|
Inspired piety In an era when it was usual for good Christians to attend Mass only a few times each year and confession annually, Isabel attended Mass every day. This had been her habit since her childhood with her mother. Isabel’s education was entrusted to Rodrigo Sanchez de Arevalo, who became bishop of Plasencia. She frequently visited the Franciscan Monastery of the Trinitarians where Our Lady of Sorrows was venerated and to whom Isabel professed great devotion and later named patron saint of Granada. Queen prayed the Divine Office. Her Italian chaplain Lucio Marineo Siculo said she prayed the canonical hours as if she were a nun despite the many governmental matters she was obliged to attend to day and night. Isabel often recalled the saying of her time: those monarchs who do not fear God must fear their subjects. Isabel’s devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament led her to write to the bishops, admonishing them with respect to the care and attention they should be giving to this devotion: “In many of the local churches of our diocese the Blessed Sacrament is not treated with the proper solemnity and reverence, nor is it kept in a silver container or replaced at the appropriate times. I wanted to write to you about this—she says to the bishops—asking you then to make a visit to these churches and give orders so that all the above-mentioned may be provided and done as it should be in the service of God our Lord.” The queen‘s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary was fervent. She co-founded the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception with her dear friend St. Beatriz of Silva in 1489, an order still thriving today. This was 365 years before the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was declared. Isabel also wrote to Pope Alexander VI saying: “I entreat your Holiness to see that no one, whatever law or government he may live under, should dare to contradict the teaching about the Immaculate Conception, since from it so much good comes for the service of the Lord.” Queen Isabel was exceedingly generous to the Church with endowments, and giving ornaments and sacred vessels to enhance the liturgy as well as commissioning music and canticles for the same. After receiving two monks from the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, she sent them the enormous sum of 1,000 ducats annually to be used in Jerusalem for “those things necessary to Divine worship and for the upkeep of the Holy Sepulchre itself”. Aged 15, Isabel was threatened with marriage to Pedro Giron, 43, a godless, animalistic man. Her response was three days of prayer in chapel, with tears, fasting and pleas that God might spare her, asking, “Dear God, compassionate Saviour, do not let me be given to this man! Either let him die, or let me die!”. Giron set out on his journey toward Isabel but fell ill and on the third day after his departure, in Villanueva de los Ojos in the province of Ciudad Real, he died. To whatever one attributes this, Isabel forever felt her gratitude to God. Aged 17, Isabel was urged by powerful nobles to seize the throne. Everything was in place, she had sweeping support, the throne was hers at a nod. Yet she desisted, refusing the crown offered to her by Archbishop Carrillo. Like David with King Saul, she refused to raise her hand ‘against the Lord’s anointed’, regardless of the weakness of the king (see 1 Samuel 24 for David’s powerful example). She would take the throne only by rightful succession as from Divine appointment. It came when she was 23. When Spain was invaded by Portugal in 1474, Queen Isabel had no army to defend her country. But she rode from town to town and prayed in public for her country’s needs; the people were so touched, so inspired by her sincerity and goodness that again and again they rallied to her and the resulting army was decisively successful in its defence of the realm. Pope Alexander VI gave her the title Isabel the Catholic for her service to the Church. She and her husband Ferdinand became known as ‘The Catholic Kings’. Queen Isabel’s Last Will and Codicil shows her faith endured to the end, ordering a total of 40,000 Masses requested be said for her and for those who had died in her service. And a legacy unforeseen, Queen Isabel commissioned to be built the Church of St Peter on the Golden Hill near the Spanish embassy in Rome. The Tempietto of the church includes a small dome. This was the model Michelangelo used for Christendom’s most recognized landmark, the dome of St Peter’s Basilica. |