might bring peace to two kingdoms, she was ever a true and
loyal wife; unwedded by ecclesiastical tyranny in the very flower of her
young womanhood, she was ever a faithful daughter of the Church;
inheriting a crown when she had proved her own capacity for royal
dominion, she bestowed it on a strange and absent son, with no thought
but for the good of her country and of Christendom; and finally, as
queen-mother and ever faithful counsellor, she accepted all the
difficulties of government, while the glory of royalty was reserved for
the king whom she had created. Berenguela was ever present in the right
place, and at the proper time, and her name is associated only with what
is good and worthy and noble in an age of violence and wrong and
robbery; when good faith was well-nigh unknown, when bad men were
all-powerful, when murder was but an incident in family life, and
treason the chief feature in politics.

Chapter XVI

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

In the early days of the thirteenth century, Pedro II. of Aragon had
married the somewhat frivolous, yet devout, Maria of Montpellier, whose
mother had been a Greek princess of Constantinople; and when a son was
born of this marriage, Maria, who foresaw a great future for her child,
was most desirous that he should have an Apostolic patron. There was the
embarrassment of the choice, however, as Maria did not wish to neglect
or cast a slight upon eleven saints while giving preference to one, and,
finally, the queen's father confessor, Bishop Boyl, devised the
following plan. Twelve tapers, each consecrated to an Apostle, were to
be lighted, and the child was to be named in honor of the candle which
burned the longest. Southey, in somewhat prolix and doggerel verse, has
given the following account of the ceremony:

"The tapers were short and slender too,
Yet to the expectant throng,
Before they to the socket burnt,
The time, I trow, seemed long.

"The first that went out was St. Peter,
The second was St. John,
And now St. Mattias is going,
And now St. Mathew is gone.

"Next there went St. Andrew,
Then goes St. Philip too;
And see, there is an end
Of St. Bartholomew.

"St. Simon is in the snuff,
But it is a matter of doubt,
Whether he or St. Thomas could be said,
Soonest to have gone out.

"There are only three remaining,
St. Jude and the two Saints James,