Saint Margaret of Scotland

Saint Margaret of Scotland, also known as Margaret of Wessex, was born in the Kingdom of Hungary around the middle of the eleventh century, most often dated to about 1045. She was a daughter of Edward the Exile, son of King Edmund Ironside of England, and of Agatha, a noblewoman of uncertain but continental origin who has been variously linked by historians to the Hungarian royal house, to German dynasties, or to Kievan Rus. Edward had been taken abroad as a child after Cnut’s conquest of England and grew to manhood in exile, spending years at the Hungarian court. In 1057 King Edward the Confessor, who had no children, summoned Edward the Exile back to England as a possible successor. The exile died almost as soon as he landed, and Margaret, together with her mother, her brother Edgar Ætheling, and her sister Cristina, remained in England under the Confessor’s protection.

The Norman victory at Hastings in 1066 and the collapse of native English resistance left the family in danger. Edgar was briefly proclaimed king in London but submitted to William the Conqueror. Margaret and her kin later left England; according to later Scottish tradition they were making for the Continent when a storm drove their ship into the Firth of Forth. They were received by Malcolm III, king of Scots, who had himself spent years of exile in England and who had already been married to Ingibiorg, by whom he had sons. Malcolm married Margaret, probably in 1070, in a ceremony associated with Dunfermline. The union bound the Scottish royal house to the ancient dynasty of Wessex and gave Malcolm a pretext for intervening in northern England, while it offered Margaret a secure and influential position. She established her household in a manner that mixed English, Hungarian, and continental courtly and religious customs.

As queen, Margaret exercised a marked influence on the Scottish church and court. The principal source for her life is the biography composed by Turgot, a monk of Durham who served as her chaplain and later became bishop of St Andrews. Turgot portrays her as a woman of intense personal piety who heard several Masses a day, recited the Divine Office, fasted rigorously, and devoted long hours to the reading of Scripture. She urged the Scottish clergy to adopt Roman practices concerning the beginning of Lent, the reception of communion at Easter, the proper observance of Sunday, and the prohibition of marriage within forbidden degrees of kinship. She founded a Benedictine community at Dunfermline, importing monks from Canterbury, and endowed churches, including a church at Edinburgh Castle. Her charity was famous: she is described as feeding orphans, washing the feet of the poor, and ransoming English captives taken in Malcolm’s raids. She and Malcolm had eight children recorded by name: Edward, who died with his father in 1093; Edmund; Ethelred, who became abbot of Dunkeld; Edgar, Alexander, and David, all of whom later reigned as kings of Scots; Edith, who married Henry I of England and is known as Matilda of Scotland; and Mary, who married Eustace III of Boulogne.

Malcolm III and their eldest son Edward were killed on 13 November 1093 while raiding in Northumbria, at Alnwick. Messengers brought the news to Margaret at Edinburgh Castle, where she already lay gravely ill. She died on 16 November 1093 and was buried before the high altar of her church at Dunfermline. In the following century her descendants, especially her son David I, promoted her cult. Pope Innocent IV canonized her in 1250, and her relics were translated to a shrine in Dunfermline Abbey. After the Scottish Reformation the shrine was destroyed; her head was taken to the Scots College at Douai and was later lost. The Catholic Church keeps her feast on 16 November; for a period after 1693 it was observed on 10 June, the date of a translation. She is honoured as a patron saint of Scotland and of Dunfermline, and she is invoked by queens, widows, and those concerned with education and with the care of large families. Through her daughter Matilda she became an ancestor of later kings of England, and through her sons she shaped the Canmore dynasty that ruled Scotland for two centuries.