Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

Saint Elizabeth of Portugal, also called Isabel of Aragon, was queen of Portugal, the wife of King Denis and the mother of two children. She became known as a peacemaker who reconciled quarreling rulers and as a benefactor of the poor. As a widow she lived in Coimbra as a Franciscan tertiary. The Church commemorates her on July 4, the day of her death.

She was the daughter of Peter, later king of Aragon, and of Constance of Sicily. She was born in Zaragoza. The year of her birth is not certain: dates from 1269 to 1271 are given. She was named after her great-aunt, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Pope Pius XI recalled the tradition that her very birth brought concord between her grandfather and her father. At the age of twelve she was given in marriage to King Denis of Portugal.

The marriage was not easy, for the king was unfaithful. Elizabeth courageously endured a difficult married life and also brought up her husband’s children born out of wedlock. She herself bore a daughter, Constance, and a son, Afonso. In the grave disputes that divided the family and the kingdom she became a worker of reconciliation. She generously helped the poor, and Pius XI recalled how many churches, monasteries, and pious institutions she founded.

As her husband’s counselor she eased tensions between Aragon, Portugal, and Castile. When her son Afonso rose in revolt against his father and war broke out, she brought about their reconciliation; according to the accounts, she then rode out between the armies drawn up for battle. A legend is also linked with her, of the bread she was carrying to the poor that turned into roses; a similar story is told of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.

Denis died in 1325. The widowed queen made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and offered her crown there. She then settled in Coimbra, in a palace built beside the monastery of Poor Clares she had founded, and took the habit of the Third Order of Saint Francis. She gave away her possessions to the poor and to monasteries. Pope Urban VIII declared in a separate act that she had made her profession in that order.

In 1336 her son, by then King Afonso IV, was at war with King Alfonso XI of Castile, the husband of his daughter Maria and also Elizabeth’s grandson. The queen set out for Estremoz to reconcile them. She died there on July 4, 1336, consumed by fever. Her body was taken to Coimbra and buried in the church of the Poor Clares. Her relics are venerated there to this day.

Pope Leo X beatified her in 1516, permitting her cult in the Diocese of Coimbra, and Urban VIII canonized her in Rome on May 25, 1625. In 1936, on the six hundredth anniversary of her death, Pius XI recalled that the liturgical books called her Mother of peace and of the homeland, and he held her up as a model at a time when war threatened the world. In the collect of her memorial the Church asks that through her intercession we may be peacemakers and be called children of God.