Life
The accounts of Elizabeth's life describe her as set apart for God from the beginning. The synaxarion relates that it was revealed to her mother that the girl would become a chosen vessel of the Lord, echoing the language of Acts 9:15, and that her parents sent her to a monastery while still a child.
She grew up, the tradition says, in an atmosphere of fasting and constant prayer, and came to be regarded as having received the gift of healing both physical and spiritual infirmities. Because of this reputation the sisters of the convent of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Constantinople chose her to be their abbess.
The anchor record names Heraklea in Thrace as her birthplace; the external Orthodox sources consulted describe her simply as being from Constantinople and do not independently corroborate the Thracian origin.
Asceticism
Elizabeth's life is chiefly remembered for the severity of her self-discipline. The synaxarion reports that she wore a coarse hairshirt throughout the year, so that her body was chilled in winter while, in the words of the account, her spirit blazed with love for God.
For many years, the sources say, she ate only grass and vegetables and would not partake of bread, wine, or oil. One account adds that she never wore shoes, donned only a single coarse outer garment, never bathed her body with water, and would fast for forty days at a stretch.
A recurring detail in the tradition is that, imitating the humility of the Publican of the Gospel, she did not for three years lift up her eyes to the sky, fixing her mind upon God alone and, as the account puts it, looking constantly to God with her spiritual eyes.
Miracles & Traditions
Traditional Accounts: The wonders attributed to Elizabeth are preserved in her synaxarion and later Orthodox accounts rather than in independent documentary record. She is said to have killed a vicious and poisonous serpent by her prayers, an episode that gives rise to her alternative epithet 'the Dragon-slayer' and to icons in which she is shown having triumphed over a dragon.
Traditional Accounts: The same sources relate that she healed a woman who had suffered for many years from an issue of blood, cast out unclean spirits, and cured many people of various diseases and passions during her lifetime.
Relics & Shrines
After her repose, the tradition holds that healings continued at her grave: the synaxarion reports that many were cured of various illnesses at her tomb and that the blind received their sight, and other accounts add that even the soil around her grave became associated with healing.
Portions of her relics are reported to be kept at monasteries in Crete and in Athens.
