ABSTRACT
Two Middle English translations of The Revelations of Saint Elizabeth are extant. One (like most of the manuscripts of the Latin) attributes the original to the Elizabeth of Hungary who died in 1231, i.e. to Elizabeth of Thuringia (b. 1207). Elizabeth, who was the widow of the Count of Thuringia and the mother of his three children, was devoted to poverty and to the care of the sick. She never became a nun but was a Franciscan tertiary (i.e. a member of the Third Order of St Francis, lay people who led a disciplined and dedicated life in the world), and there is no authentic early tradition that she was a visionary. Although St Elizabeth of Schönau, a twelfth-century German Benedictine nun and mystic, has been suggested as a more likely candidate for the authorship of the Revelations (Oliger 1926: 44–50), a better case can be made for Elizabeth of Toess (c. 1294–1336), the great-niece of Elizabeth of Thuringia and also, like her, daughter of a king of Hungary. This Elizabeth was a Dominican nun in the Swiss convent of Toess whose life, together with those of her sisters in religion, was written in Middle High German by Elsbeth Stagel, the close friend and spiritual daughter of the great Rhineland mystic Henry Suso.
