Saint Margaret of Scotland

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Saint Margaret of Scotland

Stained glass image of Saint Margaret of Scotland in the small chapel at Edinburgh Castle.
Queen and Saint
Born c. 1046 in Castle Reka, Southern Hungary
Died 16 November 1093 in Edinburgh Castle, Midlothian, Scotland
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Church
Canonized 1251

by Pope Innocent IV

Major shrine Dunfermline Abbey (Fife, Scotland), now destroyed, footings survive; Surviving relics were sent to the Escorial, near Madrid, Spain, but have since been lost.
Feast November 16 / June 10. June 16 in Scotland.
Patronage death of children; large families; learning; queens; Scotland; widows; Dunfermline; Scotland; Anglo-Scottish relations

Saint Margaret (c. 1046–16 November, 1093), was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the Anglo-Saxon heir to the throne of England. She married Malcolm III, King of Scots, becoming his Queen consort.

Biography

The daughter of the English prince Edward the Exile and granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, Margaret was born and raised in Hungary, a country that had welcomed the deposed royal family.[1] Though the family returned to Britain after the power of its Danish overlords waned, the young princess (and her surviving relatives) were soon forced to flee again—this time by the Norman conquest of 1066. Arriving in Scotland,[2] the two sought amnesty in the court of Malcolm III, a request that he granted graciously.[3] According to Turgot (Margaret's hagiographer), the young noblewoman's penchant for personal piety was already well-established by this time:

Whilst Margaret was yet in the flower of youth, she began to lead a very strict life, to love God above all things, to employ herself in the study of the Divine writings, and therein with joy to exercise her mind. Her understanding was keen to comprehend any matter, whatever it might be; to this was joined a great tenacity of memory, enabling her to store it up, along with a graceful flow of language to express it.[4]

Malcolm was probably a widower, and was no doubt attracted by the prospect of marrying one of the few remaining members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret soon took place and was followed by several invasions of Northumberland by the Scottish king, probably in support of the claims of his brother-in-law Edgar. These, however, had little result beyond the devastation of the province.

Margaret and Malcolm had eight children, six sons and two daughters:

  1. Edward, killed 1093.
  2. Edmund of Scotland
  3. Ethelred, abbot of Dunkeld
  4. King Edgar of Scotland
  5. King Alexander I of Scotland
  6. King David I of Scotland
  7. Edith of Scotland, also called Matilda, married King Henry I of England
  8. Mary of Scotland, married Eustace III of Boulogne

Her husband, Malcolm III, and their eldest son, Edward, were killed in siege against the English at Alnwick Castle on 13 November, 1093. Her son Edmund was left with the task of telling his mother of their deaths. Margaret was ill, and she died on 16 November, 1093, three days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son. Her children tried to hide the fact of their father's and brother's deaths, but when Margaret did find out she either died of sadness or a broken heart.


She would personally serve orphans and the poor every day before she herself would eat, and would rise at midnight to attend church services every night.


Legacy and Veneration

Malcolm and Margaret as depicted in a 16th century armorial

Margaret was canonizedd in 1251 by Pope Innocent IV on account of her personal holiness and fidelity to the Church. The Roman Catholic Church formerly marked the feast of Saint Margaret of Scotland on 10 June, but the date was transferred to 16 November, the actual day of her death, in the liturgical reform of 1972.


<cut down> It is notable that while Malcolm's children by his first wife Ingibjörg all bore Gaelic names, those of Margaret all bore non-Gaelic names. Later tradition often has it that Margaret was responsible for starting the demise of Gaelic culture in the lowlands and Scotland in general. The forenames of Margaret's children were probably intended to bear Margaret's claims to the Anglo-Saxon throne in the period before permanent Norman rule was recognized, and so the first group of children were given Anglo-Saxon royal names. In fact, in Gaeldom, she has usually not been considered a saint, but referred to as Mairead/Maighread nam Mallachd: Accursed Margaret.[5]

Queen Margaret University (founded in 1875), Queen Margaret Hospital (just outside Dunfermline), North Queensferry, South Queensferry and several streets in Dunfermline are all named after her.

Notes

  1. Farmer, 329. Conversely, Huddleston (1910) notes: "A constant tradition asserts that Margaret's father and his brother Edmund were sent to Hungary for safety during the reign of Canute, but no record of the fact has been found in that country." Despite this proviso, virtually all extant sources describe the royal family's sojourn in Hungary.
  2. Huddleston records a (likely apocryphal) tale that the two women had actually sought to return to the European continent, but lost control of their vessel during a storm and were shipwrecked on the Scottish coast (1910).
  3. Butler, 515; Farmer, 329.
  4. Turgot, "The Life of Saint Margaret," (§7).
  5. Best, 12-13.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Some elements included from the 1911 version of Encyclopædia Britannica, a text now in the public domain.

  • Best, Nicholas. The Kings and Queens of Scotland. London: Sterling, 1999. ISBN 0-297-82489-9.
  • Butler, Alban. Lives of the Saints. Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater. Palm Publishers, 1956.
  • Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0192800582.
  • Huddleston, G. Roger. "Saint Margaret of Scotland" in the Catholic Encyclopedia. 1910.
  • Parsons, John Carmi and Wheeler, Bonnie. Medieval Mothering. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1996. ISBN 0815336659.
  • Turgot, Bishop Of Saint Andrews. The Life Of St Margaret, Queen Of Scotland (Third Edition). Edited by William Forbes-Leith, S.J. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1896. Accessible online through McMaster University's Medieval Women project.

External links

All links retrieved September 18, 2007

Preceded by:
Ingibiorg Finnsdottir
Queen consort of Scotland
1070 - 1093
Succeeded by: Sybilla de Normandy

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