The medieval saint of charity who, Steiner relates in GA 109, carried a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into her sentient soul.
Elizabeth of Thuringia in Anthroposophy is the Hungarian king's daughter and Landgravine of Thuringia (1207 to 1231) whom Rudolf Steiner names in The Principle of Spiritual Economy (GA 109, 1909) as a bearer of a preserved sheath of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Berlin lecture of 15 February 1909, a copy of the astral body of Jesus was woven into her sentient soul, the same weaving Steiner ascribes to Francis of Assisi. She belongs to the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth century in which, as GA 109 describes it, such astral copies were given to souls whose karma called for them. For Steiner her charity, the Marburg hospital of 1228 and her nursing of the sick were not learned virtues but the working of that inherited sheath of feeling, which makes her biography a documented case of spiritual economy.
A king's daughter who scrubbed the sores of lepers, Elizabeth of Thuringia (1207 to 1231) compressed a lifetime of charity into twenty-four years. Betrothed at four, widowed at twenty, she left the Wartburg, built a hospital at Marburg in 1228 and nursed its patients herself. Rudolf Steiner returns to her repeatedly in GA 109, holding her biography up as a riddle that only spiritual economy can solve.
In Steiner's Own Words
Many other personalities of this time had such a copy woven into their own being; and when we know this, they become models for us to emulate. If a person were to get to the bottom of this matter without knowing that Elisabeth of Thuringen had a copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into herself, how could he or she fully understand the life of this saintly woman? Many, many individuals were called upon through this continuing Christ-Force to carry its mighty impulse into future ages.
What it Means Today
The Church remembered Elizabeth through legend: bread hidden in her cloak turning to roses, a leper laid in her own bed appearing to her husband as the crucified Christ. Esoteric Christianity, as Steiner unfolds it in GA 109, replaces the miracle with a mechanism. Her ego remained her own ordinary human ego, open like any other to errors of judgment; what was extraordinary was the feeling-life she carried, a preserved copy of the astral body of Jesus working through her sentient soul. Steiner relates that the identical weaving lived in Francis of Assisi, which is why the two saints, who never met, read like siblings. The same reckless giving, the same tenderness toward lepers, the same indifference to rank appeared in an Italian cloth merchant's son and a Hungarian king's daughter within a single generation.
The reading has a practical edge for anyone who studies biography. Marburg still holds the evidence: Elizabeth founded its hospice in 1228, served the sick there until her death in 1231, and the Elisabethkirche was begun over her grave in 1235, the year Gregory IX canonized her. Hagiography records what she did. Spiritual economy, as Steiner presents the account, asks what was given to her so that she could do it, and answers with a sheath of Christ-formed feeling, lent to one short life of twenty-four years.
Where to Read More
- The Principle of Spiritual Economy, GA 109
- Find The Principle of Spiritual Economy at SteinerBooks
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