JUly 4. elizabeth of portugal, dauber of wounds

experiment:

see the inner, god-fearing man in a tyrant.

Patron saint of charitable societies, difficult marriages, falsely accused people, widows, victims of adultery, victims of jealousy, brides

Lived 1271 to 1336
Canonized 1625

Saint Elizabeth of Portugal was born in Spain. As a very young girl, she chose to "fast [and] macerate her tender body." At age ten or twelve she was "given in marriage" as a child bride to King Denis of Portugal. As one blogger notes,"princesses married young in those days." The king, whose forename and country of origin make for an amusing spoonerism, was prone to "abominable lust." As such, he sired 2 children with her and additional 7 or 9 children with other girls. One source claims that, despite Denis' infidelity,"Elizabeth knew the inner, god-fearing man."

Sometimes known as the PEACEMAKER, Queen Elizabeth "had it all and turned it all to good." She founded institutions for several poetic-sounding causes: travelers, the sick, wayward women, needy foundlings, and abandonned infants. She often paid poor girls' dowries.  In addition to dowering destitute brides, she dolled up them up by dressing their hair and bequeathing her jewels to them. Like St. Juliana, she liked to kiss beggars' "loathsome sores."

She is the Portuguese Academy of the Sciences' patron saint, because "in a time when healing practices consisted of astrological prognostications," she daubed a leper's wound with curative egg whites.

Elizabeth is an incorruptable. Her corpse is "as beautiful and serene as if she merely slept."

MIRACLES

• In one story, she turns bread into roses; in another, she turns flowers into coins; in yet another, she turns coins into flowers. She is often depicted with roses in the folds of her gown.
• When Elizabeth's daughter, Constance, died suddenly, a hermit flagged down the queen. He said her daughter had appeared to him in visions to say she was condemned to purgatory. She would be freed in one year if daily mass was said in her supplication. (I am not sure who would free her, because everyone on the internet is a wise guy.) Elizabeth complied, and a year later her dead daughter came to her decked out in white and announced she was rising to heaven. 

#POETRYEXISTS

I am too big a heathen to comprehend whatever this means, but I enjoy the sounds of this sentence:
"Some of Elizabeth's acts of charity are so sublime that one almost shies away from mentioning them, for fear of trespassing on the sacred."