266 ST. ELISABETH the sacrod veil before tLe new high altar at Tosz. Her life was spent in great piety and humility with the nnns, and she did not allow any difference to be made on account of her rank. One day a stranger monk came to the convent, and casually asked her name. She said, *' Elisabeth ;" and as he wished to know where she came from, she said, " Ofen." " What I you have come such a long way to such a poor little convent as this ? I dare say you are no better than you should be. Elisabeth silently withdrew into the church, and left the clearing of her character in the hands of God. Agnes kept all Elisabeth's jewels, and refused to give them to her ; but when the latter was singing matins, the nuns saw that every word came sparkling out of her mouth like diamonds and pearls, and fell into a bowl she held. The chief miracle recorded of her is that she carried water in a sieve, to extinguish the flames in a peasant's burning house. For some time her health was very bad, so the superior made her go to the baths of Baden, in Argau, after which she visited her step- mother, Queen Agnes, at Eonigsfelden, and went by Zuijch to Einsiedeln, where she obtained many graces and her bodily recovery. She was a nun for twenty- eight years; during the last two she was perfectly helpless, suffering great pain, and had to be fed and tended like a child, until her death, May 6, 1 338. Her body remained fresh and uncor- ruptod for several months. Then the nuns buried her in the choir, in a beauti- ful stone tomb; on the top of it the four evangelists were represented; on the middle and both sides were the royal arms of Hungary, after the old fashion, without date or epitaph. In 1770, when Maria Teresa had the body of Queen Agnes removed to the Abbey of Blasius, she ordered that of Elisabeth to be placed there also; but it could not be found. Mailath, Oeach, v. Ungam, i. 263, 264. Papebroch, AA.SS.^ from a German Life by Murer. Franz Palacky, Gesch, v. Bohmen, ii. 352, 371. Burgener, Hel- vetia Sancta, St. Elisabeth (18) of Siena, Bak- TOLOHMEA. St. or B. Elisabeth (19) Achler, of Keuthe, Dec. 6, 9, Nov. 25, 28 (Elisa- beth OF Waldsee, or Waldsech ; Elisa- beth Bona, the Good Elisabeth, Die GuTB Beth, Beta) 1386-1420, was of a burgher family at Waldsee, in Upper Saabia ; she obtained with difficulty the consent of her parents, left their house, and lived in retreat with a friend. A convent of the Third Order of St Francis being established at Eeuthe, near Wald- see, in 1407, she entered it with four companions. She had a bleeding wound in each side and seven in her head, in which she felt the pricking of the crown of thorns : in addition to these, the five wounds of Christ appeared on her every Friday and fast day, and sometimes she was covered from head to foot with marks of scourging. During twelve years her only food was the Holy Com- munion, and once this Holy Sacrament was given to her by the hand of Christ Himself. It was never her own wish to be distinguished by these extraordinary graces, and so afraid was she of their proving a temptation to pride, that when her confessor desired to have recourse to the exorcisms of the Church to free her from the persecutions of the devil, she begged him not to do so, saying that
- to suflfer is to deserve." She died at
the age of thirty-four. Her confessor. Father Conrad Kugeln, wrote her Life, and sent it to the episcopal ordinary of Constance; but it was not until two hundred years after, when her grave was opened by the Provost of Waldsee, that she began to be venerated as a saint in Suabia. After several miracles had been wrought at her tomb, the Emperor Frederic II. begged the Pope to begin the process of her canonization ; but it was only in 17 GO, under Clement XIIL, that her worship as *' Beata " was autho- rized by the Holy See, and her body paraded in the church as that of a saint. A.BM.y Dec. 5. Wetzer and Welte, Bic, de ThMogie CathoUque. Burgener, Helvetia Sancta. Her contemporary Life, translated by Goschler, will be given by the BoUandists, Nov. 25.
