Saint Margaret of Antioch: The Iconography
JULY 20
The core of St. Margaret's story was summarized in the 9th century in the Martyrology of Rabanus Maurus:
In Antioch, Margaret the virgin. The Consul Olibrius, wishing to ravish and turn her away from faith in Christ, afflicted her with many torments and ordered her hung on a rack and her flesh slashed with sharp nails. After that he put her in a dark prison cell, where she overcame the seductions of the devil, who appeared to her in the guise of a dragon and an Ethiope. None of his deceptions could harm her. Finally she was beheaded by the persecutor's sword.1
By the time of the Golden Legend we find a number of elaborations on this story in vitas and altarpieces (example).

THE DRAGON AND THE DEMON

In one of these elaborations the dragon swallows St. Margaret whole, whereupon she makes the sign of the cross and the dragon bursts asunder. Many medieval commentators cast doubt on the credibility of this account, but in the art the dragon became Margaret's most common attribute.2

The artists found various ways to picture this sequence of actions in a single image. Some have Margaret actually in the maw of the beast, as in the third picture at right. Others emphasize her victory over the demon, for example by having her pierce the dragon through the mouth with a long spear topped by a Cross of Lorraine. Or she may stand with her foot on the dragon or on the demon's second guise as an "Ethiope," as in the legend.3 The dragon may be chained, as in the first picture at right, but it is never depicted as burst into pieces.

THE CROSS

To symbolize the gesture of signing oneself the images of St. Margaret vanquishing the dragon usually give her a cross of some sort, such as the small red one in her right hand in the third picture at right. The cross can also be an attribute, as in the second picture.

THE INCREDIBLE BEAUTY

All the versions follow Rabanus in having Olibrius instantly struck with desire for the maiden, whom he is usually said to discover tending sheep among others of her age ("like Leah," says one source, "the mother of Joseph the Patriarch.") It is a commonplace that female saints may be beautiful to look at but are more beautiful within, but in the case of Margaret most versions take special pains to emphasize what an early Latin legend calls her incredible beauty (inter omnes incredibile pulchritudine speciosa videbatur). In Bokenham Olibrius is astonished by "her forehead lily white, her curved dark brows and grey eyes, her ruddy cheeks, her straight nose, her red lips, her chin that shone like polished marble and was cleft in the middle."4

For most artists of the time, such beauty had to mean fair hair. There are some exceptions in Spain (example), and some German Margarets are more "medium blonde," but throughout Europe the saint's hair is usually quite blonde, as in the three pictures at right. Pien notes pictures of her from France that show her as a shepherdess with a crook, sheep, and passis crinibus, which can mean hair that is either disheveled or simply loose-flowing.5 In fact, almost all images have the hair flow more or less loosely down her back and/or over her shoulders, as in the first and second examples at right.

THE CROWN

It is also commonplace to put crowns on virgin martyrs who may not have been royals, as in the first picture on the right, but in St. Margaret's case there is textual support for the many crowns we see in her portraits. In the Golden Legend Voragine writes of the saint's gaining "the crown of martyrdom" (Ryan, 370), but Caxton makes a fuller statement of this detail: "a dove descended from heaven, and set a golden crown on her head" (93 ¶28) The "Katherine Group" version goes even further: "All the earth began to shake and quiver, and a dove came, burning as bright as if it were on fire, and it brought a golden crown and set it on that blessed maiden's head" (Head, 703). And a much earlier Greek hymn (with the Orthodox version of her name) has "Marina, the hand of the officer severed your head / But the hand of God crowned you with grace" (Acta Sanctorum, July vol. 5, 35).

Rather than a crown there are a few cases where the saint wears a garland in her hair (as in the second picture at right), or holds it in her hands as in the one with the demon underfoot that was mentioned above.

THE BOOK

Again we have a commonplace that in this case has special relevance to the legends. The books in the portraits will remind the medieval viewer of St. Margaret's final prayer that God may bless those who in time of childbirth or other peril will read, write, or even press to their body a copy of her story.6 Just having the book in one's house, according to the "Katherine Group" version, will prevent any demon from taking up residence there (Head, 704f).

THE HOLY HELPER

On the basis of her final prayers St. Margaret was included among the "Fourteen Holy Helpers" of late medieval piety. The first image at right is taken from a statuary group of the Helpers.

Prepared in 2014 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University


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St. Margaret: Detail from the Glottertal "14 Holy Helpers" (See description page)


Lorenzetti, 14th century (See description page)


The dragon swallows Margaret head-first in this detail from Maniera di Turino Vanni's St. Margaret Altarpiece.

ATTRIBUTES

  • Cross in hand
  • Dragon, usually at feet
  • Crown

MORE IMAGES

  • 1325-70: St. Margaret's portrait and martyrdom are included in the St. Catherine Windows at Regensburg Cathedral.
  • 1390s: St. Margaret holds her cross among the saints on the left wing of Cenni di Francesco's Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece.
  • Late 14th century: In St. Margaret and the Dragon by Agnolo Gaddi's workshop, Margaret has emerged half-way out of the dragon with her little cross in hand.
  • 1420-30: In a painting on glass of St. Margaret a field of bluebells in the background may refer to her capacity to avert "evils."
  • 2nd half of the 16th century: In the predella of a retable in Salamanca.
  • 17th or 18th century: Statues of St. Barbara and St. Margaret.
  • Undated: St. Margaret's statue is among the eight that flank Peter and the Virgin Mary in the St. Peter Altarpiece at the "Frari" in Venice.

DATES

  • St. Margaret's legend was declared apocryphal by Pope Gelasius in 494, and her cult was suppressed by the Vatican in 1969, but she is still listed on the current official Roman Martyrology for July 20.7
  • The Orthodox churches celebrate her feast on July 13.

NAMES

  • In Orthodox Christianity, Margaret's name is Marina. This means "of the sea," so some earlier Latin texts may refer to her as Pelagia, which means "of the sea" in Latin.

BIOGRAPHY

  • Golden Legend #93: html or pdf.
  • Three medieval English versions of the story in Cockayne.
  • "The Lives of St. Margaret of Antioch in Late Medieval England." In Head, 675-708.
  • "The Life of St. Margaret, Virgin and Martyr." In Bokenham, 7-27.
  • "An Old French Life of St. Margaret of Antioch." Translated in Stouck, 579-591.
  • Jean Pien, "De S. Margarita seu Marina Virg. et Mart." In Acta Sanctorum July vol. 5, 24-45. (Includes a number of different sources in Latin. Pien has a survey of images of the saint on p. 30.)
  • "De Inventione Capitis Margaretæ Virginis et Martyris in Cœnobio Gemblacensi facta." Analecta Bollandiana, VI, 33-34.
  • Also recommended: Clayton, Old English Lives of St. Margaret.

NOTES

1 My translation. The Latin text is at Acta Sanctorum, July vol. 5, 24.

2 Bledsoe (32) found that out of a sample of thirty Books of Hours that included prayers to St. Margaret fully twenty-six had illustrations with the dragon, but that Voragine and Jean de Mailly dismissed the episode as "apocryphal and frivolous." In the South English Legendary (Head, 687) the author protests that a devil cannot die or be destroyed.

3 Voragine, who as a Genoan may have actually seen "Ethiopes," prefers to call the devil's second illusion "a man," but the French version has him "a dark man, / who did not look like a Christian / but was darker than an Egyptian…" – see Stouck, 586. And the "Katherine Group" legend makes him "much blacker than any black man, so grisly, so loathsome, that no man might briefly describe it" – Head, 697.

4 Acta Sanctorum, July vol. 5, 35. Bokenham, 11.

5 Acta Sanctorum, July vol. 5, 30.

6 Stouck, 589. Bokenham, 18. Head, 690.

7 Oxford Dictionary of Saints, s.v. "Margaret of Antioch." Martyrologium Romanum, under July 20.

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