ST

MARGARET (SANCTA

See also:

• MARGARITA

MARGARITA)  , virgin and martyr, is celebrated by the Church of Rome on the 20th of July . 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 as the price of her renunciation of Christianity . Her refusal led to her being cruelly tortured, and after various miraculous incidents, she was put to death . Among the Greeks she is known as Marina, and her festival is on the 17th of July . She has been identified with St Pelagia (q.v.)—Marina being the Latin equivalent of Pelagia—who, according to a legend, was also called Margarito . We possess no historical documents on St Margaret as distinct from St Pelagia . An attempt has been made, but without success, to prove that the group of legends with which that of St Margaret is connected is derived from a transformation of the pagan divinity Aphrodite into a Christian saint . The problem of her identity is a purely literary question . The cult of St Margaret was very wide-spread in England, where more than 250 churches are dedicated to her . See Acta sanctorum, July, v .

24-45; Bibliotheca hagiographica,

Latina (Brussels, 1899), n . 5303-5313; Frances Arnold-Forster, Studies in Church Dedications (London, 1899), i . 131-133 and iii . 19 . (H .