Seinte Margarete: a late Old English perception of feminine sanctity

Seinte Margarete: a late Old English perception of feminine sanctity 'Ich habbe adun be drake adust & his kenschipe akest; ant he swelted pet m e wendetoforswolhen: ich am kempe & he is crauant & ouercumen. Ah be ich bonki brof, be kingene king art echetiche icrunet'1 At the climax of pe Liflade & te Passiun of Seinte Margarete, the saint's story as set out in M S Bodley 34, Margaret is presented as a heroicfigure,a victorious champion who has overcome a demonic dragon. She straightway sees another demon grovelling at her feet as a loathly litde black man; she casts him to the ground and ruthlessly forces him to reveal his evd stratagems. She is in total command; the devti, writhing, can only obey. And yet the writer describes this forceful woman as 'bet milde meiden' (p. 28, line 9). The power she wields is paradoxical. Margaret is both a conqueror and a victim. She defeats the dragon while she is a prisoner; at the end of the story she is beheaded, but her death is a victory. Apparendy defenceless, totally at the mercy of a brutal adversary, and even at times plainlyterrified('3ef ha agrisen wes of bet grisliche gra, nes na muche wunder': p. 22, 3), Margaret nevertheless keeps her presence of mind and meets every challenge with remarkable courage. Acknowledging her own weakness, she is endued with supernatural strength. The legend of St Margaret conforms to the conventions of 'epic' hagiography, and Margaret is the typical heroine of that genre as the 'maiden martyr' persecuted by a secular authority who wants both her maidenhead and her renunciation of the Christian faith. The conventions have been outlined by Hippolyte Delehaye, who refened to such legends as 'des passions epiques' because they have more in common with epic poetry than with sobre historical I have referred throughout to the manuscript text of Seinte Margarete in Facsimile of MS. Bodley 34, with Introduction by N. R. Ker, Early English Text Society (EETS) OS 247, London, 1960, and to the same text, edited with parallel text from British Library (BL) M S Royal 17 A XXVTI by Frances M . Mack, in Seinte Marherete, EETS OS 193, London, 1934, repr. with corrections 1958. The passage quoted here is on f. 26r-v in the manuscript; p. 26, 11. 15-19, in Mack's edition. The line division given is mine: the form is discussed below, p. 3. Subsequent quotations similarly rely on both forms of the text, but for convenience are identified only by page and line reference to Mack's edition. Seinte Margarete has been published most recently, with a modern English translation, in Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and 'Ancrene Wisse', ed. Bella Millett and Jocelyn WoganBrowne , Oxford, 1990. P A R E R G O N ns 10.2, December 1992 168 S. M. W. Withycombe narrative.2 The age of the great persecutions may be seen as the Heroic Age of the Church; the legends of the martyrs are the tales of heroes who, like founders of nations such as Aeneas or the Charlemagne of the chansons de geste, accompUshed great deeds to found the 'nation' of Christendom.3 The characters are typical, the action runs a predetermined course, and, as the intention is more to edify than to inform, historical accuracy and biographical detail are less important than moral values. The martyrs are held up as examples to imitate, God's victorious agents whose faith and loyalty have withstood the greatest pressures that evti tyranny could devise. N o w honoured and glorified in Heaven, they are commended to struggling souls on earth as intercessors, friends at the Divine Court. This particular presentation of Margaret has some distinctive qualities of its own, qualities that its writer—very probably a man—admired and commended to his audience.4 Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg has recendy affirmed the value of hagiography as a historical source for contemporary perceptions of medieval women.5 What does this version of the Passion of St Margaret reveal about contemporary attitudestowomen and about qualities admired and commended in women saints? Although this text was written in the early thirteenth century, it can in certain respects...