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Saint Margaret
St. Margaret of Antioch
Saint Margaret the Virgin and the dragon
Martyr and Virgin
Born unknown, Antioch (in Pisidia)
Died 304
Feast July 20; July 17 in the Eastern Church
Attributes slain dragon
Patronage childbirth, pregnant women, dying people, kidney disease, peasants, exiles, falsely accused people; Lowestoft, England; Queens' College, Cambridge; nurses; Sannat, Malta

Margaret the Virgin, also known as Margaret of Antioch (in Pisidia), virgin and martyr, is celebrated as a saint by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches on July 20; and on July 17 in the Orthodox Church. Her historical existence has been qustioned; she was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I in 494, but devotion to her revived in the West with the Crusades. She was reputed to have promised very powerful indulgences to those who wrote or read her life, or invoked her intercessions; these no doubt helped the spread of her cultus.[1]

Saint Margaret sculpture

Saint Margaret and the Dragon, alabaster with traces of gilding, Toulouse, ca 1475 (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Francisco de Zurbarán 047

St. Margaret dressed as a shepherdess (Francisco de Zurbarán, 1631).

According to the Golden Legend, she was a native of Antioch, daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. She was scorned by her father for her Christian faith, and lived in the country with a foster-mother keeping sheep. Olybrius, the praeses orientis (Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East), offered her marriage at the price of her renunciation of Christianity. Upon her refusal, she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. One of these involved being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards. The Golden Legend, in an atypical moment of scepticism, describes this last incident as "apocryphal and not to be taken seriously" (trans. Ryan, 1.369). She was put to death in A.D. 304.

The Eastern Orthodox Church knows Margaret as Saint Marina, and celebrates her feast day on July 17. She has been identified with Saint Pelagia – "Marina" being the Latin equivalent of the Greek name "Pelagia" – who, according to a legend, was also called Margarita. We possess no historical documents on St Margaret as distinct from St Pelagia. The Greek Marina came from Antioch, Pisidia (as opposed to Antioch of Syria), but this distinction was lost in the West.

An attempt has been made, but without success, to prove that the group of legends with which that of Saint Margaret is connected is derived from a transformation of the pagan divinity Aphrodite into a Christian saint. The problem of her identity is a purely literary question.

Sainte Marguerite et Olibrius

Saint Margaret attracts the attention of the Roman prefect, by Jean Fouquet from an illuminated manuscript.

The cultus of Saint Margaret became very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her, most famously, St. Margaret's, Westminster, the parish church[2] of the British Houses of Parliament in London. Some consider her a patron saint of pregnancy. In art, she is usually pictured escaping from, or standing above, a dragon.

She is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, being listed as such in the Roman Martyrology for July 20.[3] She was also included from the twelfth to the twentieth century among the saints to be commemorated wherever the Roman Rite was celebrated,[4] but was then removed from that list because of the entirely fabulous character of the stories told of her.[5] Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc.

References[]

  1. "Margaret of Antioch" The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. David Hugh Farmer. Oxford University Press 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 16 June 2007
  2. Westminster Abbey. "St. Margaret's, Westminster Parish details". http://www.westminster-abbey.org/st-margarets/history/. Retrieved 2008-05-03. 
  3. Martyrologium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001 ISBN 88-209-7210-7)
  4. See General Roman Calendar as in 1954
  5. Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 130
  • Acta Sanctorum, July, v. 24—45
  • Bibliotheca hagiographica. La/ma (Brussels, 1899), n. 5303—53r3
  • Frances Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications (London, 1899), i. 131—133 and iii. 19.

External links[]

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.


ca:Margarida d'Antiòquia cs:Markéta Antiochijská ko:안티오키아의 마르가리타 ka:წმინდა მარინე hu:Antiochiai Szent Margit ja:アンティオキアのマルガリタ no:Margareta av Antiokia nrm:Sainte Mèrdgitte ro:Marina din Antiohia ru:Маргарита Антиохийская sk:Svätá Margaréta z Antiochie fi:Marina (suurmarttyyri) sv:Margareta (helgon) th:มาร์กาเร็ตแห่งอันติโอก uk:Свята Марина wa:Sinte Magrite zh:聖瑪嘉烈

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