Thursday 11 January 2007

Who was St Margaret?


I was looking at the Village sign yesterday and wondered who she was? According to the 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. Her refusal led to her being cruelly tortured, and after various miraculous incidents, one of which involved getting swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive, when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards, she was put to death in A.D. 304.
She is pretty busy. this is a list of her patronages: against sterility; childbirth; dying people; escape from devils; exiles; expectant mothers; falsely accused people; kidney disease; loss of milk by nursing mothers; Lowestoft, Suffolk, England; martyrs; nurses; peasants; people in exile; pregnant women; Queens College Cambridge; Rixtel, Nederlands; safe childbirth; women; women in labour. That seems like a lot of work to me.

1 comment:

Dsole said...

LOL! she's really a little busy, but that's a good Saint! :)

Greetings from madrid DP