St. Elizabeth of Portugal
(1271-1336)
Feast day: July 4
Like St. Elizabeth of Hungary, her great-aunt, Elizabeth of
Portugal, married young. At age 12 she became the bride of Portugal’s
20-year-old king, Dinis. Today such a match is shocking, but child brides were
commonplace in the Middle Ages. Among royal families every marriage was a
political alliance, and the sooner the alliance was sealed at the altar, the
better.
It’s to be expected that Dinis would have no interest in a
12-year-old girl, and probably several years passed before the marriage was
consummated (Elizabeth was 19 when she gave birth to her first child). In the
meantime, Dinis was not lonely. He had a string of mistresses by whom he
fathered at least seven, perhaps as many as nine, children.
Dinis was very fond of his illegitimate children; he brought them
all to live in the palace, and insisted that Elizabeth raise them. It is the
kind of heartless demand that could wreck a marriage, yet whatever Elizabeth
may have felt — jealousy, resentment, rage — she kept to herself and proved to
be a loving foster mother.
Yet it appears that Dinis was not an ogre. He tried to be a good
king: he improved the code of law in Portugal, founded the country’s first
university at Coimbra, and collaborated with his wife in building churches and
religious houses. Some historians have looked on Dinis’ reign as a golden age
for medieval Portugal.

Still, there is no denying that the king was callous to his wife.
He compounded the problem by favoring one of his illegitimate sons over his
eldest son and heir Alfonso. Unlike his saintly mother, Prince Alfonso did not
suppress his feelings of resentment. Four times Alfonso schemed to overthrow
his father and seize the crown; once he even contrived to murder his
half-brother, the illegitimate son Dinis loved best. Each time, it was Elizabeth
who made peace in the family, although with each of Alfonso’s plots it become
increasingly difficult. Once, when Prince Alfonso’s army was arrayed at one end
of the field and King Dinis’ on the other, Elizabeth rode between them and refused
to leave the battlefield until father and son reconciled.
We do not know if Dinis ever asked Elizabeth to forgive him for
all the pain he had caused her. After Dinis died, however, in his will he made
Elizabeth executor of all he possessed. If he could not show his trust and
esteem for Elizabeth in life, at least Dinis displayed it after death.
Queen Elizabeth died July 4, 1336. Her last words were a prayer
to the Blessed Virgin: “From the foe shield us; in the hour of death take us.”
Craughwell is the author of St. Peter’s Bones
and This Saint
Will Change Your Life.