"The Heretic’s Tale" by Sarah Starr Murphy
A selection from our Summer 2023 issue. On July 25th, Sarah Starr Murphy will be reading along with other contributors at the launch party for the issue. Visit our Eventbrite page for more information.
Listen up, pilgrim. Most people don’t want to hear about saints because they can come across as holier than thou. Beatific. Tales full of prayer and miracles. Yawn. But let me tell you about Elizabeth of Hungary. If ever a saint could be described as not giving any fucks, it would be her.
Elizabeth was consumed by prayer, obsessed with prayer. You know how a preschooler will talk nonstop until you put something in their mouth or turn on the television? Elizabeth was like that, but to God. When her mother the Queen was murdered during Hungarian-German infighting, Elizabeth just prayed harder.
Elizabeth generally got what she wanted. Or she would have, if she’d wanted things. But the problem was that she wanted negative things. Maybe it was the ability to have everything she wanted that made Elizabeth want nothing at all. Maybe it was her contrary nature. She didn’t want jewels, didn’t want fine foods, didn’t want the politically advantageous but otherwise dull husband she was betrothed to as an infant and wed to at the awkward age of fourteen. She certainly didn’t want the three clingy children she bore before she even hit twenty. She ripped the gold circlets off her head, passed out the food, and gave away her children for good measure. That’s right. She sent her children away so that she could be closer to God. She stood in the entrance of the castle and watched them go, pouring rain running down their small, retreating backs. The same rain streaked down Elizabeth’s face and no one could be sure if she was crying as her lips moved in silent, unknowable prayer. Men would saint her for this alone – sacrificing her children for Jesus – but what do men know of teenage girls?
In the 1200s there was always some man in charge. First Elizabeth’s dad, then her husband and his advisors. Elizabeth figured out a way to game the system. She convinced her biddable, overawed husband to cede control to another man, a lowly confessor named Conrad. Elizabeth swore official faithful, godly loyalty to this minor functionary of the Church.
Conrad was tall, dark, and so fucking handsome that the devil himself wanted a piece of that. Big hands, broad shoulders, narrow waist, thighs for days and a sparkle in his eye that Elizabeth put down to the holy ghost. Shoving her husband to the side, he supervised her praying, her studying, her preaching. He supervised her endless giving away of material goods. Townspeople would line up and Elizabeth would hand out whatever she could grab: pearls, sheep, turnips, artwork, swords. It all meant the same to her – nothing. Conrad stood nearby, supervising. Often, they needed to check in lonesome storerooms of the castle to see if there was anything else to give away.
Conrad had Elizabeth whipped whenever she disobeyed his orders. For instance, when she missed confession time with him because she was obliged to entertain foreign dignitaries. Conrad had her ladies-in-waiting whipped as well, all of them in their undergarments with red welts raising on their skin that the record tells us would not go down for three weeks. One version of the story describes Conrad’s control as total except “with the marital right safeguarded,” which means exactly what you think it means. Another version includes no such phrase, either because the monk sucked at Latin or because Conrad took those rights too.
Elizabeth told her husband that God had mentioned that he should go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Husband went straight away, riding out with his entourage, and promptly died of plague. Eventually, his bones made their way back to Hungary and Elizabeth went to greet them, Conrad at her side. She went on and on about the depth of her grief, but she reminded all present that she was so obedient to God’s will that she didn’t want her husband back. No one, God included, was surprised. All extant versions of the tale piously inform us that Elizabeth then entered into a state of perpetual chastity.
Once their threesome became a duo, things with Conrad went south. Conrad had many demands, was especially persnickety about food, how it was prepared, how it was consumed. It was exhausting, always listening to him bang on about the bread’s leavening, the bitterness in the drink. Elizabeth realized that she felt a higher calling and remembered that she was somehow still in possession of a large chunk of her royal dowry. It was time to get rid of it all for real and work some miracles. She set off into the world with a backwards middle finger for her first crush.
Passing through a small town, Elizabeth heard of a woman in need. This woman, let’s call her Karen, was tricked by her maid into swallowing a demon. Karen swelled up like a giant barrel. For two years. Two years of wandering around, looking like a barrel full of demon, trying to make her ale and raise her bratty kids and obviously hire a different maid. Two Christmases with her mother-in-law making pointed comments and her father-in-law running through his stock of barrel jokes. Two years of sweating like a barrel in the summer heat, of having to make bigger quilts to cover herself in the winter. Two years is a long time, and you’d better believe Karen was Elizabeth’s biggest fan after her miraculous cure. What was the cure? You’d like to know in case one day there’s a demon barrel in your abdomen? Dozens of Hail Marys, a sprinkling of holy water, and Elizabeth and Karen disappearing into a back room under strict instructions that no one disturb them for two hours. There were some vomiting sounds, a long silence, and then distinct moans. When the women emerged, their cheeks were flushed and they were smiling, the barrel gone.
After Karen, Elizabeth continued her wandering through the countryside, praying. She prayed awake, asleep, in the bath, and whenever she felt the urge to go back to Conrad. Elizabeth was a prayer machine. Eventually, she settled into a small town known mostly for its pig farming. They gave her a special pew in the chapel.
She was so well known for her praying that people came just to watch her at it. There wasn’t much else to do in the early 1200s besides go to church and try not to die a grisly death. Sometimes Elizabeth ignored the crowd, sometimes she did an interactive performance. It all depended on how much boiled meat she’d had that morning.
The particular spring day in question, Elizabeth had had just enough boiled meat to think properly – she was always pale and thin, an anorexic for God – and she saw a young man standing at the far edge of the crowd. You know the type. Tall, scrawny, trying to grow a beard but it isn’t going very well. The very image of the third, unloved, and unlikely-to-inherit son.
“You!” Elizabeth yelled, and the boy did that thing where he pointed to himself and then looked behind him, but there were just some pigs there, rooting about in the refuse because garbage cans weren’t invented until the mid-19th century.
“You live a really pathetic life,” Elizabeth said, her hands still pressed together in prayer. The young man looked embarrassed.
She smiled at him. “Should I pray for you? To God?”
The boy made a face like, who else would she be praying to, but he nodded. Elizabeth was a hottie, and the boy wanted to see her supple lips mouth his name. Just, you know, for reference.
“Yeah, I would.” Then he got kind of cocky, because the crowd had turned to look at him. He added, “I require it!” Which was kind of an asshole thing to say, so Elizabeth quirked an eyebrow, which was a beautiful eyebrow, and the boy bowed his head and folded his hands in front of his crotch so as to appear appropriately pious and not turned on.
Elizabeth started praying for the young man, yelling up towards heaven as if she had to be really loud for God to hear, quoting scripture and reminding Him of all He’d promised, and it went on and on. She didn’t say the young man’s name because he’d forgotten to tell her what it was, but the young man liked it anyway. All the attention.
But then he started to feel a bit off. At first he thought he was blushing. He was hot. Then he felt like maybe he was coming down with something. Sweating sickness again, probably. Then he went from discomfort to pain and underneath his woolen tunic, his skin started to sizzle.
“Jesus, lady, stop!” he yelled, but Elizabeth kept going, louder and faster, her words spinning up to heaven and the people around settling in because damn, was this a good show now.
Sweat ran down the boy’s body, getting into his eyes, staining his pits and dripping down his back. This was bad enough, but then he started to smoke. Billows of gray began to rise from his person, not out his ears like a cartoon but billowing from his entire body. Obviously, he started screaming. He ripped off his clothing. He raced about, mostly naked. At first everyone just stared, but then a few men ran up to try to help him remove his linen undergarments. The heat was so intense they couldn’t get near him, not to mention the stench of burning flesh was off-putting. Just when they were sure the kid was going to burst into flames, he passed out. He fell right into the filthy muck of the road, which was lucky because all of the effluent seemed to cool him down. He lay there for a while as everyone kept their distance and Elizabeth finished her prayer with a pretty sanctimonious, “Amen.” She walked away without looking back, because that’s exactly what she was like.
The townspeople edged closer, muttering about Elizabeth and her highly entertaining but terrifying miracles. She was both an honor and a fright to have as a neighbor. The smoke cleared, and the young man opened his eyes. His body cooled and people brought his scorched clothes back to him. He panted with horror and everyone avoided getting too close because God is mysterious as hell. Eventually he stood up and limped slowly in the direction of the Order of the Friars Minor. The next day, no one was surprised to hear that he’d become a monk, tonsured and all.
Elizabeth died at twenty-four of something she caught while working in the hospital for the poor she funded with the last of her royal dowry.
Since it had been obvious to everyone for years that Elizabeth was going to be a saint, they’d sort of hoped her death would be a bloody martyr situation. Dying of an unknown illness seemed sort of pedestrian, so they were relieved when easily attributed miracles began to happen right away. A massive flock of birds landed on the church where Elizabeth’s body lay and sang a complete funeral mass. With their beaks. No one could understand it because they were birds, but people were impressed anyway. Many miracles followed, and Elizabeth was properly canonized only four years later. They were efficient about it back then, or maybe old Conrad put in a good word in the interest of tamping down any lingering rumors.
The next big miracle happened in the village where Elizabeth died. There was a man named Frederick who was absolutely full of himself. Blonde, wavy hair, piercing blue eyes, muscles he worshiped like false idols. He thought he was all that, especially when it came to swimming. Which you do have to give him some credit for because it wasn’t like there were Beginning Swim classes at the YMCA in those days. Frederick had taught himself to swim in a disgusting cow pond filled with all kinds of intestinal worms. There wasn’t really any reason for Frederick to learn how to swim, not a lot of triathlons in 13th century Hungary, but he was damn proud of his abilities. He was known for cornering people at the butcher’s, telling them in excruciating detail about his morning training routine, how many laps of the pond he’d done, what his heart rate had been in comparison to the chirping of the cricket. He was the kind of man born tragically too early for a smart watch or a Strava account. All the townspeople wanted was to see if the butcher had any meat that wasn’t rotten, but they’d have to listen to Frederick bang on much too early in the morning. Even worse, this was before coffee was introduced to Europe. Frederick: the man was a trial.
There was a Poor Man, who doesn’t get a name because Poor Man is descriptor enough. Poor Man had been the recipient of one of Elizabeth’s other, more minor miracles before her death. She’d fixed his glaucoma and given him sight because he’d prayed nicely beside her one lazy afternoon. And now Poor Man was like one of those annoying people who get glasses for the first time. How he could see every leaf on the tallest trees, so on and so forth. Everyone was glad that he’d gotten his sight back, but he did lay it on a bit thick. While the villagers were milking their cows, he’d pop up and start describing their own barns. Poor Man, he was a trial too.
These two tedious men found themselves by a large lake. The swimmer because he’d carbed up and was ready to do a quick 10 laps, and Poor Man because he wanted to describe the light on the wavelets, the liminal place between the bullrushes and damp muck of shore, the melodious song of the bullfrog. (Of course Poor Man was a writer.)
It was a hot autumn day, and everyone was a bit short on patience, head lice everywhere, bloody flux making its way through the town, etc. People were itchy. Poor Man was stretched out smack in the middle of a group of sunbathing townsfolk, composing aloud in a voice that was designed to carry.
“The way the shimmering light hits the arrowed tips of the kingfisher’s sapphire feathers is like…” (He would’ve been wearing a fedora and clutching a moleskin notebook and an unread book of Hemingway if he, like the swimmer, hadn’t been born centuries too early.)
The pontificating was irritating Frederick, who was trying to get into the proper headspace for his swim, standing waist-deep in the water and stretching his triceps.
“Poor Man!” Frederick yelled, which is a rude thing to yell, but that’s the kind of guy he was, “I heard you can see again! Good for you. Way to do something literally everyone else can do.”
Poor Man considered correcting Frederick’s use of “literally,” or pushing back against the ableism, or deconstructing the valuation of capitalistic labor over the making of True Art, but then he thought of Elizabeth and the slander against her miracle.
“That late holy woman, Elizabeth, who has given me such a beautiful gift –”
“Oh, Jesus, not Elizabeth again. Can we just go one day without talking about Elizabeth?”
Here it must be admitted that Poor Man got a bit screechy and defensive.
“She’ll avenge me so that you will never leave the water alive!”
Once the curse was said, it seemed to all involved a bit hyperbolic. It would join the long list of dumb things Poor Man forever regretted saying, fueling a poetry collection in two years’ time.
Frederick decided that Poor Man wasn’t worth his time. Anyway, his muscles were atrophying just standing there. (Born too early for steroids.) He launched off the bottom, heading for the center of the lake, ready to show that stupid Poor Man.
Two strokes later, all the strength drained out of his limbs and Frederick sank to the bottom. He held his breath, looking up at the sun dancing on the surface far away. Totally unable to move, he let out that last breath of air and watched the bubbles drift up, prolonging the moment when he had to breathe in water, but fuck, there it was, and he died.
There weren’t any other swimmers in the village, so it took until the body floated and someone borrowed their uncle’s boat to get deceased Frederick out of the lake.
Despite being a prick, Frederick had admirers in the village. He’d started a body building club, which recommended herbs to pump you up and a songbird-based protein diet. These neigh-bros were pretty bummed that Poor Man had used a miracle to drown Frederick. They decided to take Frederick’s body on a journey to Elizabeth’s tomb. Ask for a miracle, apologize in person. It was the kind of thing they did back then, especially when they’d already brought in most of the harvest and they were stuck at home with the woman they’d had to marry even though Frederick was more their type. Getting out for a trip with the lads seemed really appealing, even if they did have to drag their buddy’s putrescent corpse along on a donkey cart.
They journeyed for seven days. To pass the time, they dressed Frederick up in comical outfits, propped him against road signs while sketching quick impressions, told the innkeepers they met along the way that he was just a bit drunk, all that kind of shit. They didn’t make it to the tomb. (These kinds of guys never do, too much drinking, not enough follow-through.) Still, Elizabeth, bored on her cloud up in heaven, saw the kindness and devotion in their hearts. Or maybe she just regretted killing Frederick at the behest of Poor Man. Maybe she didn’t want to be the saint known for lighting people on fire AND drowning them. Maybe Jesus gave her That Look. Or maybe life was just one more thing she could give away. Whatever it was, Saint Elizabeth brought Frederick back to life midway through a chilly evening, as everyone was sitting around the fire telling tales. He lurched upright with a huge gasp of breath into his swimmer’s lungs, which caused several onlookers to spit out their bog-myrtle infused ale.
There were many more miracles attributed to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, stretching through today and doubtless extending far into the future, but we’ll leave her here, at the end of her own time. Here ends a faithful record of the life and miracles of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Saint Elizabeth, pray for us. Or you know what, nah, we’re good. Thanks anyway.
_
Source Material:
Delany, Sheila, ed. A Legend of Holy Women: A Translation of Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Holy Women. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
Tracy, Larissa, ed. Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives. Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 2003.
Sarah Starr Murphy’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Qu, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. She’s co-managing editor for The Forge Literary Magazine and eternally at work on a novel. She’s a marathoner with epilepsy and two very stinky dogs.
