St. Margaret--The Missing Saint

Once one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Margaret of Antioch is no longer even on the calendar.

St. Margaret of Antioch (photo: Les Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne, 1500-1520)

The trial transcript for the condemnation of St. Joan of Arc mentions St. Margaret more than 120 times. She’s usually paired with St. Catherine, and sometimes St. Michael. Joan never specified which Margaret and which Catherine, but Margaret of Antioch and Catherine of Alexandria were both saints with wide devotions and popular lives set in verse, so it’s considered likely that she was referring to them.

This has caused problems for some, because the lives of both were woven out of the common cloth used for the vitae (lives) of many saints. Margaret’s story used narrative cliches and fantastic imagery, offering wonders that left even a purveyor of legends such as Jacobus de Voragine, the 13th-century author of The Golden Legend, in doubt about their veracity.

There is no way to tell if any genuinely historical information about St. Margaret has come down to us in some way. She is just a name in martyrologie…