Human Flower Project

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Rainha Isabel’s Roses

In Portugal, July 4 is a holy holiday, the feast of a peace-loving Queen.

St. Elizabeth (Isabel) of Portugal

Francisco de Zurbarán, 1640

Museo del Prado

Photo: ABC Gallery

If you’re feeling a bit lavender, overdosed on red, white and blue today, cross the Atlantic and celebrate with the Portuguese.

Long before 1776, July 4 was celebrated as the Feast of Rainha Santa Isabel who died this day in 1336. A woman who “had it all and turned it all to good,” she is revered across Portugal, notably in Coimbra, where she lies in the Church of St. Clare. They say (and someone checked as recently as 1912) that she “reposes” after seven centuries there, “as beautiful and serene as if she merely slept.”

We celebrate her, too, for her legendary flowers.

Statue of St. Isabel

Zaragoza, Spain

Photo: Seminario San Carlos

A Spanish princess, Elizabeth was married at age 12 to King Dinis of Portugal, Portuguizing her name to Isabel. Dinis apparently was a whale of a king but a gerbil of a husband. Among his many reprehensible acts, he frowned on his wife’s charity—a predicament a lot like that of Elizabeth of Hungary, Isabel’s great-aunt.  Their legends run along the same floral lines. As Isabel took bread to the poor, her husband confronted her; she said she was merely carrying flowers and when she opened her cape, roses came tumbling out.

As Hungary’s St. Elizabeth, in the same fix, performed the same miracle, we conclude there’s a supernaturally good connection between bread and roses and saintly women. Heads up, you people on the Adkins Diet!

Not only was Isabel a long-suffering wife and charitable queen, she appears to have been a brilliant architect, designing a number of buildings across Portugal and overseeing their construction. Here we find another of her flower legends.

“The queen had a dream one night in which God asked her to build a church dedicated to the Holy Spirit.” After gaining “further clarification” during the next day’s Mass,  “she ordered a construction crew to be assembled and brought to her.

“She told them of the plan, and specified the site for the church. The workmen went to the location, and could not believe their eyes: The foundation was already poured, and the sketches for the church were waiting for them. The men went to work and, as usual, the queen paid regular visits.

Rainha Santa Isabel post card and stamp

Image: AAC

“One day, while Elizabeth was supervising the work, a girl walked up to her to offer an armful of flowers. The queen took them and distributed them, one by one, to each workman:

“‘Let us see if today you will work hard and well for this pay,’ she quipped.

“Each worker graciously accepted his flower, and reverently put it in his satchel. When the day’s work was done, each man found not a flower in his satchel, but a gold coin.”

Rainha Isabel‘s greatest miracles, however, involved the transformation not of flowers but of armies. She managed to maintain the peace between her combattive son and King Dinis for the throne of Portugal and later with the princes of Castile.

Rainha Santa Isabel is venerated in Zaragoza, Spain, and with great affection throughout her adopted homeland of Portugal. For her powers of peace, she is invoked “in time of war.” So before the bottle rockets glare, may she and her roses be remembered today in the U.S., too.