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 [Greek: kenôsis], 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.