She was present at the Legislative Assembly when Louis was suspended, and was imprisoned in the Temple with the royal family. By the execution of the king and the removal of Marie Antoinette to the Conciergerie, Madame Elizabeth was deprived of her companions in the Temple prison, and on the 9th of May 1794 she was herself transferred to the Conciergerie, and haled before the revolutionary tribunal. Accused of assisting the king’s flight, of supplying émigrés with funds, and of encouraging the resistance of the royal troops on the 10th of August 1792, she was condemned to death, and executed on the 10th of May 1794. Like her brother, she had all the domestic virtues, and, as was to be expected of a sister of Louis XVI., she was in favour of absolutist principles. Hers was one of the most touching tragedies of the Revolution; she perished because she was the sister of the king.
The Mémoires de Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1858), by F. de Barghon and Fort-Rion, are of doubtful authenticity; and the collection of letters and documents published in 1865 by F. Feuillet de Conches must be used with caution (see the bibliographical note to the article Marie Antoinette). See le Comte A. F. C. Ferrand, Éloge historique de Madame Élisabeth (1814, containing 94 letters; 2nd ed., 1861, containing additional letters, but correspondence mutilated); Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Étude sur Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1864); A. de Beauchesne, Vie de Madame Élisabeth (1869); La comtesse d’Armaillé, Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1886); Madame d’Arvor, Madame Élisabeth (Paris, 1898); and Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scott, Madame Elizabeth of France (1908).
ELIZABETH, SAINT (1207–1231), daughter of Andrew II.,
king of Hungary (d. 1235), by his first wife, Gertrude of Andechs-Meran
(d. 1213), was born in Pressburg in 1207. At four years
of age she was betrothed to Louis IV., landgrave of Thuringia,
and conducted to the Wartburg, near Eisenach, to be educated
under the direction of his parents. In spite of her decidedly
worldly surroundings at the Thuringian court, she evinced from
the first an aversion from even the most innocent pleasures, and
stimulated by the example of her mother’s sister, St Hedwig,
wife of Henry VI., duke of Silesia-Breslau, devoted her whole
time to religion and to works of charity. She was married at the
age of fourteen, and acquired such influence over her husband
that he adopted her point of view and zealously assisted her in
all her charitable endeavours. According to the legend, much
celebrated in German art, Louis at first desired to curtail her
excessive charities, and forbade her unbounded gifts to the poor.
One day, returning from hunting, he met his wife descending
from the Wartburg with a heavy bundle filled with bread. He
sternly bade her open it; she did so, and he saw nothing but a
mass of red roses. The miracle completed his conversion. On
the death of Louis “the Saint” in 1227, Elizabeth was deprived
of the regency by his brother, Henry Raspe IV. (d. 1247), on the
pretext that she was wasting the estates by her alms; and with
her three infant children she was driven from her home without
being allowed to carry with her even the barest necessaries of life.
She lived for some time in great hardship, but ultimately her
maternal uncle, Egbert, bishop of Bamberg, offered her an
asylum in a house adjoining his palace. Through the intercession
of some of the principal barons, the regency was again offered her,
and her son Hermann was declared heir to the landgraviate;
but renouncing all power, and making use of her wealth only
for charitable purposes, she preferred to live in seclusion at
Marburg under the direction of her confessor, the bigoted persecutor
Conrad of Marburg. There she spent the remainder of
her days in penances of unusual severity, and in ministrations
to the sick, especially those afflicted with the most loathsome
diseases. She died at Marburg on the 19th of November 1231,
and four years afterwards was canonized by Gregory IX. on
account of the frequent miracles reported to have been performed
at her tomb.
The exhibition in the Royal Academy of P. H. Calderon’s picture, “St Elizabeth of Hungary’s Great Act of Renunciation,” now in the Tate Gallery in London, roused considerable protest among Catholics. The saint is represented as kneeling nude before the altar, in the presence of her confessor and a couple of nuns. The passage this is intended to illustrate is in Lib. iv. § 1 of Dietrich of Apolda’s Vita, which relates how, on a certain Good Friday, she went into a chapel and, in the presence of some Franciscan brothers, laid her hands on the bare altar, renounced her own will, her parents, children, relations, and all pomps of this kind (hujus modi) in imitation of Christ; and stripped herself utterly naked (omnino se exuit et nudavit) in order to follow Him naked, in the steps of poverty. A literal interpretation of this passage is not impossible; for ecstatic mystics of all ages have indulged in a like κενώσις, and Conrad, who revelled in inflicting religious tortures, was quite capable of imposing this crowning humiliation upon his gentle victim. It is far more probable, however, that the passage is not to be taken literally.
Lives of St Elizabeth were written by Theodoricus (Dietrich) of Apolda (b. 1228), Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. c. 1240), Conrad of Marburg and others (see Potthast, Bibl. Hist. Med. Aev. p. 1284). A metrical life in German exists by Johann Rothe (d. c. 1440), chaplain to the Landgravine Anne of Thuringia (Potthast, p. 985). L’Histoire de Sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie, by Montalembert, was published at Paris in 1836. Her life has also supplied the materials for a dramatic poem by Charles Kingsley, entitled the “Saint’s Tragedy.” The edition of this in vol. xvi. of the Life and Works of Charles Kingsley (London, 1902) has valuable notes, with many extracts from the original sources.
ELIZABETH, a city and the county-seat of Union county,
New Jersey, U.S.A., on Elizabeth river, Newark Bay, and
Arthur Kill, 10 m. S.W. of Jersey City. Pop. (1890) 37,764;
(1900) 52,130, of whom 14,770 were foreign-born and 1139 were
negroes; (1910 census) 73,409. It is served by the Pennsylvania,
the Lehigh Valley and the Central of New Jersey
railways. The site is level and the streets are broad and shaded.
There are many residences of New York business men, and
several historic buildings, including Liberty Hall, the mansion of
William Livingston, first governor of the state; Boxwood Hall
(now used as a home for aged women), the former home of
Elias Boudinot; the old brick mansion of Jonathan Belcher
(1681–1757), governor of the province from 1747 to 1757; the
First Presbyterian Church; and the house occupied at different
times by General Winfield Scott. The city has several parks,
the Union county court house (1905), a public library and
several charitable institutions. Elizabethport, that part of the
city on Staten Island Sound, about 2 m. S.E. of the centre of
Elizabeth, has a port open to vessels of 300 tons; it is an outlet
of the Pennsylvania coal fields and is thus one of the most
important coal shipping depots in the United States. Here,
too, are a plant (covering more than 800 acres) of the Standard
Oil Company and a large establishment for the manufacture of
the “Singer” sewing machine—according to the U.S. census
the largest manufactory of sewing machines in the world—employing
more than 6000 workmen in 1905; among the other
manufactures of Elizabeth are foundry and machine shop
products (value in 1905, $3,887,139), wire, oil (value in 1905,
$2,387,656), refined and smelted copper, the output of railway
repair shops, edge tools and lager beer. The value of the manufactured
products was $10,489,364 in 1890; $22,861,375
(factory product) in 1900; and $29,300,801 (factory product)
in 1905.
Elizabeth was settled in 1665 by a company from Long Island for whom the land had been purchased from the Indians and a grant had been obtained from Richard Nicolls as agent for the duke of York. But about the same time the duke conveyed the entire province to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, and these two conflicting grants gave rise to a long-continued controversy (see New Jersey). The town was named in honour of Elizabeth, wife of Sir George Carteret, and was first known as Elizabethtown. From 1665 to 1686 it was the seat of government of the province, and the legislature sat here occasionally until 1790. In the home of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson (1688–1747), its first president, the first sessions of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) were held in 1747, but immediately afterwards the college removed to Newark. In December 1776 and twice in June 1780 the British entered Elizabeth and made it a base of operations, but on each occasion they were soon driven out. Elizabeth became a “free town and borough” in 1739; the borough charter was confirmed
