04 July - Elizabeth of Aragon, born in Saragossa on 4 January 1271, is the daughter of Peter III of Aragon, King of Aragon and Sicily, and Constance II of Sicily. Elizabeth was the great-niece of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, whose first name she bore. She married Denis I, the sixth King of Portugal, on 24 June 1282 in Trancoso.
From this union came two children: Constance, who in 1302 married Ferdinand IV, King of Castile, and Alfonso, who would later become King of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile in 1309. The queen was a model of humility, she was a good wife, not blaming her husband for his infidelities and even taking care of the education of her illegitimate children. She was a good mother, she intervened when twice her son rebelled and took up arms against his father in order to reconcile them. She was also a good queen; she continually sought to be loved by her subjects by practising charity very generously.
The queen was denounced for "dissipation of the royal treasury" which she spent on alms and care for the needy. Although the king, concerned about the finances of the state, forbade her to spend her money in this way, all her duties as a Christian, she nonetheless continued to help those who needed her charity. Surprised one winter's day by the king, she only had time to hide her purse under her coat. The king asked her authoritatively what she was hiding under her cloak. The queen replied that it was roses to decorate the altar of the chapel she had had built. The king replied that there were no roses in January, and ordered her to uncover herself immediately and entrust the suspicious object to him. The queen suffered this humiliation without blinking an eye and in front of the royal suite opened her cloak, revealing a magnificent bouquet of roses. The king, recognizing this as a supernatural act, repented and left his wife free to manage her own charitable acts.
After the death of her husband, she retired to a convent of Poor Clares, a second Franciscan order, in Coimbra and died there in 1336 in the odour of sanctity. Since the creation in 1819 of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de La Laguna also called Diocese of Tenerife (Canary Islands), St. Elizabeth is co-patrona of the same and the cathedral of the diocese by Bula of Pope Pius VII. She was canonized in 1625 by Pope Urban VIII while Portugal is attached to the Spanish crown under the reign of Philip IV of Spain. Queen Elizabeth is listed in the Roman Catholic Sanctuary as "Elizabeth of Portugal".
