Master Conrad of Marburg succeeded the Franciscan Father Rodinger as Saint Elizabeth's confessor in 1225. Her husband Ludwig had a high opinion of him, and "in a weak moment gave consent to Elizabeth's vowing perpetual obedience to this man as her director, little dreaming that by doing so he was condemning her soul to the rack, her body to the death" (Lives of the Saints, 430). He is described as a learned and able man, but deplorably insensitive. As ruthless and brutal as he treated her, he could not break her spirit as she straightened, "like grass after heavy rain" (Attwater 112).
Various sources differ to exactly what extent Master Conrad blighted the life of Saint Elizabeth. The harshest judgment comes from Lives of the Saints, which details numerous incidents of abuse. On one instance, Conrad was to preach and expected Elizabeth and her ladies in waiting to be present. Elizabeth was expecting an important guest, and her absence was sorely noted by Master Conrad. He sent her a message renouncing her, after which she threw herself at his feet imploring his pardon. "This he only granted on condition that [she and her maidens] should strip to their shirts, and be lashed with his knotted scourge. They shudderingly submitted, as, gloating his eyes on their bare shoulders, he beat them without more mercy than he had displayed to heretics dancing in the flames of their pyre" (Lives of the Saints, 435).
Besides beating Elizabeth, Conrad treats her cruelly by denying her every pleasure. In her failing health, Conrad dismisses her faithful attendants, Ysentrude and Jutta. "The coward is always cruel. When he found she took a delight in giving alms of money, he forbade her doing so. Then she gave loaves, and found satisfaction in that. He forbade her that pleasure. Then she gave crusts away; when he heard of that he stopped it....It was openly asserted that she was the mistress of Conrad. Her cheeks burned, but she could not break from under his iron thraldom. She was made to wash up dishes, and scrub the floor; she submitted" (Lives of the Saints, 456). According to this account, Master Conrad leads her to her early grave. Other texts, however, do not look upon Conrad with the same disdain.
According toThe Golden Legend, Master Conrad did indeed deprive her of things she loved, "And this holy man did this for to break her will, so that she should set all love in our Lord, and to the end that she should not remember her first glory" (223).
Rutebeuf's medieval version of Saint Elizabeth fully portrays Master Conrad as a "good man" (Cazelles, 157). For instance, "Conrad also inspired her to avoid / Eating food / If she could know or guess / That it had been obtained through plundering. / And she followed this advice so well / That no one ever suspected a thing. / For when she was able to guess / The source of the food that was served, / As she sat beside her husband, / You would have sworn, through her gestures, / that she was eating it, truly, / More than anyone sitting at the table. / She was in fact not eating anything, / But was merely moving the food around on her plate" (Cazelles, 157-8). This is a curious representation, illustrating that there are different takes on Master Conrad's role in Saint Elizabeth's life.
Essentially, Master Conrad cannot be painted as solely good or evil. "Subjectively, it is true that Conrad, by giving to Elizabeth obstacles which she overcame, helped her on her road to sanctity...objectively, his methods were offensive" (Butler's Lives of the Saints, 388-9). According to Butler's Lives of the Saints, Conrad sometimes acted as a prudent and necessary brake on her enthusiasm, not allowing her to expose herself to infectious disease or use every bit of energy working for the poor. Hence, his motives may have been thoughtful, but he acted on them in cruel ways. "He punished her with slaps in the face and blows with 'a long, thick rod' whose marks remained for three weeks. No plea of 'other times, other manners' can take the sting from Elizabeth's bitter cry to Isentrude, 'If I am so afraid of a mortal man, how awe-inspiring must be the Lord and Judge of the world!" (BLS, 389). Master Conrad must ultimately be considered cruel and abusive, and the emotional intensity of their relationship sheds light on the life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.