Marburg is first historically mentioned in a document of the beginning of the 13th century, and received its municipal charter from the landgrave Louis of Thuringia in 1227. On his death it became the residence of his wife, Elizabeth of Hungary, who built a hospital there, and died in 1231, at the age of twenty-four, worn out with works of religion and charity. She was canonized in 1235 at the instance of the Teutonic Knights, who had settled in Marburg in 1233 and were zealous in promoting her cult. By 1247 Marburg had already become the second town of Hesse, and in the 15th and 16th centuries it alternated with Cassel as the seat of the landgraves. In 1529 the famous conference between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of Transubstantiation took place there in the Rittersaal of the Schloss (see MARBURG, COLLOQUY OF). During the Thirty Years' and Seven Years' Wars Marburg suffered considerably from sieges and famine. In 1806, and again in 1810, it was the centre of an abortive rising against the French, in consequence of which the fortifications of the castle were destroyed. See Kolbe, _Marburg im Mittelalter_ (Marb., 1879); Bücking, _Mittheilungen aus Marburgs Vorzeit_ (Marb., 1886); Schoof, _Marburg die Perle des Hessenlandes_ (2nd ed., 1903). MARBURG, COLLOQUY OF (_Marburger Religionsgespräch_), the name given to a conference of divines held in 1529 in the interests of the unity of Protestant Germany. The circumstances in which it was held, the influence of the men who conducted its deliberations, and the result of its proceedings, combine to render it of no small importance for the history of the Reformation in Germany.