"She also founded a hospital especially for poor children. It is related
by an eye-witness that whenever she appeared among them they gathered
round her, crying 'Mutter! Mutter!' clinging to her robe and kissing her
hands. She, mother-like, spoke to them tenderly, washed and dressed
their ulcerated limbs, and even brought them little toys to amuse them.
In these charities, she not only exhausted the treasury, but she sold
her own robes and jewels, and pledged the jewels of the state. When the
landgrave (her husband) returned, the officers and councillors went out
to meet him, and, fearing his displeasure, they began to complain of
the manner in which Elizabeth, in their despite, had lavished the public
treasures. But Louis would not listen to them; he cut them short,
repeating, 'How is my dear wife? how are my children? are they well? Let
her give what she will, so long as she leaves me my castles of Eisenach,
Wartburg, and Naumburg!' Then he hurried to the gates, and Elizabeth met
him with her children, and threw herself into his arms, and kissed him a
thousand times, and said to him tenderly, 'See! I have given to the Lord
what is his, and he has preserved to us what is thine and mine!'"
Louis was soon after killed in the Crusades, and she and her children
were driven out of Thuringia by his brothers, Henry and Conrad. Later,
some of her possessions were restored to her. She spun wool to earn more
money to give away, and wore ragged clothes that she might help the
destitute. She died at twenty-four, singing hymns, her sweet voice
murmuring, "Silence!" at the last.
"No sooner had Elizabeth breathed her last breath than the people
surrounded her couch, tore away her robe, cut off her hair, even
mutilated her remains for relics. She was buried amid miracles and
lamentations, and four years after her death she was canonized by
Gregory IX."
Murillo's "Abraham receiving the Angels" and "The Prodigal's Return"
were purchased of Marshal Soult by the Duke of Sutherland, and are now
in Stafford House. "The Healing of the Paralytic" was purchased of
Marshal Soult for thirty-two thousand dollars, and is now in the
possession of Mr. Tomline of London. The head of the Christ is thought
to be Murillo's best representation of our Lord. "The soft violet hue,
so dear to Valencian art, of the Saviour's robe, is skilfully opposed to
the deep brown of St. Peter's mantle, a rich tint then and still made by
Andalusian painters from beef-bones." "The Release of St. Peter" is at
the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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