Saint Isidore the Farmer

Saint Isidore the Farmer was a farmer from Madrid who lived in the twelfth century. He joined hard work on the land with daily prayer and shared what he had with the poor. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him together with his wife, Blessed María de la Cabeza, as an example of a devout Christian farmer. His memorial falls on May 15.

He was born in Madrid to a poor and devout family. The exact dates of his life are not known: tradition holds that he was born around 1070 or 1080 and died around 1130, although some sources give a later year of death. The oldest source about him is a codex attributed to John, a deacon of the church of Saint Andrew in Madrid, written in the thirteenth century, long after Isidore’s death. Many of the stories about his life belong to pious tradition.

Isidore worked as a hired farmhand on an estate near Madrid; tradition hands down the name of his master, Juan de Vargas. He married María, whom the Spanish venerate as María de la Cabeza. Pope Innocent XII approved her ancient cult in 1697. According to tradition, the couple had one son, who died in childhood. Though poor themselves, they shared the little they had with those in need.

Isidore never went to work before he had heard Mass and prayed to God and the Mother of God. Other laborers accused him before his master of neglecting his work because of this. According to a tradition that the bull of canonization also recounts, the angry master came to the field and saw it being plowed by three teams of oxen: Isidore drove one, and young men in white garments drove the other two, vanishing as he drew near. Popular piety sees them as angels. It was also told that one freezing winter he scattered grain on the snow for hungry doves, and yet his sack stayed full.

He died in Madrid around 1130, after confession and Holy Communion. He was buried in the cemetery. According to the bull of canonization, about forty years later his body was moved to the church of Saint Andrew and was then found intact. Over the following centuries devotion to Isidore spread throughout Spain, and King Philip III earnestly asked the Holy See for his beatification.

Pope Paul V beatified him in 1619. Gregory XV canonized him on March 12, 1622, in Saint Peter’s Basilica, together with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, and Teresa of Jesus, and set his feast on May 15. Because Gregory XV died before the bull of canonization was drawn up, it was issued only more than a century later, by Benedict XIII. In 1960 John XXIII proclaimed Saint Isidore patron of all the farmers of Spain. He is also the patron saint of Madrid.