From jacobean attribute to isabelline relic: holy queen Isabel’s pilgrim’s staff

• Autor(a) principal: Pacheco, Milton Pedro Dias
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/104620; https://doi.org/10.3989/hs.2021.012
• topic: D. Isabel, Infanta of Aragon and Queen of Portugal; Saint Isabel of Portugal; Holy Queen’s Treasure; Relics cult; Jacobean Pilgrim; Pilgrim’s Staff; Medieval Goldsmithing

During the opening of the tomb of the Blessed Isabel, Infanta of Aragon and Queen of Portugal —the wife of King D. Dinis— in March 1612, in order to continue her canonization process, there were found, deposited on top of the coffin, some personal objects: the staff and a small leather pouch offered by the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela during her pilgrimage in 1325. Acquiring an immediate spiritual value as an authentic relic, the pilgrim’s staff was disposed for veneration within a silvery reliquary, executed between 1612 and 1614, and later transported in a pompous processional parade during the feasts held in Coimbra on the occasion of her canonization announced in 1625, while the pouch and a fragment of the staff were sent to the Court of King D. Filipe III of Portugal – IV of Spain. We favored, as the main lines of research in the field of Art History, the presentation of the data obtained after a rigorous material analysis of the staff and a thorough consultation of the available documented sources concerning the only relic of the so-called Holy Queen Isabel’s Treasure displayed for public adoration, within the historic chronological frame from 1325 to 1625.