The Feast of St Margaret of Scotland
St Margaret of Scotland was not Scottish. A member of the royal family of England, she was born in exile in Hungary in 1045. The career of this pious woman shows the twists and turns that the life of a princess could take in the Middle Ages.
Eleventh-century England saw a confused and violent set of claims to the throne. Margaret’s family, descended from King Edmund Ironside, had fled England during the reign of Danish invaders, taking refuge in Hungary where she and her brother Edgar the Aetheling were born. The clan returned to England in 1057 during the rule of Edward the Confessor. When Edward died in 1066 three rival armies claimed the English crown: one led by a native noble Harold Godwinson, one of Vikings by Harald Hardrada, and one by the Duke of Normandy, William the Bastard. When the smoke cleared, the Bastard had become the Conqueror. Because Edgar the Aetheling also had a claim to the throne, William kept him in Normandy for a time but when Margaret’s brother returned he allowed himself to be associated with a rebellion against William and the family had to flee after its failure.
The ship carrying Margaret was driven by a storm to land in Scotland where she came to the attention of the king, Malcolm Canmore (“Big Head”). A widower with sons, he married Margaret in 1070; together they had eight children, three of whom became kings of Scotland and one a queen in England.
Margaret’s piety was famous. She was known for her personal charity and patronage of the Scottish church which she urged toward reform in accordance with the great changes toward purifying religion sweeping Europe. She died on November 16, 1093 shortly after learning of the death of her husband and oldest son in battle against the English.
The story of her earthly remains is an interesting one. Margaret and Malcolm were buried in Dunfermline Abbey but in 1560 the reliquary containing her head was brought to Edinburgh at the command of Mary Queen of Scots, supposedly as a sacred relic to assist in Mary’s childbearing. In 1597 the head was in the keeping of the Jesuits in the Scottish college in Douai, France but it was lost during the destruction of churches and shrines during the French Revolution of the 1790s. Somehow, Philip II of Spain obtained other bits of Margaret and Malcolm and had them transferred to the royal palace in Madrid where they too have become lost. Margaret is a patron saint of Scotland.