Abstract
Margaret’s identity cannot be understood without appreciating the deep role religion played in her public acts and private life. Like other royals of the time, she seamlessly melded religion, statecraft, and public and private devotion. The pious patronage of queens discussed previously remained firmly within the practical realm of statecraft, aligning them with the power and authority of the Church. Gisela and Anastasia in Hungary, and Ælfthryth, Emma, and Edith in Anglo-Saxon England were active benefactors of the Church: procuring and donating treasured relics, granting lands, and rebuilding and endowing monasteries. All were also engaged in the management of the Church hierarchy, appointing bishops and founding monasteries. None of them, however, could be described as engaging in acts of personal devotion while queen. There is little evidence to suggest that their piety extended to such activities as attending to the poor and the sick, fasting rigorously, and praying continually. Margaret’s public acts of selfless charity and asceticism were therefore a departure from their example. They were instead a reflection of the beliefs and practices of the reform movement that was gaining momentum on the Continent.
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Notes
Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 18–28;
Tom Licence, Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950–1200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 37–42.
For characterization of the movement see Leyser, Hermits, 19–26; Marina Miladinov, Margins of Solitude: Eremitism in Central Europe Between East and West. Studies in Central and East European History (Zagreb: Leykam international, 2008), 34–50, especially 42–45 pertaining to Hungary.
For a discussion of the diverse ways in which new hermits observed their lifestyle, see Giles Constable, “Eremitical Forms of Monastic Life,” in Monks, Hermits and Crusaders in Medieval Europe, Collected Studies Series 273 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1988), V: 239–264;
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and Eremites de France et d’Italie (XIe–XVe siècle), ed. André Vauchez, Collection de l’École française de Rome, 313 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2003).
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Barrow estimates that Benedictine monks were introduced to Dunfermline in the 1080s. G. W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 55.
R. L. Græme Ritchie, The Normans in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1954), 45;
Robert Folz, Les saintes reines du Moyen Age en Occident (VIe–XIIIe siècles), Subsidia Hagiographica 76 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1992), 99.
See also G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 193–196.
G. W. S. Barrow, Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000–1306 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 77.
See also Mary Clayton, “Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 157.
For Aidan, see Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969; repr. 1992), 3.3, 5, 14, 16, and 17. For Cuthbert, see Vita sancti Cuthberti auctore anonymo, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave in Two Lives of St Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940; repr. 1985), bk. 4, ch. 14; Bede, Vita sancti Cuthberti prosaica, in Two Lives of St Cuthbert, 142–307;
Bede, Vita sancti Cuthberti metrica in Bedas metrische Vita sancti Cuthberti, ed. Werner Jaager, Palaestra 198 (Leipzig: Mayer and Müller, 1935); and Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 4.26–32. Other hermits include Wilgils (seventh century), who lived as a hermit in a cell within a monastic community at a place near the mouth of the river Humber, and Cynefrith (early eighth century), who had been abbot of Gilling but sought seclusion in Ireland. Bede lists several hermits: Hereberht who retired to an island in a lake; Wictbert, who was a missionary to Frisia; and Haemgils, who sought solitude in Ireland. Clayton, “Hermits and the Contemplative Life,” 153;
Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London: Methuen & Co., 1914), 1–7.
The account is recorded in Walter Bower, Scotichronicon by Walter Bower in Latin and English, ed. D. E. R. Watt et al, 9 vols. (Aberdeen and Edinburgh: Aberdeen University Press, 1989–1998), 3.111
and analyzed in Simon Taylor, “Columba East of Drumalban: Some Aspects of the Cult of Columba in Eastern Scotland,” The Innes Review 51, no. 2 (Autumn 2000), 115–116.
Early Scottish Charters Prior to AD 1153, ed. Archibald C. Lawrie (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), no. 8.
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For a discussion of use of these cults and canonizations to establish the legitimacy of his dynasty see Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. Éva Pálmai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 123–134.
DV, fo. 13va; Diii, ch. 9. About one in 11 persons in England was a slave during the time of Edward the Confessor. David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror: The Norman Impact Upon England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), 311.
For Radegund see: Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Sanctae Radegundis Liber I, ed. Bruno Krusch, MGH SRM (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), 2.364–377, trans. in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, ed. Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halbor, with E. Gordon Whatley (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1992), 60–105;
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Marie Anne Mayeski, Women at the Table: Three Medieval Theologians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), 105–147, quote on 107.
The life was written c. 1041. Helgaud de Fleury, Vie de Robert le Pieux. Epitomae Vitae Rothberti Pii, ed. Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labory (Paris: Sources d’histoire médiévale 1, 1965), ch. 21; trans. Phillipe Buc, “Helgaud of Fleury: A Brief Life of Robert the Pious,” August 2003, www.stanford.edu/dept/history/people/buc/HELG-W.DOC
Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), 255–263.
Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 203, 248, 372–373;
Susan Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England. A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; repr. 2008), 211–233.
D. W. Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Blackwells, 1989), 140.
G. W. S. Barrow, Scotland and its Neighbours in the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 39, n. 78.
Andrezej Poppe, “La Naissance du culte de Boris et Gleb,” Cahiers de civilistion médiévale 24 (1981): 29–54.
David (d. ca. 1090) was the younger son of King Andrew I of Hungary (d. 1061). The Old Testament David had been a popular motif in Pictish stone carvings, although the extent to which these were still a part of the landscape—geographical and cultural—is unclear. St. Andrews still has custody of a carving of King David wresting open the jaws of a lion. Such iconography has been interpreted as evidence of Pictish highkingship. Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, “‘The Continuation of Bede,’ s.a. 750: Highkings, Kings of Tara and ‘Bretwaldas,’” in Seanchas: Studies in Early and Medieval Irish Archaeology, History and Literature in Honour of Francis J. Byrne, ed. Alfred P. Smyth (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 142–143.
See Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009), especially 100–118.
Mark A. Hall, “Women Only? Marian Devotion in Medieval Perth,” in The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland, ed. Steve Boardman and Eila Williamson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 108–109.
Rebecca Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-book: The Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen of Scots (Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2007), 67–75.
For the suggestion that the purpose was to fulfill treaty obligations, see Frank Barlow, William Rufus, Yale Monarch Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983; repr. 2000), 309–311.
For the possible marriage negotiations see Lois L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 21–25.
Wynzen de Vries, “Goscelin of St Bertin’s Vita Sancti Laurentii Cantuariensis” (Unpublished Diss., Groningen, 1990). Alan Macquarrie, The Saints of Scotland: Essays in Scottish Church History AD 450–1093 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1997), 216–218.
Jane Chance, Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 10.
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© 2013 Catherine Keene
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Keene, C. (2013). A Pious Woman. In: Saint Margaret, Queen of the Scots. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137035646_7
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