5. The teats of Elizabeth of Thuringia were hacked off as relics in the 13th century.
Elizabeth of Thuringia (1207-31) was a radiant Hungarian princess. Happily married with three lovely children, if she had a fault it was her unceasing generosity to the poor. But when her equally pious husband, Louis IV of Thuringia, died on Crusade, her life was turned upside down: refusing to marry again, she fell under the spell of her brutal and zealous confessor, Conrad of Marburg. Conrad reorganised Elizabeth’s life to make it one so miserable and austere that her own servants would beat her for indiscretions. Sadly, she died aged just 24, as daily beatings and near-starvation took their toll.
But Elizabeth’s generosity, personal ministration to the poor, and pathetic death all made her a popular figure in her native Hungary and beyond. Within hours of her death, mobs of Catholics were banging at the mausoleum’s doors, wanting to touch her body for cures and blessings. Soon pilgrims flocked from far and wide, and began to mutilate her barely-dead body for relics. Locks of hair and fingernails were torn off, but the devastation did not stop there: someone even cut off her teats, and took them away as relics. Seeing Elizabeth’s teats, thus, became an incongruous goal for many pilgrims.
