Feast day: November 16

St. Margaret of Scotland

Queen · c. 1045–1093

Patron of Scotland

An English princess who became queen of Scotland, softening a rough court with her faith, reforming the Church, founding monasteries, and personally serving the poor and orphaned.

Margaret was an English princess of the old Anglo-Saxon royal house, born about 1045, who, after the Norman Conquest drove her family into exile, was shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland. There the Scottish king, Malcolm III, fell in love with the devout and cultivated princess and married her, about 1070 — and Scotland gained one of its best-loved queens and its patron saint.

She brought to the rough Scottish court the refinement and deep piety of her upbringing, and exercised an extraordinary influence for good over her husband — a brave but unlettered warrior — and over the whole kingdom. She softened his temper, guided his rule toward justice, and together they made their court a place of religion and learning.

Her charity was famous: she rose at night to pray, fed crowds of the poor with her own hands, ransomed English captives, and founded churches, hospices, and the great abbey of Dunfermline. She also worked to reform the practices of the Scottish Church, bringing them into harmony with the wider Western Church, and to revive the holy island of Iona.

She was the mother of eight children, several of whom became kings or saints. Worn out by austerity and grief, she died in 1093, just days after learning that her husband and eldest son had been killed in battle. Canonized in 1250, she is the patron saint of Scotland.

She fed orphans and beggars with her own hands before she ate, rose at night to pray, and raised a son, St. David, who became one of Scotland's best kings.

Image: AnonymousUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/09655c.htm