{"id":182942,"date":"2022-08-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.fundacioncarf.org\/santa-isabel-infanta-de-aragon-y-reina-de-portugal-la-luz-de-una-santidad-amable\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T18:15:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T16:15:32","slug":"isabel-reina-de-portugal-santidad-amable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/isabel-reina-de-portugal-santidad-amable\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Isabella, Infanta of Aragon and Queen of Portugal: the light of a kindly holiness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Although the Cortes de Arag\u00f3n 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 Aljafer\u00eda around 1270. Unlike other Aragonese saints, she does not have a chapel dedicated to her in El Pilar or La Seo, but the monumental Baroque church in the Plaza del Justicia is dedicated to her. It also bears his name one of the streets that leads from the square to one of the busiest arteries of Zaragoza: Alfonso Street.<\/p>\n

Santa Isabel<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The face, of a tone between whitish and rosy, is a sample of baroque expressiveness, a 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, since the hagiographic repertoire is rich 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> with Christ. A saint who, like others, was a true mother of mercy.<\/p>\n

Thorns and roses<\/h3>\n

About fifty years before Christ, the book of Wisdom (1, 8) showed the portrait of a time when happiness was to be crowned with roses before they withered. But roses always have thorns and so, of course, does life itself.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And it is that the Christian<\/a> does not hide the reality of life but gives it a new attunement: the supernatural, because the authentic life of the Christian is that of identification with Christ.<\/p>\n

Devotion to the saints is illuminated by the consideration that they are other Christs. Without saints, Christianity becomes more inaccessible. Remove the saints and the prophets, and we are left only with the spectator and immobile God of the philosophers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Santa<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Santa Isabel of Portugal<\/a>She prays for peace in our countries. She is patroness of the territories at war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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St. Elizabeth: light of a kindly holiness<\/h3>\n

An Aragonese saint of the twentieth century, St. Josemar\u00eda Escriv\u00e1, 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.<\/p>\n

There is no greater prodigy of synthesis in these laudatory words. In contrast to 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.<\/p>\n

In the fair of intrigues and pettiness, holiness is possible if it moves to the rhythm of God's presence.<\/p>\n

This presence was nourished in Elizabeth's piety, in the recitation of the psalms and in daily Mass. From there came the strength of someone who, like the biblical Esther, could well have said: \"My Lord and God, I have no defender but You\" (Est 4:17).<\/p>\n

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\".<\/p>\n

The queen also suffered from the accumulated hatred of her son Alfonso towards his father, who showed preference towards his bastard brothers.<\/p>\n

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, for the unjust suspicion that she herself had fomented the rebellion of Alfonso. She would leave, however, to assist Don Dion\u00eds on his deathbed in 1325.<\/p>\n

It was then that the king himself reminded Alfonso that the queen was twice his mother, for she gave him her life in tears and prayers. 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.<\/p>\n

St. Elizabeth: Queen of Charity<\/h2>\n

She was also the peacemaker, since the beatitudes show us the portrait of the imitators of Christ, and call the peacemakers children of God (Mt 5:9).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Antonio R. Rubio Plo, <\/strong>Graduate in History and Law. Writer and international analyst.
\n@blogculturayfe \/ @arubioplo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the church of the Royal Seminary of San Carlos in Zaragoza, images of Aragonese saints or those related to the Society of Jesus predominate, as they were carved by Jesuit sculptors for a temple that is an apotheosis of the Baroque. One of the saints represented is a saint from Zaragoza who won the hearts of the Portuguese people: Queen Isabel, daughter and granddaughter of Jaime I and Pedro III of Aragon, and married to King Dion\u00eds of Portugal.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":183466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182942"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216333,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182942\/revisions\/216333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fundacioncarf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}