of
the remaining two chapters. In Chapter 2, I explore the connections
between the authors of sermons about St. Elizabeth and the compilers of
sermonaries including such sermons, on the one hand, and the geographical areas and social milieus where her veneration was especially
intensive, on the other. I seek to understand the motivations of the
authors and compilers and to identify the audience whom the sermons
were presumably destined for. Chapter 3 is dedicated to a rhetorical
analysis of sermons with the aim of finding out how sermons could
represent the saint and modify her image.

15
See N. BRIOU, Les sermons latins aprs 1200, in B. M. KIENZLE, ed., The Sermon,
Turnhout, 2000, pp. 363-447, on pp. 383-386 and 423-430.

XIV

INTRODUCTION

Three appendices make up the remainder of the work: the

above-mentioned sermon catalogue; a list of the themata, that is, the
Biblical quotations which sermons were built on; and the edition of
eighteen sermons in twenty-seven versions.
*
Many gigantes whose shoulders this study stands on are cited in the
footnotes and the bibliography. Nevertheless, such scholarly references
in themselves would not do justice to those who have lent me a helping
hand over the years. First and foremost I would like to thank Gbor
Klaniczay for his wide-ranging contributions in all phases of this project
from the invention of its topic twelve years ago to the correction of the
final text right before its submission. Nicole Briou and Edit Madas have
also followed my work from the beginning and have given expert advice
without which it would have gone in a wrong direction. The final
linguistic form of the book owes very much to the thorough proofreading
of Frank Schaer. Beside them many others have assisted me in many
ways; their certainly incomplete list includes Istvn Bodnr, Dvid
Falvay, Grit Jacobs, Estelle and Victor Karady, Stanislava Kuzmov,
Beatriz Marcotegui, Petra Mutlov, Balzs Nagy, Dra Sallay, Hanna
Szemzo, Stefan Tebruck, Andr Vauchez, and Matthias Werner.
Unfortunately the late Louis-Jacques Bataillon OP, to whom all students
of medieval preaching are greatly indebted, could not live to see the
publication of this work.
The writing of the doctoral dissertation that forms the basis of this
book was made possible by the Soros Foundation which covered the costs
of my doctoral studies at the Central European University (CEU). A
large part of the source material was collected in the Hill Museum and
Manuscript Library in Collegeville MN with a research grant from the
Heckman Foundation in 2001. Similarly important were a research stay
in Rome in 2003 and a research trip to Munich in 2005, both financed by
the Doctoral Research Support Grant of the CEU, as well as a
scholarship in Florence in the Societ Internazionale per lo Studio del
Medioevo Latino (SISMEL) in 2002. Most of the sermon editions in
Appendix 3 and large portions of the main text were prepared in the
Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study when I was a Junior
Fellow there in 2004-2005. The book was completed with the financial
support of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) as part of the

INTRODUCTION

XV

research project Symbols that Bind and Break Communities: Saints

Cults as Stimuli and Expressions of Local, Regional, National and
Universalistic Identities (NN 81446). At last but not least, I am grateful
to the Societ Internazionale di Studi Francescani for awarding me the
Premio Paul Sabatier (ex-aequo with Filippo Sedda) in 2008 and offering
me the opportunity to publish my work in their prestigious series
Medioevo Francescano.