~ Patron of Day Laborers & Rural Communities

St. Isidore the Farmer (1070 – 1130) was one of the so-called “Spanish Five” canonized in 1622. The others were Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Phillip Neri, and Teresa of Avila. Pretty saintly company.

Legend has it that Isidore was a good and pious man, and yet not everyone thought he was a saint. In fact, he was known to loiter around the local church dedicated to Mary and rumors circulated that his so-called piety was more about shirking his responsibilities in the fields of Torrelaguna than praying to the Almighty.

One day his boss and landlord, the wealthy Juan de Vargas of Madrid, decided to see for himself whether Isidore was really holy or not. He hid himself outside the rural church and when Isidore exited soon after mass, he followed him right back to the fields where the farmer immediately started to work the land. Confident that Isidore was hard at work and seeing nothing to confirm his suspicions, Juan was about to step out into the sunlight when he suddenly realized that there was a second plow working Isidore’s field. He paused a moment to take in the scene.

Two dazzlingly white oxen were pulling a sharpened plow through the rich and heavy earth. Up and down the field they cut the soil in deep furrows. Juan watched them for a few minutes and then left his hiding place to talk with Isidore. As he stepped onto the field the white oxen suddenly disappeared and once again there was only the peasant Isidore, humbly working under a bright morning sun.

Drawing near to the saint, Juan asked him about the second plow he had seen but Isidore denied any knowledge of it and couldn’t explain how the field behind him had been mysterious cut and turned.

The story quickly spread and soon everyone was saying that angels worked the fields with Isidore and his wife Maria Torribia. People came from everywhere to watch them work, hoping to catch sight of the angels.

Isidore and Maria became known throughout Christendom as a holy couple and many miracles and wonders were attributed to them. Some forty years after his death, Isidore’s uncorrupted remains were transferred to a suitable shrine and his legend carried on to a new generation of farmers. Maria was likewise venerated and in time her head was enshrined in a reliquary and paraded around Spain whenever drought threatened.

The husband and wife were the only married saints for many centuries of the Church and in 1947 their memory and prayers took on new life when they became patrons of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference in the United States.