Elizabeth of Reute
Elisabeth Achler or Elsbeth Achler (also called " Elizabeth of Reute ", known as the Good or Beth " Elisabetha Bona "; * November 25, 1386 in Waldsee, † November 25, 1420 in Unterankenreute) was a German nun and mystic. She was co-founder of the monastery Reute. Their lives are intimately bound up with the religious reform movements of the 15th century who, with back-references to the religious awakening of 13-14. Century and its " mystical " spirituality, aimed at a renewal of the church and religious life.
Life
Elisabeth Achler was the daughter of Hans and Anna Weber married couple Achler. She had two brothers.
The Waldseer Augustinian Canons Kügelin Konrad (1367-1428), since Elizabeth's 14 years her confessor and spiritual director, inspired the religious minded girl for a spiritual life. It was Franciscan Terziarin and first lived in extreme poverty in an elderly Begine in Waldsee. In 1403 she moved with four other young women in the Metsch of newly built using the pen provost of Waldsee Jacob Klause in Reute. In 1406 the hermitage was raised to the convent; the sisters followed the Third Rule of the Franciscan Order. Elisabeth led there a life in solitude, poverty and prayer; she took care of the kitchen and fed the poor at the monastery gate. Their religious life was directed primarily to the consideration and witnessing the passion of Christ.
Survival
Immediately after Elizabeth's death wrote Konrad Kügelin a Latin Vita, which was widespread in the following years in several and German versions. It is decorated in essential elements modeled after the Vita of St. Catherine of Siena and should serve as a basis for a canonization process. Elisabeth appears as a mystic who had visions, ecstatic states experienced the stigmata of Christ wore and lived without eating for three years. The evidence for this alleged Nahrungslosigkeit formation is due to the representations of the confessor Kügelin ago. He wrote:
" Now the Virgin love in the truth no bodily food ate because she could not have a bowel movement. Then the devil came so many times to her and brought with human excrement, the foul- smelling beyond, as if it were mixed together sulfur and resin. And the droppings did the evil spirit in a basin or jar or in a harness that was in the chamber, so you can see that they also went to chair and so the suspicion that eat them secretly, the greater will the sisters. Even more: the devil also took the same feces and threw it on her bedroom through a window, that the walls were dirty from the outside, so that the nuisance was increasing and not from ".
Kügelin also said that he himself had seen the devil struck the Achler writes. The Vita also reveals the extent more about Kügelins views and his religious experience of the world than Elisabeth Achler itself
Elisabeth Achler is considered a " woman of the people " who committed a decided life in imitation of Christ led. In her mind then also had Ursula Haider, who grew up from 1422-1430 in Reute monastery and later became known as mystically gifted reform Abbess of Bickenklosters in Villingen.
Elisabeth Achler, the "good Beth," as it is called because of their self-sacrificing life, has become the only among the mystically gifted women of the 14th and 15th century in Germany for popular saints; it is revered to this day. Their beatification took place on June 19, 1766 by Pope Clement XIII. ; her feast is celebrated on 25 November. In the Sanctuary of Reute baroque frescoes represent scenes from her life dar. Since 1870 is in Reute the parent of a new Franciscan community; along the lines of "Good Beth ", the Franciscan Sisters of Reute aim to have " serve God ( to ) in the suffering humanity ."