Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

LIVES OF THE SAINTS. — VOLUME VIII. 3 kingdoms. King James, who foresaw well that she would surpass in piety all the princesses of the blood of Aragon, wished to have her at his court and to take upon himself the care of her education, in order to inspire in her early on the desire for virtue and the solid maxims of the Christian religion. Elizabeth, whom he left at his death in the sixth year of her age, having returned to her father's house, showed immediately, by her modesty and her conduct, how much she had benefited from her grandfather. At the age of eight, she recited the divine office every day; which she practiced thereafter until her death. She had such compassion for the poor that she could not see them without assisting them by all the means that her charity provided her. She despised the luxury of clothing, which is so common among princesses. She fled from the pleasures and entertainments that are often almost their entire occupation. She had prescribed for herself fasts which she observed inviolably. In a word, she led a heavenly life, which made the king, her father, say that the piety of his daughter was the cause of the happy success of the affairs of his State. The radiance of her virtue having spread throughout Europe, she was asked in marriage by several princes; but Denis, Ki Denys, roi de Portugal Husband of Elizabeth, King of Portugal. ng of Portugal, had the good fortune to prevail over all the others, to the great contentment of his subjects, who received their new queen as a saint whom heaven gave them to shower them with all kinds of happiness.

The honors of royalty with all their charms did not touch Elizabeth's heart in the least, nor did they prevent her from practicing her ordinary exercises. With truly Christian prudence, she tempered the various functions she fulfilled at court one with the other. Her abstinence was the rule of her delights; her joy was moderated by her tears; all her actions were accompanied by prayer, and, failing in nothing that she owed to the King her husband, she did for the service of God all that piety required of her in her station. To this end, all the hours of her time were holily distributed. As soon as she rose, she recited Matins and Prime, then she went to her chapel where she heard Mass on her knees, during which she always made her offering, so as not to appear empty-handed before the majesty of her God. She was also accustomed to kiss the priest's hand out of respect. She often approached Holy Communion, to which she brought an admirable purity of conscience. At the end of Mass, she said the Office of the Blessed Virgin along with that of the Dead. After dinner, she returned to the chapel to hear Vespers and finish her office; it was also there that she withdrew to make her orisons and spiritual readings, and to pour out her heart in the presence of the Lord: and all her pious actions were accompanied by a great abundance of tears that the tenderness of her love drew from her eyes. As for the time that remained after her devotional exercises, she used it to make with her own royal hands ornaments for the altars or clothing for the poor; and all the ladies of the court, touched by her example, helped her in these pious works. Her entire exterior announced simplicity; she was affable and full of kindness for everyone; she possessed the spirit of compunction in an eminent degree, and it often happened to her, in prayer, to shed abundant tears.

As she was almost always applied to God, she practiced a very rigorous abstinence, for fear that her body being too well nourished, her spirit would not be as fit for contemplation. This is why, besides the fasts that the Church prescribes during the year, she fasted three times a week, the whole of Advent, and from Saint John the Baptist until the Assumption of Our Lady, after which she began, in honor of the Angels, a Lent that did not end until the day of Saint Michael; on the Fridays and Saturdays that preceded the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, she fasted on bread and water. Her zeal would have pushed her to perform even greater austerities; but prudence made her moderate them, so as not to disobey the King her husband, who forbade her from doing more.

Her charity toward the poor was incomparable. Her chaplain had express orders to turn none away, so that it often happened that the funds intended for her alms were insufficient. She sent wheat and provisions to the monasteries of monks and nuns whom she knew to be in need. Her liberality was not confined within the borders of the kingdom of Portugal; it extended even to distant lands made miserable by public calamities. She took particular care of people of quality whom reversals of fortune, or rather divine Providence, had reduced to poverty. Not only did she give hospitality to poor pilgrims and strangers, but after receiving them with all imaginable kindness, she had them clothed and provided them with the means to continue their journey. She took orphans under her protection and promptly assisted young girls who were in indigence, in order to draw them from the peril to which misery exposed their purity; she sent clothes to those who needed them, and she found good matches for those inclined toward marriage. She was not content merely to have the necessary things given to the sick, but she also wished to serve them herself. Every Friday of Lent, she washed the feet of thirteen poor people; and after kissing them most humbly, she had them dressed in new clothes. She practiced the same on Holy Thursday with regard to thirteen poor women. God authorized these devotions of Elizabeth through miracles. One day, while she was washing the feet of the poor, there was among them a woman who had an ulcer on her foot whose foul odor was unbearable: the queen, despite all the repugnance of nature, took this infected foot, dressed the ulcer, washed it, dried it, kissed it, and healed it. Having performed the same charity for the poor in Santarem on Good Friday, one remained in the palace, crippled and covered with leprosy, who had not been able to follow the others because of his great weakness: a gate guard having met him became a ngry wit Santarem City in Portugal where the saint's life takes place. h him, struck him with a stick, and wounded him. Elizabeth, being informed of this, first had the guard brought to her and severely reprimanded him for his harshness toward the poor; then she had the cripple brought to her, applied the first dressing to his wound herself, and ordered that he be taken great care of; but the next day, through the merits of the Saint, he was found perfectly healed, both of his wound and of the leprosy with which he was afflicted. Carrying a large sum of money in her robe one day to distribute to the poor, she met her husband, who asked her what she was carrying; she replied: "They are roses"; and, indeed, unfolding her robe immediately, it was found, by a marvel of divine Providence, that they were, even though it was at a time when naturally there could be none. It is in memory of this miracle that one of the gates of the monastery of Saint Clare, which she had built, was called the Gate of the Roses, because of the great alms she had distributed there to the poor.

One of the principal functions of charity is to restore peace between people who are in dissension: it is in this that one can say that that of Saint Elizabeth triumphed; for if from her birth she reunited her grandfather with her father, in the course of her life she made reconciliations which, according to human appearances, seemed impossible. Alphonse of Portalegre, her brother-in-law, was in a quarrel with her husband because of some domain that he claimed belonged to him, and he was resolved to obtain justice for himself by force of arms. But our Saint stifled this civil war by sacrificing a portion of her income and yielding it wholeheartedly to the king to compensate him for what he released to the prince, his brother. The principal duty of a queen is to soften the spirit of the king toward his people and his subjects; to point out to him on occasion the abuses that slip into the administration of affairs, and to prevent him from being surprised or deceived by ill-intentioned persons, who only look at the interest of their master insofar as their own is linked to it. This is what Elizabeth worked at incessantly. She often gave good advice to the king; she effectively led him to govern his States well; she inspired in him sentiments of gentleness and compassion toward his people; she exhorted him particularly not to lend an ear to the vain speeches of flatterers, nor to the false reports of the envious; she restored him two or three times to a good understanding with Prince Alphonse, her son, when the State, finding itsel prince Alphonse, son fils Son of Elizabeth and Denis, often in conflict with his father. f divided for them into two parties, was on the point of coming to blows. When she knew that families were in litigation, she made sure to accommodate them amicably to prevent them from consuming themselves in costs. If one of the parties lacked money to satisfy the other, according to the proposed conditions, she gave liberally from her own, so as not to delay for too long the bonds of peace, which she preferred to all the gold in the world. But her charity never appeared more heroic than in a popular riot that occurred in Lisbon. The citizens, some of whom held for the king, and others for Prince Alphonse, his son, being already under arms, ready to fight against one another, our generous princess mounted a mule, and, going from side to side in the middle of the two armies, to solicit them by her tears, as well as by her words, to lay down their arms and to treat for peace, instead of thinking of war, she succeeded so happily in her negotiation that she obliged the son to ask pardon of his father, and the father to forgive his son. Portugal was not the only kingdom where she made peace reign; she also worked strongly to establish it between the other kings of the Spains, so that being united together they could exterminate the Moors, who occupied a fairly considerable part of it and ravaged the other by their continual incursions. She reconciled Peter, King of Aragon, her father, with Ferdinand, King of Castile, her son-in-law: which some princes had several times attempted to do uselessly. She also restored to peace the king, her husband, with the same Ferdinand, when they were preparing to make war on each other. Finally, one can say that she died from the fatigues she took to extinguish a cruel dissension between Alphonse, King of Portugal, her son, and Alphonse, King of Castile, her grandson.

This love of Elizabeth for the public tranquility deserved, it seems, that she should enjoy the sweetness of a private peace with the king, her husband; but God, wishing to test her virtue, permitted discord to arise from what should have produced only perfect concord between them. Prince Alphonse, her son, had risen against the king. The queen spared nothing to reconcile them: besides her prayers and mortifications, to appease the anger of God and to obtain from His mercy a solid peace in the royal house, she did everything possible to persuade Alphonse to lay down his arms, to submit to the king, his father, and to implore his clemency. However, some ill-intentioned people poisoned such charitable negotiations to the king, making him believe that the queen was secretly assisting the prince with money and soldiers, and that she was revealing the secrets of the council; which had several times prevented, they said, his arrest. This report so embittered the king that, without inquiring into the truth, he deprived Elizabeth of all her revenues and relegated her to Alanquer, with orders not to leave without his permiss Alanquer Place of the queen's exile. ion. As soon as this was known in the kingdom, several great lords, indignant at such ill-treatment, came to find her to offer their services, so that, by force of arms, they might compel the king to revoke this exile and restore her to the honors due to her rank. But far from taking advantage of this disposition of her subjects, she did what she could to appease them and stifle their fury. "Let us abandon our interests," she told them, "to divine Providence, and let us trust only in God alone; He will know well how to show our innocence and remove from the mind of the king, my lord, the wicked impressions that have been given to him of our conduct." She therefore spent the entire time of her exile shedding tears, macerating her body, fasting for whole weeks on bread and water, and praying almost incessantly, until at last the king, entirely disillusioned, recalled her to his person and conceived for her new feelings of tenderness and veneration.

Her patience appeared again on other occasions, particularly in the king's illicit loves. Although this prince had children by her, namely: Constance, later married to Ferdinand IV, King of Castile, and Alphonse, who succeeded him, and that, moreover, he was a courageous, liberal, and just man, a father to the poor and adorned with all the qualities proper to make a great king, he was nevertheless incontinent; and, without regard for the fidelity he owed to the queen, his wife, nor for the scandal he gave to his people, he allowed himself to be won over by several mistresses who also bore him children. Elizabeth conceived an extreme sorrow from this, and it was undoubtedly a great subject of discontent for her to be obliged to see every day before her eyes persons who shared with her the heart of her husband. However, more touched by the offense to God than by the injury done to her, she never showed them anything, and applied herself only to withdrawing the king from his debaucheries through the ways of gentleness. It is with this view that she took care of the children who came from this criminal commerce, having them raised herself, and rewarding their nurses and governesses with the same kindness and liberality that she might have done for those of her own children; and, by these heroic actions, she changed the heart of her husband so well that, recognizing at last that such a wise woman was a rich treasure for him, he renounced all kinds of illegitimate pleasures and kept his conjugal faith to her until death. But, because great changes are not made in the heart of a prince if God, who holds it in His hands, does not manage them by His Providence, a terrible accident finished opening the king's eyes and making him know the holiness of Elizabeth.

She had a page whom she ordinarily used to distribute her alms and for other works of piety, because he was wise and virtuous, and he carried out all the commissions given to him with prudence. It happened that another page of the king's chamber, jealous of the honor the queen showed the first, resolved to ruin him, and, to achieve this, as he had the ear of his master, he made him believe that the queen had more affection for this young boy than the law of God permitted. No more needed to be said to this prince to embitter him, because the disorder in which he still lived made him susceptible to all sorts of bad impressions against his wife: he therefore immediately conceived the design of having this innocent boy put to death in secret; and, having mounted his horse that same day to go for a ride, as he passed by a place where there was a lime kiln, he took aside those who tended the fire and ordered them that, when a page came to ask them if they had done what the king had commanded them, they should seize him on the spot and throw him into the burning furnace to be consumed. The next day, the king did not fail to send the queen's page there, so that these men might execute upon him what he had told them; but God assists his servants and takes the side of the innocent against the impious: here is how He arranged things by His Providence. The queen's page, passing before a church and hearing the bell ring at the elevation of the holy host, entered and remained there until the mass was finished. After this mass, he heard another, and, this one being finished, he remained in the church until the end of a third that had begun. Meanwhile, the king, impatient to know if this page of the queen was dead, called one of his own, who was precisely the slanderer, and sent him in haste to the furnace to know if what he had commanded had been done. The workers, believing that this one was the page of whom the king had spoken to them, seized him at that very moment, bound him, and threw him alive into the fire, where he was instantly consumed. The page, innocent and falsely accused, having finished hearing his three masses, arrived soon after and asked if His Majesty's orders had been executed. He was told that the thing was done. He retraced his steps to report to his master. The king was very surprised to see him and to learn that his design had had an outcome entirely contrary to what he had proposed. "What have you done, then, and where have you been for so long?" he said to him in anger. "Sire," replied the page, "going to execute Your Majesty's orders, I passed near a church where a mass was being said; I heard it to the end; and, before it was finished, another was begun which I also heard; and then a third, because my father, giving me his blessing before dying, particularly recommended to me this devotion of hearing all the masses that I would see begin, and thus I remained in the church until the end of the last one, after which I did what Your Majesty had ordered me." Then the king, admiring the judgments of God, recognized the innocence of the queen, the virtue of his officer, and the malice of the slanderer who had accused them.

Elizabeth needed a great abundance of graces to withstand such harsh storms; thus, she did everything in her power to prepare herself to receive them well: in addition to the good works we have reported, she never missed an opportunity to practice new ones. No public buildings were constructed in her time, whether churches or hospitals, ports or aqueducts, to which she did not contribute significantly with truly royal liberality; and people were so convinced of her munificence that a lady of illustrious rank, who had begun to found a monastery of Bernardines near Santarem, seeing herself on her deathbed, begged her by her will to complete this pious work: which the Saint willingly accepted; and not only did she have this religious house completed, but she also assigned it large revenues for its subsistence, without wishing for the title of founder to be given to her; she always left it to that lady who had laid its foundations. The Bishop of Santarem had undertaken to build a hospital for foundlings; and, seeing that by his death he left his design imperfect, he also had recourse to the piety of the queen; he begged her, by his will, to be the heir to the work he had begun. This commission was very agreeable to her; she even had the building made more spacious, increased its revenues in order to support more people, and prescribed good regulations for its administration. Her care extended to choosing wet nurses for the children, and sometimes she fed them herself, as if she had been their own mother; and, when they were of an age to learn a trade, she took it upon herself to place them with masters, to whom she recommended them particularly. A lady of Coimbra had begun to found a monastery for the daughters of Saint Clare in that city; but, lacking money, she had only been able to build the chapel and very little housing . The q Coimbre City where the saint founded a monastery and where she is buried. ueen, who eagerly embraced all opportunities that could contribute to the glory of God, immediately resolved to complete this undertaking. To this end, she bought neighboring houses which she united with what was already done; and thus, she made this monastery capable of receiving nuns, whom she introduced there immediately: her humility was so great that she sometimes served them at table with Princess Beatrice, her daughter-in-law. She also founded in the same city, near the palace, a hospital for the maintenance of thirty poor people of both sexes: she also had another built in a place called the New Towers or Torres-Novas, to serve as an asylum for debauched women who wished to retire and do penance for their licentious lives.

However harsh the conduct of the king her husband was toward her, she nevertheless always maintained for him a very deep respect and all the tenderness of a perfect wife, as we have already noted on several occasions; but it can be said that her conjugal love never appeared stronger and purer at the same time than during the illness from which he died, and after his death. Indeed, as soon as she saw him dangerously ill, it is impossible to say how afflicted she was, nor the care she took to assist him in this state: she did not leave him for a moment, and herself provided him with all the necessary assistance; no matter how much the king urged her to take a little rest, she did not spare her health for that; she spent the nights by his bedside to have him take, at the precise hours, the remedies ordered by the doctors; she tried to console him in his pains, and to banish from his mind the melancholy caused by the violence of the illness. She studied favorable moments to speak to him of God and the rigor of His judgments, of the compunction with which one must detest one's sins to obtain pardon, of the purity of conscience that a soul must have to appear before the eyes of the divine Majesty, before whom kings are no more than shepherds; finally, she spared nothing, either for his relief or to prepare him to die as a Christian, if God wished to call him to Himself. It was also with this view that she offered extraordinary prayers, and had them offered in many places, that she distributed large sums of money to the poor, and that she practiced many other good works.

After the death of the king, which occurred in Santarem on January 6, 1325, however overwhelmed with grief she was, she did not abandon herself to tears which, far from benefiting the deceased, often cause one to forget to provide them with the help they need; but she retired to her room to receive consolation in communion with her God. Her charity carried her further: for, to engage heaven to open its treasures for the relief of her husband's soul, she stripped herself of her royal garments, cut her hair herself, and took the habit of Saint Clare; then, in this holy attire, returning to where the king's body was, she said generously to the nobles of the kingdom who were present: "Know that, in losing your king, you have at the same time lost your queen; death, in a single blow, has taken both from you; render to the body of your sovereign all the honors that his dignity deserves. As for me, I will attend very appropriately in this poor habit, since no richer one is needed for a funeral, and as this rope and this vile tunic will represent my grief, so this veil on my head will bear witness to the constant fidelity I have had for my spouse." She then placed herself near the king's body, and did not leave it until he was buried. He was carried to the Cistercian monastery of Odivelas, which he had had built during his lifetime, and where he had chosen his burial place. The queen remained there for a few more days, not to receive consolation in her widowhood, but to continue her prayers at the king's tomb. She also had many masses said there for the repose of his soul; and, with this same intention, she clothed many poor people and distributed alms to a very large number of people.

After having thus rendered him the last duties, she went to Coimbra, to the monastery of Saint Clare, with the intention of enclosing herself there and ending her days under the Rule of that Saint. But she was dissuaded by some servants of God; they represented to her that, if she did so, this innumerable multitude of poor people, whom she supported with her liberality, being deprived of her assistance, would be reduced to the last extremity; she therefore preferred the advantages of her neighbor to the movements of her private devotion and her own satisfaction, and did not entirely enclose herself in the cloister. However, she always retained the habit of penance of the Third Order of Saint Francis; and, having had an apartment built near the monastery from which she could enter, she often retired with the nuns, whom she had permission to visit whenever she wished.

In the year of the death of the king, her husband, she went, for the repose of his soul, on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James, in the city of Compostela, in Galicia. As soon as she arrived at the place from which one begins to discover the high towers of that church, she dismounted and finished the rest of the journey in that state; which she did with such fervor that no one dared t Compostelle A major pilgrimage site visited by the saint. o oppose her devotion. During her stay in this holy place, the feast of this holy Apostle was celebrated on July 25, and she chose that very day to offer him the rich gifts she had brought. She therefore presented to him her gold crown, adorned with the most beautiful jewels in the world, her royal garments, all sparkling with embroidery and pearls, vases of gold and silver of inestimable price, a complete set of ornaments to serve for pontifical masses, tapestries and fabrics bristling, so to speak, with gold and precious stones, a prodigious sum of money, and so many other considerable gifts, that it was acknowledged that, by her munificence, she had surpassed everything that the greatest princes of the earth had ever done in honor of Saint James. Having thus fully satisfied her devotion, she went to the Cistercian monastery at Odivelas to celebrate, with royal pomp and magnificence, the anniversary of the death of the king, her husband, after which she returned to Coimbra. It was then that she had the monastery of Saint Clare completed, to which she again assigned very ample revenues. As she still had many precious fabrics and a quantity of silver ingots, she brought in goldsmiths and embroiderers, and gave them all these treasures to make sacred ornaments for the altars: chalices, crosses, censers, candlesticks, lamps, and other vessels intended for divine worship; she left a portion to the monastery of Saint Clare, and distributed the rest to various churches in Portugal.

We have reported until now the virtues that Saint Elizabeth practiced during the lifetime of the king, her husband, and the first year of his passing; we must now see what she did from that time until her death. It can be said that, being delivered from the law of marriage, as Saint Paul speaks, and having no other care than that of living in Jesus Christ, she made the same virtues appear with a new brilliance. Abstinence, retreat, prayer, and charity toward one's neighbor were still her ordinary exercises; but, as she was no longer obliged to spare herself to obey and please the king, she gave them a much greater scope. Her advanced age, which was nearly sixty years, did not prevent her from performing very rigorous fasts; and although, through her former mortifications, she had already perfectly subjected the flesh to the spirit, she did not cease to chastise it always to keep it in its duty; not only did she deprive herself of delicate dishes, but she even refused herself necessary food. She often entered the monastery, according to the power the Pope had given her, to pray with the nuns; she ate in their community, and her greatest pleasure was to converse with them; she exhorted them with holy fervor to observe their Rule and to make themselves faithful spouses of Jesus Christ, to whom they had consecrated themselves. She had five nuns with her, with whom she recited the entire divine office. She said Matins at midnight; in the morning, as soon as she was up, she attended a low mass to begin the day holily. A little later, she heard a high mass that she had celebrated every day for the repose of her husband's soul; then she attended the solemn mass of the day, and said Terce, Sext, and None with her holy companions.

After dinner, instead of amusing herself, according to the custom of the court, she gave audience to all the people who had recourse to her; and it is an admirable thing to see with what patience she listened to all the requests made to her, and with what presence of mind she answered them; sometimes a poor woman asked her for something to feed her family, reduced to the last misery; other times she was asked to help poor orphans; here, a widow implored her assistance and protection in her affairs; there, a sick person sent to represent to her that he was abandoned by everyone and had nothing to relieve himself. Sometimes it was a matter of poor monasteries to be helped, of desolate temples to be repaired. Finally, people came from all sides to find her, all the more freely because they were assured of being well received at her home. Neither people of the lowest condition with their dirty and torn clothes, nor villagers covered in dust, nor the sick who already bore on their faces the image of death, and the ulcerated who exhaled an unbearable odor from their bodies, were excluded from her room; they were on the contrary received like great lords, and one always left satisfied from her presence. She gave salutary advice to all those who consulted her; she effectively led to penance those she knew to be in disorder; she tried to procure some consolation for those she saw in pain; she sent alms to be distributed to prisoners, and she paid the price for the ransom of the captive. Above all, she showed well, in a famine that occurred in Coimbra, that her charity had no bounds: for, the inhabitants of this city being reduced to extreme scarcity, to the point of being forced to eat rats and mice, the virtuous princess spared nothing to help them in such great need; she had a large quantity of wheat and other provisions bought, which she distributed liberally to all the needy; and, as the desolation was so strange that the dead remained without burial, she took care to have them buried, sending for this purpose, into the streets and houses, people to whom she provided abundantly all the things necessary for their burial. The officers of her household, fearing, through human prudence, that the excessive expense she was making would reduce her herself to indigence, pointed out to her that it was appropriate to moderate it so as not to expose herself to this inconvenience. But, far from tasting their reasons: "You could not," she told them, "hold a discourse to me that was more disagreeable; do you want to limit my charities, because your hearts are narrowed by a vain fear of lacking the necessary? Are you so weak as to believe that God will abandon us when we use everything we have to help our neighbor? Is it not He who governs the world and who, by His Providence, causes the events we see happening? That is a fine imagination to persuade ourselves that we will perish if we continue to show charity to our brothers who are dying of hunger, and, on the contrary, that we will live if, through a pitiless cruelty, we let them perish of misery. Do you not know that Jesus Christ forbade us to occupy ourselves with the morrow? Remember that He assured us that He would take much more care of us than of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, which, however, never lack anything. No, I cannot hear the groans of so many poor mothers of families, and the voices of little children, nor see the tears of the elderly and the dead bodies of so many people, without using the goods that God has given me to provide for all these needs. Banish therefore this fear from your hearts, take good courage, put your trust in God, and do not spare my treasures at all to assist the miserable." Can one add anything to a charity so pure, so brilliant, so constant, and so universal?

When the functions of charity gave her a few moments of respite, she used them for the contemplation of heavenly things, retiring to a secret cabinet, where she could be neither seen nor heard by anyone; and there, she gave full freedom to her heart to sigh, and to her eyes to shed tears; she often spent a good part of the night there. Other times, she went to visit the hospital she had had built in honor of Saint Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary, and served the poor there herself. She conversed familiarly with them, exhorted them to patience in their misery, and, after having softened their ills with her words full of tenderness and a certain heavenly unction, she lifted them, made their beds, prepared dishes for them in the kitchen, and then, like a servant, brought them to them. The pale faces of the sick did not frighten her; the stench of the ulcers did not repel her; the fear of catching their ills did not worry her; finally, her dignity as a queen did not prevent her from giving herself to the vilest ministries of the hospital. It is in these holy practices that Elizabeth spent the rest of her days, waiting for the hour to arrive to appear before her God. The great graces she had received on her pilgrimage to Saint James made her undertake this journey once more, in order to obtain from this great Apostle new favors to die well: it was a year before her death, on the occasion of a plenary indulgence extraordinarily granted to pilgrims of this holy place; but it was not with the retinue and equipment of a queen, as the first time: she dressed in a poor habit so as not to be recognized, and only had herself accompanied by two women. She did it on foot, burdened with her small luggage, like people of the vilest condition, although she was then sixty-four years old, and it was during the greatest heat of the summer; and, finally, she made no difficulty in asking for alms from door to door, to receive her subsistence from the charity of the faithful. Prodigious humility! which should confound the delicacy of certain women who recoil before the slightest inconvenience, and do not dare to take a step without being completely at their ease.

Upon her return from this pilgrimage, news came to her that Alfonso IV, King of Portugal, her son, and Alfonso XI, King of Castile, the son of her daughter, were at odds with one another, and that their quarrel, if not promptly stifled, threatened to set these two kingdoms ablaze. This news was enough to make her die of grief; but, as there was no time to delay in providing a remedy for such a pressing evil, and having no regard for the frailty of her age, she promptly went to Estremoz, where the King, her son, was then ready to take the field against his nephew: she wished to wring words of peace from him and immediately pass into Castile, to complete this great work there with the King, her grandson. But no sooner had she arrived in Estremoz than she fell ill. She saw that this fever would lead her to the grave. As the illness was not very violent, she did not fail to attend divine service every day, according to her custom; but, when the danger became extreme, after having made her will in the presence of the King and Queen Beatrice, her daughter-in-law, she did not wish to delay receiving the Viaticum. To this end, she had an altar prepared outside her room and had the august sacrifice of the Mass celebrated there, and, when it was time to receive communion, she rose from her bed herself, her fervor giving her enough strength to support herself, dressed in the habit of a penitent of the Third Order of Saint Francis, and, dying as she was, without the help of anyone, but fortified only by the grace of God, she went to kneel at the foot of the altar: there, melting into tears and heaving sighs of devotion, which touched all those present, she received the Holy Eucharist. She did this out of a feeling of profound humility and singular respect for Jesus Christ, not believing she should suffer Him to be brought to her room as long as she had the strength to go and seek Him herself at the foot of the altars. What is more admirable, and shows the greatness of her courage, is that she made these pious efforts on the very day she died. Finally, in the evening, after having spoken with the King, her son, to urge him to make peace with the King of Castile, she rendered her soul to God, imploring the help of the Blessed Virgin, who had appeared to her, accompanied by Saint Clare and other holy nuns, and by reciting the Apostles' Creed. This was on July 4th in the year of Our Lord 1336, which was the sixty-fifth of her age.

Saint Elizabeth of Portugal is depicted caring for the poor and sick; in the habit of a Franciscan, attending the funeral of the King, her husband; in royal attire, trampling the earthly crown under her feet; carrying a pitcher, to recall that the water brought to her turned into wine, for the doctors having ordered her to abandon, at least for a time, the austerity of her ordinary life, she nonetheless continued to drink only water, when heaven itself intervened with a miracle in favor of the disciples of Hippocrates; she is attributed, like Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, her great-aunt, with the miracle of the coins turned into flowers. Our Saint is particularly honored in Zaragoza, Estremoz, Coimbra, and throughout Portugal.

## CULT AND RELICS.

Her body was carried from Estremoz to Coimbra, to be buried in the monastery of Saint Clare, where, by her will, she had chosen her burial place. A very pleasant kind of perfume emanated from it, which lasted until it was placed in the ground.

People came in crowds to her tomb to pray to her to continue for them, before God, the effects of the kindness she had always shown them on earth. They could not be prevented from honoring her publicly as a saint; and this cult, without being authorized by the superiors, was not condemned. Pope Leo X was the first to permit, at the solicitation of Don Emmanuel, King of Portugal, that her memory be honored publicly in the city and diocese of Coimbra, at Mass and in the divine office on the day of her death. Since that time, Pope Paul IV granted King John III, son of Emmanuel, that this commemoration would be made throughout the kingdom of Portugal.

In the year 1612, the body of the Saint was found still whole, wrapped in a silk cloth, in a wooden chest covered with leather, which had been enclosed in a marble tomb. Alfonso, Bishop of Coimbra, had a rich chapel built in her honor, with a large silver reliquary of admirable workmanship, to place such a precious relic; and, death not having permitted him to carry out the translation, in addition to the twelve thousand gold crowns he had already spent on this act of religion, he left another thirty thousand to work on the process of the canonization of our Saint, which was finally done by Urban VIII, on May 25, 1625, at the instance of the Catholic King Philip IV, and Queen Elizabeth of France, his wife. In 1630, the same Pope permitted the who le Church t Urbain VIII Pope who beatified Josaphat. o celebrate her office as a semi-double, but without precept, ordering only that in places where there was devotion to her, care should be taken to name her first in the martyrology, on the fourth day of July. In 1695, the office was declared a precept by Pope Innocent XII, and moved to July 8th.

We have drawn this life from the one that the Rev. Fr. Hilarion de Coste, a religious of the Order of Minims, composed in Latin, one year after she was canonized. — Cf. Godescard, and Acta Sanctorum.