In the 1860s Franz Liszt, best known as piano virtuoso but actually with a more restrained sense to himself when appropriate, composed an oratorio based on frescos at the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach depicting the life of St Elizabeth of Hungary. The Wartburg is an interesting location in its own right, and between the times of St Elizabeth and Franz Liszt had witnessed Luther’s work translating the Bible into German.

The oratorio, at over two hours, is seldom performed, and perhaps it would be fair to say that there are elements that are somewhat dull if we’re honest. The titular Saint had married the Landgrave of Thuringia as a teenager in the early 1220s, lost her husband to the crusades at the age of 20, and died at only 24, having distributed significant value in alms to the poor and needy, as well as endowing and herself serving in a hospital.

The most memorable moment in the oratorio is a miracle that follows a trope common to a number of female Saints in which challenged by her husband as to what she was doing, a basket full of bread which she was to distribute to the poor miraculously became a much more innocent basket of roses, appropriate to a young lady of her station. Whether it returned to bread or allowed the poor to go hungry is not reported. More importantly, her early vitae on the whole suggest that her husband was in full support of her charity, rendering the historicity of the miracle yet more unlikely.

The oratorio also probably overstates the drama with which Elizabeth departed the castle after the death of her husband, and minimises the influence of her confessor.

What, then, are we to make of the life of  this Saint, her miracle, and/or Liszt’s setting of scenes from her life to music? She is a clear example of Christian charity, albeit facilitated by financial and social advantage; we can all learn from her about giving of God’s gifts to us to those around us in need. The setting is entitled ‘legend’ and I wonder if we can’t allow ourselves to learn from the lives of Saints as told with legendary elements, even if an historian might argue that certain stories within the tales are unlikely to have actually happened? Tropes of hagiography can still be informative for spiritual formation; good works can be inspirational even, or perhaps especially, when they are overstated.

The miracle of the roses perhaps needs an additional element: bread transformed into Christian Love for the purposes of distribution to God’s people to enable their glorification of God. It is, of course, another element to draw us back to the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life.