Although the Cortes of Aragon declared her patron saint of the kingdom in 1678, it is Zaragoza that accumulates more memories and references to this saint, born in the palace of the Aljafería around 1270. Unlike other Aragonese saints, she does not have a chapel dedicated in El Pilar or the Seo, but the monumental baroque church in the Plaza del Justicia is dedicated to him. It also bears his name one of the streets leaving the square leads to one of the busiest arteries of Zaragoza: Alfonso Street.
The iconography of that Infanta of Aragon and Queen of Portugal focuses mainly on her heroic charity, directed mainly to the poor and the sick. The image of St. Charles represents her with royal crown and purple mantle, a mantle that she holds with both hands and is full of roses.
The face, with a whitish to pinkish hue, is a sample of the baroque expressivenessa harmonious combination of the sublime and the simple. "Delicacy" is the term that could best define the image. Its contemplation will lead some to disquisitions on where history begins and legend ends, for the hagiographic repertoire is prodigal in examples of charitable queens and princesses who, questioned by their parents or husbands about the contents of the folds of their cloaks, show roses instead of coins or food intended for the poor.
To this it should be objected that no legend can cast doubt on the testimonies about Elizabeth's charity, an expression of her faith in identifying the patients with Christ. She was a saint who, like others, was a real mother of mercy.
About fifty years before Christ, the book of Wisdom (1:8) painted a portrait of an era in which the happiness was to be crowned with roses before they wilted. But roses always have thorns and so, of course, does life itself.
Those thorns were not spared to the sweet, kind and intelligent Queen Elizabeth. Her unfurled mantle of roses is an image of her own life. Note, however, that the mantle shows the roses, not the thorns.
And it is that the Christian does not hide the reality of life but gives it a new attunement: the supernatural one, for the authentic Christian life is that of identification with Christ.
Devotion to the saints is illuminated by the consideration that they are other Christs. Without saints, the Christianity becomes more inaccessible. Remove the saints and the prophets, and we are left only with the spectator and immobile God of the philosophers.
St. Elizabeth of Portugal, pray for peace in our countries. She is patroness of the territories at war.
An Aragonese saint of the twentieth century, St. Josemaría Escrivá, once referred to the holy queen in these terms: "That kindly sanctity of an infanta of Aragon, Queen Isabella of Portugal, whose passage through the world was like a luminous sowing of peace among men and peoples.
There is no greater prodigy of synthesis in these laudatory words. In the face of a rigorist and antipathetic "holiness", we have here an example of naturalness, a demonstration that holiness can also inhabit palaces and move with ease at banquets, audiences and visits. In the fair of intrigues and pettiness, holiness is possible if it moves to the rhythm of the God's presence. This presence was nourished in Elizabeth's piety, in the prayer of the psalms and in the daily mass. From this came the strength of someone who, like the biblical Esther, could have said: "My Lord and God, I have no defender but You" (Est 4:17).
Her husband, King Don Dionis, often seemed to be more interested in the gallantries of the troubadours than in the affairs of government. His continuous infidelities were public knowledge, but Isabella kept quiet and usually changed her conversation or withdrew to the palace chapel when the unleashed tongues of the courtiers sought to torment her with the latest news of her husband's "gallant life".
The queen also suffered with the hatred accumulated of his son Alfonso towards his father, because he was showing signs of preference towards his bastard brothers. The queen would go to a plain, near Lisbon, to avoid the clash between the armies of her husband and her son, and although she managed to avoid it, she would be imprisoned by royal order behind the walls of the fortress of Alenquer, because of the unjust suspicion that she herself had fomented Alfonso's rebellion. She would leave, however, to assist Don Dionís on his deathbed in 1325.
It was then that the king himself reminded Alfonso that the queen was twice his mother, for she gave him life between tears and sentences. Isabella would go to meet God in 1336 in Estremoz, in the heat and fatigue of the hot Alentejo summer, when she was on her way to interpose herself between the opposing armies of two Alfonsos: her son, Alfonso IV of Portugal, and her grandson, Alfonso XI of Castile.
It was also the peacemakerThe beatitudes show us the portrait of the imitators of Christ, and call the peacemakers children of God (Mt 5:9).
Only those who are filled with God have peace and are in a position to transmit it. Peace often comes also from that kindly holiness, even if it is often misunderstood, which sees in others other children of God.
Antonio R. Rubio Plo
Degree in History and Law
International writer and analyst
@blogculturayfe / @arubioplo
