Feast day: July 20

St. Margaret of Antioch

Virgin, Martyr · d. c. 304

Patron of Childbirth, expectant mothers

A young woman of Antioch, disowned for her faith and martyred under Diocletian, whose immensely popular legend — including her escape from a dragon — made her one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.

Margaret of Antioch — known in the Eastern Church as St. Marina — is one of the most popular of the early virgin-martyrs, though, as the Church itself has long acknowledged, the historical details of her life are buried beneath layers of legend, and even the century in which she lived is uncertain. She is traditionally placed in the persecution of Diocletian, about the year 304.

According to her legend, she was the daughter of a pagan priest of Antioch in Pisidia, secretly raised a Christian by her nurse and set to work as a shepherdess. Refusing both the advances of a Roman official and his demand that she renounce her faith, she was tortured and imprisoned.

The most famous episode of her story — and the source of her enduring patronage — is set in her prison cell, where the devil is said to have appeared to her as a great dragon and swallowed her whole; but the cross she carried so disagreed with the beast that it burst open and she emerged unharmed. From this deliverance 'from the belly of the dragon' she became the patron invoked by women in the dangers of childbirth.

Whatever the truth behind the tale, devotion to Margaret was immense in the Middle Ages — she was counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and was one of the heavenly voices St. Joan of Arc claimed to hear. She remains the patroness of expectant mothers and safe delivery.

One of the heavenly voices St. Joan of Arc said she heard, she was among the most venerated saints of the Middle Ages and a patron of safe childbirth.

Image: Lazaros or (Λαζάρος) (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09652b.htm