Saint Margaret
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 by the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches on July 20 and July 17 in the Eastern Church. Her historical existence is dubious; 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 intercession; these no doubt helped the spread of her cult.^[1]

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, 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.

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

The Greek church knows Margaret as Marina, and celebrates her festival 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 We possess no historical documents on St Margaret as distinct from St Pelagia.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, 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.

The cult of Saint Margaret became very widespread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her. Some consider her a patron saint of pregnancy. In art, she is usually pictured escaping from the dragon.

St Margaret; Zurbarán, 1631

She is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, being listed as such in the Roman Martyrology for July 20.^[2] She was also included from the twelfth to the twentieth century among the saints to be commemorated wherever the Roman Rite was celebrated,^[3] but was then removed from that list because of the entirely fabulous character of the stories told of her.^[4] Margaret is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and is one of the saints who spoke to Joan of Arc.

[edit] References

• 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Saint Margaret of Antioch

[edit] External links

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

• Saint Margaret and the Dragon links and pictures (more than 45), from Dragons in Art and on the Web
• Middle English life of St. Margaret of Antioch, edited with notes by Sherry L. Reames
•  "St. Margaret". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/St._Margaret. 

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