Isidro Labrador
Saint Isidro Labrador (Madrid, c. 1082-ibid., November 30, 1172) born in the Muslim Mayrit was a Mozarabic farmer who was possibly at the service of the Vargas family and many other landowners such as Francisco Vera. His work as a day laborer most mentioned by biographers is carried out by Juan de Vargas, and was carried out mainly in the Madrid area and surroundings. Some details of his life are known from the praise indicated in a codex found in the Church of San Andrés in 1504 (known as Códice de San Isidro and written at the end of the century XII) and where it is called Ysidorus Agricola. This document mentions that he is married with a son and provides reference to only five miracles, the others being added later from oral tradition during his beatification process by various hagiographers. Despite the fact that he was not yet canonized, the people of Madrid had worshiped him since the XII century that increased rapidly in later centuries.. For this reason, the ecclesiastical and municipal authorities, the Madrid aristocracy and the Spanish royal crown led his canonization process in the XVI century..
Among the scholars of his life are: Alonso de Villegas, Jaime Bleda, Jerónimo de la Quintana, López de Hoyos, Juan de Ferreras and the Madrid poet Lope de Vega himself in a hagiographic poem entitled Isidro (Madrid, 1599). The narration of the miracles may differ from one another, and is influenced by popular oral tradition. San Isidro is the first married layman brought to the altars after a canonization process instructed by the Congregation of Rites. The promoters of this canonization were several members of the family of the Lujanes, the Vargas and the royal house of the Habsburgs. On March 12, 1622 he was finally canonized by Pope Gregory XV, and in 1960 Pope John XXIII declared him by bull as patron saint of Spanish farmers. His body is used in processions of the XV century to pray for rain in Madrid, his popularity spreads subsequently. Isidro labrador was a holy dowser, well, thaumaturgical and rainmaker. A simple man and benefactor of the poor, he began to be venerated by the people of Madrid some forty years after his death.
The canonization led to the work of documenting part of the existing doubts about the life of San Isidro, and institutionalized a large portion of the oral tradition of previous centuries. Fray Domingo de Mendoza, commissioner appointed by Philip II to the canonization, it is suspected that he was inventive when it came to reconstructing the biography of the Saint that has survived to this day. It is mentioned in the codex that Isidro Labrador was married and had a son. Popular tradition, and some authors, fix the place where he met his wife in the town of Torrelaguna. The patronage that he represents in various cities around the world, as well as the festivities that are celebrated on May 15, as it is the day on which his incorrupt body appears to have been transferred to the Church of San Andrés. The remains of the saint reside in the main altar of the Collegiate Church of San Isidro in a mortuary chest, being guarded together with the relics of Santa María de la Cabeza by the Royal, Very Illustrious and Primitive Congregation of San Isidro de Naturales of Madrid.
Biography
Isidro was born around 1082 when the territory of Madrid was part of the taifa of Toledo in the area dominated by the Arabs. The date of birth may vary depending on the chronicler. Years after his birth, during 1085, Madrid became the domain of Alfonso VI, a Christian monarch who controlled the surrounding lands thanks to an agreement made with Al-Qádir on a territorial exchange. Alfonso VI has an approximate area that covers part of the province of Toledo, Madrid and Guadalajara. This territorial expansion had to be covered with populations of farmer settlers, artisans, various workers of Visigothic and Berber origin. They are the so-called Mozarabs. Among the knights who fought in the armies of the monarch Alfonso VI, lordships and concessions were usually granted over the conquered lands. In this way, the villain lords (de plebis milites) arose, a kind of rural nobility that emerged during the reconquest period. There are no written documents on the Isidro family belonging to the family of the Vargas, the only reference was that Dr. Forns owned the property of the Casa de los Vargas in 1913, a document that was lost during the Spanish civil war.
According to the poet Lope de Vega, San Isidro's parents were called Pedro and Inés, and he places his early life in the San Andrés suburb of Madrid. San Isidro was born from a family of Mozarabic settlers who were in charge of repopulating the land won by Alfonso VI. It is possible that he came from a humble family of farmers who work on rented fields. The warrior knight who receives the property is Juan de Vargas. His domains extend over the new kingdom of Toledo, the Jarama valley, the Manzanares, the banks of the Tagus. All of them are fluvial spaces and traditionally farm work. His parents were possibly of humble origin and it is possible that they called him Isidro in honor of Saint Isidore, wise and holy Archbishop of Seville in the Visigothic era. Isidro's parents had an annual lease, an agreement freely renewed by both parties. The work was directed either by the lord, or by those in charge. The day laborers owed obedience and fidelity to the master. In return they received a salary in money, in kind or a mixture of both. The relationship between Isidro's family and the Vargas family was of this type. Other families settled in Madrid, such as the Lujanes.
Youth
San Isidro spent his childhood in the suburbs of San Andrés, some authors affirm that his full name was Isidro de Merlo y Quintana, he was known for being late for work and was regularly reprimanded for it. The only document on Isidro's life is the so-called codex of San Isidro (also known as deacon Juan), written in medieval Latin. By an unknown author, it is possible that it was written in 1275. The area in which Isidro lived was militarily unstable, as it was close to the border between the Christian and Muslim kingdoms: the Castilian Extremadura. It is known that the emir Ali ibn Yúsuf deploys his armies in the year 1110 through the center of the Iberian Peninsula causing Isidro's family to move to Torrelaguna. In the chronicles that recount his youthful life, a mixture of Islamic and Christian models of holiness is detected. Lifestyles that were in force in Madrid, during the twelfth century. He highlights in the execution of the miracles of this time its syncretic and conciliatory character between the two present religions: the Christian (official) and the Muslim.
It was precisely in the Madrid town of Torrelaguna, a place of refuge during the Arab invasions in Madrid, where he married a young woman from the Guadalajara town of Uceda, María Toribia (Santa María de la Cabeza) with whom he lived in Torrelaguna, and it is possible that they had their son there, whom tradition later knew as San Illán. The information about Santa María de la Cabeza, Isidro's presumed wife comes from Fray Domingo de Mendoza, Dominican, who On March 13, 1596, he unearthed the bones of a person from the hermitage of Caraquiz (Uceda) and by divine inspiration gave him a name and assigned the role of Isidro's wife, simultaneously inventing Isidro's life in Torrelaguna and towns in that area. Said friar tried to canonize María de la Cabeza but failed to convince the curia. During this period of Isidro's youth and maturity, the area was in warfare practically since 1083. When the city of Toledo was taken by Alfonso VI, Madrid had been under Christian rule on several occasions, one cannot speak of a true Christianization of the territory. until 1162, when Fernando II definitively occupied the city of Madrid.
Isidro died in the year 1172, his corpse was buried in the cemetery of the Church of San Andrés in the suburb where he had lived. This information is known because it was mentioned in the codex that accompanied the remains of the mummified (incorrupt) body of Isidro. In 1213, King Alfonso VIII, as thanks to the Saint for his intervention in the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, built a chapel in his honor in the church of San Andrés and placed his incorrupt body in the so-called "mosaic" ark. Despite that it was not yet hallowed in the 13th century. It seems that the popular religious fervor of the people of Madrid for the figure of Isidro Labrador was already very high in this century.
Post mortem: canonization
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After Isidro's death, it was a popular belief that he was buried in the San Andrés cemetery, despite the fact that Relaciones topográficas de Felipe II did not believe so.[quote required] In 1504, when carrying out an inventory of assets, a mortuary chest was discovered in the parish of San Andrés along with his incorrupt body, together with a codex written in Latin that describes the life of Isidro as well as the of some of his miracles. This codex, called San Isidro, is also known as the Códice de Juan Dácono and is one of the only primary sources on the life of San Isidro. After spending twenty years in the cemetery, the popularity of the Saint makes the parish priest transfer the remains of San Isidro to the interior of the Church. The discovery of the tomb is accompanied by a codex that Fidel Fita studies in depth in the XX century.
The remains of Isidro were found during the reign of Alfonso X. The translation of this codex into Spanish is by Jaime de Bleda. The remains found in the mosayca ark of the parish of San Andrés contained the remains of Isidro from the late XIII century until 1620. The ark was replaced by another polychrome with copper and gold. The writers who define Isidro's life are clearly divided into two types: those before and after his canonization. Among the above are; Alonso de Villegas, who considers Isidro an extravagant saint, the alderman Juan Hurtado de Mendoza, Ambrosio de Morales, Juan López de Hoyos and Basilio Santoro. Lope de Vega, being a contemporary of Isidro's canonization, was a student of his life. Subsequent authors only copy data from authors prior to canonization. The same miracle is described differently by some and others.
From 1234 Pope Alexander III reserves the right to canonize, but the bishops continue to confirm the elevation to the altars of the new local characters that towns and cities proclaim as their patrons without there being, in practice, a real opposition from the superior hierarchies until 1623 when, in the middle of the Counter-Reformation, the papacy obtained control of the saints, precisely with Urban VIII, who had canonized San Isidro a year earlier.
The body was mummified and covered with a shroud inside a small chest, which is why it is often called parchment-like. The ark discovered in the 16th century dates from the last third of the XIII, or from the first half of XIV. It is decorated with paintings that represent four of the miracles described in the San Isidro codex. Presumably the fifth is described on the deteriorated cover. The oldest and most well-known work on San Isidro, on which all subsequent hagiographies are based, is the Codex of Juan Dácono, written in the year 1275. It was attributed to Juan Dácono, who was possibly the Franciscan Juan Gil de Zamora. This codex was later rewritten and interpreted by some authors: Alonso de Villegas and Jaime Bleda.
The researcher of the XVII century, Antonio de León Pinelo, is the one who defends that it was Felipe II in person who claimed the canonization and that Fray Domingo de Mendoza carried out all the procedures. The chronicler Joseph de la Cruz grants the leading role in the process to Diego de Salas Barbadillo, who would have requested the canonization of King Felipe II on behalf of Madrid. Certainly there was a popular effort to have canonization. The first official news about the attempted canonization of Isidro appears in the Books of Minutes of the Madrid city council on December 23, 1562. According to the minutes, a commission made up of three members of the family of the Lujanes and one of the Vargas-Lujáns. These neighbors suggested that, taking advantage of the fact that the Commander of Castile was traveling to Rome for the canonization of Diego de Alcalá, the canonization process for Isidro should also be carried out there. The writer Diego de Salas Barbadillo, without knowing what documents he consulted previously, announced in the Madrid city hall in the year 1592, a work that according to authors is supposed to have been by his father Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo. During this period, the City Council tried to find and gather documents about the life and events of San Isidro. Proclamations were made and letters of excommunication to be provided to those who provided documents were published. Soon there were frauds that were denounced through Pauline publications.
He was beatified by Pope Paul V on June 14, 1619, and canonized by Gregory XV on March 12, 1622, along with Saint Philip Neri, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier, although the bull of canonization was not published until 1724 by Benedict XIII, when Felipe V was already reigning in Spain. The canonization led to the celebration of large festivities in Madrid. It was also determined that his feast day would be celebrated on May 15 and his Patronage was approved on the Villa y Corte de Madrid. Because of this event, the Brotherhood of San Eloy de los Plateros de Madrid decided to donate a silver chest to replace the old wooden one of Alfonso VIII. The Silversmiths' ark had silver and bronze. The people of Madrid demanded the construction of a new chapel, which would house the relics and be larger and more sumptuous. In 1642 the project of the architect Pedro de la Torre for the erection of a new chapel had already been approved and construction had begun, but the works languished until in 1656 they were in complete ruin. The central point of the chapel was to be a baroque-style canopy, for which the artist Sebastián Herrera Barnuevo submitted a design. Philip III, before San Isidro was canonized, at the time of his death, asked the Saint to be his interlocutor before God the Father.
The healing power of the Saint was entrusted to Queen Mariana of Neoburgo when in the summer of 1691 she fell seriously ill due to the remedies used by doctors at the time to cause pregnancy. Mariana was the second wife of King Carlos II, the last monarch of the dynasty of the royal house of the Habsburgs. The last sacraments were administered to Mariana and the body of San Isidro was taken in procession to the Alcázar so that he could intercede for the cure, in case of death, of the sovereign. For nine consecutive days they prayed in the Monastery of Las Descalzas, and all the religious orders settled in Madrid passed through it. At the beginning of October 1691, the disease began to subside and various festivities took place at Court to celebrate the queen's recovery. Upon seeing herself healed, Mariana ordered a silver urn to house the relics of the Saint. In January 1692 the urn was completed and the costs were charged to the royal payroll. The old urn became the property of Mariana. During her exile in Toledo, from 1701 to 1706, the widowed queen had brought the old urn with her. However, in her hasty departure to Bayonne, part of her assets remained in Toledo.
For years her uncorrupted body was believed to have healing powers, and the Spanish Royal Family made use of this miraculous quality throughout history. For example, when Felipe III fell ill with fever upon returning from Portugal and was forced to stay in Casarrubios del Monte, in Toledo. The town of Madrid then organized a procession for the cure of the monarch and the body of the Saint was transferred to this town in Toledo. During the reign of Carlos II, the Saint was also trusted to intercede for his health, transferring his relics to the Royal Alcazar of Madrid in 1696.
The Bourbons believed in the curative powers of the saint's mummy and, in 1760, the body was brought to the Royal Palace during the illness of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony. The body has also suffered mutilations motivated by religious fervor, such as when one of Isabella the Catholic's ladies bit off a toe from her foot, or when Carlos II's personal locksmith, named Tomás, pulled out a tooth from the saint and he gave it to the monarch, who kept it under his pillow until his death.
Miracles
The miracles attributed to San Isidro have three documentary sources: on the one hand, the primitive five miracles described in the Codex of San Isidro (The legend of San Isidro) and which are graphically represented on the ark mosaic that is supposed to contain the remains of San Isidro; those that some authors claim to have read in a missing document; and those that certain authors have described as their own inventiveness or from oral tradition. Miracles can be divided into three thematic groups: miracles performed in order to strengthen the cult, pluvial miracles, in general granting rain after prayers and finally, miraculous cures.
To obtain the mediation of the saint, it is customary to worship him by going to pray before his tomb, preferably in nocturnal vigils that last one, three or nine nights. In case of illness, the affected person has to go personally, or be carried, and cannot be replaced by his relatives. Contact with the shroud, or with the corpse, is usually decisive to obtain mediation, in the same way that, when rain is requested, to facilitate it, it is decided to open the tomb and place the corpse on a pedestal in front of the altar of the church of Saint Andrew so that no object can hinder communication between the saint and God. Also to enable mediation, numerous processions and prayers are held, during which, by removing the relic from its sacred enclosure and exposing it in the open air, intercession is favored. Since the construction in 1528 of the hermitage in Madrid, it is popularly considered a request for mediation to the Saint his pilgrimage to the fountain that is next to his altar, is made on May 15.
Common Miracles
The early five miracles that appear graphically on the Mosaic ark are the first to be described. These miracles, presumably, occurred during Isidro Labrador's lifetime, that is, in the XII century. Thanks to the documentary description of the San Isidro codex it is known that there are five:
- Miracle of the mill - Isidro multiplies the wheat it offers to hungry pigeons.
- Miracle of oxen - In this miracle the oxen aran and perform the labors while Isidro prays. As he was spying on by his master, after the accusation that he left the job to pray, he sees how the oxen open themselves. This scene contains significant parallels with Islamic hagiographies, but many of these aspects are now Christianized.
- Miracle of the wolf - Some children warn Isidro that there is a wolf that roams his donkey, so he starts praying and accomplishes with this, saving him from the imminent attack.
- Miracle of the pot - Offering food managed to multiply the food he had in a pot by putting a punch repeatedly.
- Miracle of the Brotherhood
In the codex it is also narrated as a mediator to obtain rain in spring. The miracles that popularized San Isidro in the XVII century do not seem to be any of these five that appear in the codex.
Posthumous Miracles
The miracles within this category fall within the period between 1421 and 1426. The narrated miracles of San Isidro underwent considerable alterations during the Modern Age.
He often visited the few churches that Madrid had and at first other peasants said that he did this out of laziness instead of devotion. Once Vargas went out to see if this was true, and found the angels plowing in his place. Another way of telling the miracle, which appears in the canonization acts, is that Vargas found Isidro plowing with angels and this made him plow faster. After witnessing the miracle, he appointed Isidro administrator of his estate. Another miracle tells that once a poor man appeared at his house asking for food and he went to give him the pot of food that his wife had prepared, and the pot, which was half empty, was filled with food. It was also said that providence made his harvest always very large, and he shared what he had with men, birds and other animals.
Among his most famous miracles is that of the well: his son, who would later be called San Illán, fell into the well and the father, thanks to his prayers, made the waters of the well rise and he was able to rescue him. Tradition has always located the well of the miracle inside the House Museum of Origins in Madrid; the archaeological excavations carried out on the site at the end of the last century warned that the well of the Museum could be much later than the time of San Isidro. A recent study showed that the true miracle well is found under the foundations of the Colegio de San Ildefonso and that the Holy Labrador died in this house.
Iconography of San Isidro
The iconography focuses, depending on the period and the artist, on some of Isidro's miracles. The first images of the Saint show him dressed in a peasant outfit, carrying a mattock in his right hand. The type of clothing depends on the time in which he is represented, usually carrying some of the agricultural utensils such as a shovel, hoe, sickle, goad, flail, plow. Sometimes with oxen driven by angels commemorating one of the miracles. Plastic expressions and artistic manifestations that represent him performing miracles are also frequent. Since the XVII century (after his canonization in 1697) it is common to find him represented in the company of his wife: Saint Maria de la Cabeza She usually carries a vase of water, sometimes a different implement from San Isidro.
San Isidro in popular culture
The figure of San Isidro has spread through popular culture in various locations around the world. As a general rule, it is a form of desire for the simple life of the peasants and direct contact with nature. Celebrations of the Saint in Madrid are known by executory letter on the financing of a festival dedicated to the farmer in the year 1344. Despite the first celebration in honor of the Madrid saint took place in May 1620 on the occasion of his beatification, the body of Isidro was carried in procession through the streets of Madrid inside a sumptuous urn carved by the city's silversmiths.
The popularity of San Isidro was relaunched due to the support of the Spanish Monarchy at the end of the 1500s and during the first half of the XVII century . The fervor that Isidro aroused led to the practice of the custom from Isabel la Católica that every time the queens fell ill they entrusted themselves to the Saint for their healing. According to the chronicles, as a prince, Felipe II recovered from an illness after having ingested water from the miraculous spring opened by San Isidro in the San Isidro meadow (a place portrayed by Goya in a painting entitled: The San Isidro meadow). Place located on the right bank of the Manzanares River where a hermitage would later be erected in his honor.
The Madrid poet Lope de Vega is one of the first to describe the life of Saint Isidro in a poem (Madrid, 1599). A. de Villegas writes an earlier one. A poem written in limericks along ten songs are the fragments in which the poet approaches the rural universe in which the saint moves. In this biographical poem he is solidly documented: he read everything previously written about the saint and had access to the papers for the cause of beatification collected by Father Domingo de Mendoza, pontifical commissioner for Isidro's beatification. In the first half of the XX century, Rafael Haideer writes a popular comedy about the life of San Isidro, in prose, in three acts. Dedicated according to him to the people of Madrid.In the fire of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid in 1631, the Saint was prayed for his intercession.
The painters of the XIX century who portrayed the Madrid saint, including Mariano Salvador Maella. Several scholars and Chroniclers of Baroque Madrid, such as Jerónimo de Quintana and Antonio de León Pinelo, would dedicate extensive lines to praise his life and miracles. It is later, already in the XVIII century, when new publications would also add the biography and miracles of Santa María de la Cabeza to the Life of San Isidro. He was declared patron of Spanish farmers by John XXIII in a bull of the year 1960.
At the movies
- Isidro, the farmer (1964) by Rafael J. Salvia. Interpreted by Javier Escrivá.
Dissemination of your figure
In the XIII century, Isidro was prayed for as a mediator to obtain rain in spring, the neighboring towns of Castilla la Nueva they did the same. These rains, if they occurred, were beneficial for agricultural activities. The prayers were common, and they were spread in order to cause rain in an environment with a dry climate where crops were frequently in danger. The loss of a harvest meant hunger and hardship. This desire caused his popularity in the first centuries, accentuating his character as a farmer saint. This mediation caused the legend of him to spread throughout the towns throughout the peninsular geography in the first centuries. In October 1492, after the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the discovery of America took place in which many of the farmers from the lands of Extremadura participated as settlers. These peasants were the initial spreaders of the cult of San Isidro to the American lands of the New World.
Sponsorships
Spain
San Isidro Labrador is the patron saint of Madrid, of Villar del Olmo Madrid, of Cartaya and Rosal de la Frontera Huelva, celebrating his pilgrimage every year. Also, in the same way, it is of Los Barrios, where the Pilgrimage of San Isidro Labrador (Los Barrios), declared of tourist interest in Spain, is also celebrated. He is also patron saint of La Orotava on the island of Tenerife, of Alfajarín (Zaragoza), of Talavera de la Reina, of Montellano (Seville), of Estepona Málaga, of La Malahá (Granada), of Labros (Guadalajara), of Villar de Cañas (Cuenca), from Morata de Tajuña (Madrid), in Tahivilla (Cádiz), in which his pilgrimage is also celebrated and in S'Horta (Mallorca) and Fuente de Cantos (Badajoz) he is also the patron saint of La Escuela Superior of Engineering of Almería
Honduras
Devotion to San Isidro Labrador is very popular and deeply rooted in the peasants and rural areas of Honduras. San Isidro is the patron saint of the city of La Ceiba, an important city on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, as well as Güinope, a picturesque town with an agricultural and mining tradition founded in 1747 in the central-eastern part of the country. San Isidro is also the patron saint of the homonymous town of San Isidro (Honduras), in the Department of Choluteca in the southern part of the country, and of the city of Tocoa, an important agro-industrial center in the Aguán Valley.
Mexico
San Isidro Labrador is the patron saint of Arteaga (Coahuila), and the parish of the homonymous municipality is dedicated to this saint, as well as the parish of the municipality of Granados, Sonora. The community of La Mora (Banámichi, Sonora) also venerates him as their patron saint.
He is also a patron of the city of Comalcalco, located in the municipality of the same name, located in the state of Tabasco. There the celebration in honor of San Isidro Labrador is very popular in the region, since the enrama or feast of the Patron Saint is held on May 14 of each year. It consists of the hermitages of the municipality taking their offerings to the parish located in the main square. The offerings consist of cocoa, groceries, farm animals, even cattle.
San Isidro Ladrador is also the patron saint in the Valley of Toluca, mainly the municipality of Metepec, where the walk of Agriculture takes place that has been going on for more than 100 years, it is celebrated on the first Tuesday 40 days after Friday saint, celebrated mainly between mid-May and mid-June. Where the parishioners participate by decorating their cars or teams with altarpieces alluding to the miracles of San Isidro Labrador.
Argentina
The Church in Argentina has a diocesan jurisdiction, under the patronage of San Isidro, and is the name of the District (municipal jurisdiction) where its Cathedral is located. The current Bishop is Monsignor Ojea, who is also the president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference.
San Isidro is the patron saint of the city of Chacabuco, located in the province of Buenos Aires
Uruguay
San Isidro is co-patron saint of the city of Libertad, department of San José, together with the dedication of the Virgin Mary of Our Lady of Sorrows.