SangDong Lee. Scottish Historical Review. Volume 97, Issue 1. April 2018.

Queen Margaret (1070-93) has been the subject of much historical research. Previous studies of the queen and later saint have been undertaken from several different perspectives, including the biographical, institutional and hagiographical. In addition, some scholars have focused on her piety and later cult. Although a saint’s miracles were one of the significant elements affecting the development of a cult, far less interest has been shown in the geopolitical importance of the miracles attributed to St Margaret and the relationship between the miracles and the saint’s cult. The intention of this paper is to examine the miracles attributed to St Margaret and to identify their characteristics within the context of their contribution to, and influence in, the development of her cult.

As is well known, Margaret (c. 1045-93), the Saxon princess who had grown up at courts familiar with Roman church practices, married King Malcolm III of Scotland (c. 1031-93) in 1070. Thereafter she attempted to introduce non-Celtic monasticism into Scotland, by requesting that Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, send Benedictine monks to Dunfermline. Her contribution to the reform of the church in Scotland and her pious life led the monks of Dunfermline to venerate her as a saint after she was buried there; and Dunfermline’s association with subsequent kings confirmed Margaret’s reputation as a royal saint.

Queen Margaret has generated much discussion. Most scholars have focused on her life and reputation or achievements, though more recently others have begun to analyse the queen-saint’s cult. Important too is Michael Penman’s discussion of the significance of the cult of St Margaret and Dunfermline abbey in the context of royal piety and political circumstances c. 1214-c. 1286 and c. 1306-c. 1329. Nevertheless, even although Robert Bartlett has edited the materials relating to Margaret’s miracles, scholars have on the whole paid little attention to the geopolitical importance of Margaret’s miracles and the relationship between her miracles and the cult which grew from them. Bartlett categorised the miracles and identified their characteristics but his discussion can be developed and this article proceeds to discuss the miracles attributed to Margaret by analysing the recipients of the saint’s miracles and the genres and characteristics of the miracles, reading them politically as potential evidence of an intentional effort by the monks at Dunfermline to promote the cult of their saint.

As a female saint, Margaret might be expected to have performed miracles associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Even though the Miracula makes no mention of miracles of this sort, the queen’s ‘sark’ (or shirt) was subsequently used during royal pregnancies. In 1450/1 the then queen, Mary of Guelders (c. 1434-63), possessed Margaret’s sark when she was delivered of a baby and in 1512 her successor, Margaret Tudor, also used the sark during childbirth. Nevertheless, at first sight Margaret seems to have particularly attracted male, rather than female, pilgrims. Of forty-five miracle recipients recorded in her Miracula, only seventeen were women. This proportion of women and men (39·5% and 60·5%) was not atypical. Finucane’s research on the posthumous miracles of seven English saints shows that, of 1,933 English pilgrims, 61% were men and 39% were women. This same ratio was also found in his analysis of 430 pilgrims from two French cults. It should be noted, however, that in the Miracula nine monks, three priests and a prior of Dunfermline abbey experienced miracles. According to Rachel Koopmans miracle collections of the early twelfth century focussed on the ‘experiences and difficulties’ of cloistered monks, while those of the later twelfth century tended to pay more attention to stories about the laity. If this trend applied also to the Miracula of St Margaret, we may deduce that the monks of Dunfermline featured in a large proportion of the miracles dating to the early stage of the cult, probably before 1150, when the nave of Dunfermline abbey was consecrated for use as a parochial church. Afterwards, greater numbers of laity visited the church and they, perhaps, began to feature more prominently in Margaret’s later miracles. This was important since the success of a saint’s cult was largely determined by its attraction to the laity. In this context, excluding the monks from the list of St Margaret’s Miracula, provides a different gender perspective, with more lay women (seventeen) than men (fourteen) visiting the shrine.

Meanwhile, the cult has often been viewed as having primarily local and regional influence. Identifying and analysing pilgrims by their origins can lead us to an understanding of the geographical reach of a cult. In the Miracula of St Margaret, thirty-one individuals were identified by place of origin. These included nine monks and a prior of Dunfermline abbey. Of nine lay people from Dunfermline and its vicinity, six were women and three men. In four cases the terms ‘local’ and ‘Dunfermline’ were applied to women, suggesting that they were from the town of Dunfermline. Male visitors travelled from Wemyss, Gellet (now Limekilns) and Inverkeithing, each five to fifteen miles distant. Although the number of cases is insufficient to generalize definitively, it seems that local women visited the abbey more than local men and that male pilgrims came from relatively more distant—but still hinterland—locations: men seemingly found it easier to make longer trips than women. Viewed through this lens, the geographical pattern of miracles indicates that Margaret’s cult was primarily local, with limited influence up to 100 miles away in Aberdeen, Galloway and Northumberia and with some impact over 300 miles away in Bury. As with French cults, where a large number of pilgrims lived within thirty-five miles of a shrine, 65% of the Dunfermline pilgrims journeyed less than thirty-five miles, requiring a trip of only two or three days to return home after visiting the shrine. In this respect, therefore, the cult of St Margaret was, indeed, local and regional. Nevertheless, if we exclude (as above) the ten religious men of Dunfermline from the list of St Margaret’s Miracula, of twenty-one recipients identified by origin, while nine (42·9%) came from Dunfermline and its hinterland, five (23·8%) came from further afield in Scotland and, most significantly, seven (33·3%) from England. Thus, it can also be argued that Margaret’s cult extended beyond regional boundaries, spreading throughout Scotland and into England. The distribution of Margaret’s relics to Edinburgh, Westminster (after Edward I’s invasion of Scotland) and Durham (after 1346), and probably St Margaret’s hospital at Huntingdon, further illustrate the expanse of the cult throughout England.

In brief, then, St Margaret seems to have attracted a typically regional and male-dominated clientele, with most of those invoking the saintly queen hailing from Dunfermline and its hinterland, and most miracle recipients being male. However, this view is inverted when the monks of Dunfermline and priests are excluded from the list of miracle recipients and the focus is instead switched to the laity, whose interests in a saint was the most significant factor in the development of a cult. Then the cult turns out to have been both atypically female-focused and spread throughout Scotland and even to England. It perhaps follows too that if the laity was originally less interested in the cult, then the monks might have made an effort to promote the cult to a lay audience. Also worthy of note, when considering the growing influence of the cult, are those miracles designed to protect the kingdom. Although not mentioned in the Miracula, when King William (1165-1214) spent a night at St Margaret’s shrine in 1199, the saint reportedly persuaded him not to attack England. John Barbour (c. 1320-95) subsequently claimed that Margaret prophesised the Scottish recapture of Edinburgh castle during the wars of independence. These two cases imply that the cult was of nationwide significance and that Margaret was a protector of the entire kingdom. Furthermore, Michael Penman has pointed out that Scottish soldiers demonstrated faith in St Margaret—for example, at the battles of Rosslyn (1303), Bannockburn (1314) and Neville’s Cross (1346)—and this may signify that the cult had spread widely among the Scottish populace, beyond simply local people in west Fife.

It must be remembered that miracles were sometimes exaggerated to demonstrate the power of a saint. In, for example, recounting Margaret’s prediction of victory at the so-called battle of Largs (1263), the Miracula recorded that the saint precipitated a fierce storm in order to protect Scotland from the Norwegian invasion and that before performing this miracle she appeared to a sick knight, John of Wemyss. Although Gesta Annalia mentions neither Margaret nor Sir John in its account of Largs, Walter Bower (1385-1449), probably drawing on Dunfermline abbey sources, noted both in his description of the battle. Bower’s version of the miracle tale put value on the knight’s experience of seeing the saint, hearing her prediction and curing his illness. Bower’s adaption of the tale might perhaps be explained by the efforts of the Dunfermline monks to promote Margaret’s cult more widely.

In this interpretation the collection of St Margaret’s miracles, which was collated and edited by anonymous monks of Dunfermline abbey, seems to show a strong intention to draw pilgrims’ attention to Dunfermline and, in consequence, to promote the cult of St Margaret. This is supported by a close reading of the characteristics of the saint’s miracles, which, as Bartlett pointed out, often demonstrate the distinctive mark of ‘the process of the cure’: ‘incubation, that is, sleeping at a cult centre prior to healing, and visual apparitions of the saint (and others) are extremely frequent.’ Of St Margaret’s forty-five recorded miracles, twenty-seven involved the saint’s appearance in vision and incubation. By comparison, only 225 of 2,050 posthumous healing miracles which occurred in France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries were characterised by the visionary appearances and only twenty-two of the 161 miracles attributed by William of Canterbury to St Thomas’s involved a visionary experience. That 60% of St Margaret’s clientele experienced a vision is a curiously high proportion.

One reason for this could be that Margaret’s appearances would have encouraged miracle-seekers to undertake a pilgrimage to Dunfermline. As Augustine put it, the power of sight might lead a man to comprehend unrealistic beings, shapeless ideas and finally God himself. Visual perception thus led to spiritual progress. In the middle ages a vision helped people to nourish their faith. It also stimulated the recipients to act: prisoners to escape, sick persons to make pilgrimage and a biographer to write a hagiography of a saint. Margaret, when appearing in dreams, commanded the recipients to come to her shrine or to specific sites in the church of Dunfermline and to seek her intercessory power. Thus, the recipients were regularly encouraged to visit Dunfermline and the appearance of St Margaret in visions was one of the most crucial catalytic agents to draw pilgrim attention to Dunfermline. It is also noteworthy that proportionately more women than men witnessed visions of Margaret. Of the twenty-seven miracles occurring after the saint’s appearance in a vision, thirteen were performed for women, which accounts for 76% of all female recipients of the saint’s miracles. Of fourteen laymen, only six experienced the saint in vision, while only eight clerics (61·5% of these recipients) did.

It is also noteworthy that most of the miracles in the Miracula which involved the saint’s appearance and incubation happened at specific locations within Dunfermline abbey church: at the tomb of the saint, before the door of the monks’ choir, before the altar of St Margaret or at St Margaret’s fountain (or well). In addition, one monk saw Margaret’s apparition while in the monastic infirmary and three monks experienced visions while in their own beds in Dunfermline abbey. Meanwhile, of eighteen reported miracles involving neither St Margaret’s apparition nor incubation, sixteen occurred in the abbey. In two cases set outside the abbey, the recipients later visited Dunfermline to give thanks and report their cures: in one the son of a nobleman was healed at home with the aid of Margaret’s dust; and in the other a ship carrying grain which had been purchased by the monks of Dunfermline was allegedly saved by the aid of St Margaret when it encountered danger at sea. In total, seaborne instances included, just five of Margaret’s forty-five miracles (11%) occurred outside the abbey. That most (89%) occurred at the abbey was perhaps meant to encourage pilgrims to make the journey to Dunfermline, just as the high frequency of visionary experiences did too. Accounts of St Margaret’s miracles demonstrate a relatively homogenous and consistent pattern: a high proportion of miracles related to vision (60%) and even more (89%) located in the abbey. These patterns might be explained by the desire of the Dunfermline monks to encourage or sustain the cult of St Margaret. A brief comparison might prove helpful here, in order to demonstrate the significance of this more fully.

Books II, III and IV of William’s collection of St Thomas’ miracles include forty-five miracles occurring after drinking or washing with the water of St Thomas; twenty-eight cases through invocations; twenty-two miracles associated with visions; twelve with various vows; twenty-seven with promises of a pilgrimage to Canterbury; and twenty-seven miracles happening at the tomb. In other words, these miracles demonstrate wide variety in terms of agency. This pattern might have resulted from the speed with which Thomas’s cult spread across Europe between 1171 and 1172. Thereafter, the demographics of pilgrims to Canterbury, and miracle recipients, shifted from the lower-classes and women to males, the nobility and the ‘foreigner’. It is clear that the cult of St Thomas drew numerous types of pilgrims, exhibited a broad range in social status and utilised a variety of miracle agencies.

By contrast, the unusually high proportion of visions associated with Margaret and the heavily localized nature of the related miracle reports warrant further discussion concerning the motivation of Dunfermline’s monks in promoting the royal cult. As Finucane pointed out, almost half of the 3,000-odd English and French posthumous miracles from nine major and other minor cults were believed to have happened at a patient’s home, while the remainder were performed at shrines. The collectors of miracle tales would probably not, without extraneous motivation, have recorded miracles which they regarded as doubtful. For example, Benedict of Peterborough, who collected the miracles of St Thomas Becket from mid-1171 to 1173, classified stories into three groups: ‘the miracles which we saw with our own eyes, or we heard from those ill people already healed and their witnesses, or those things we learned from the testimony of religious men, who had seen them with their own eyes.’ Benedict sought ‘proofs’, demanded ‘witnesses’, felt upset ‘when people failed to tell him their stories’; he even made ‘trips outside of Canterbury to investigate certain miracles.’ His criteria offered key guidelines to other miracle collectors in a period before the canonisation procedure became complicated and strict. When miracles took place away from the shrine, the collectors naturally expressed more suspicion of the potential for fraud. It would, for example, have been easier to fake the symptoms of permanent blindness and paralysis and such ailments, often perhaps caused by malnutrition, ailment, shock, mental disorder or trauma, could disappear with changes, whether psychological, environmental or nutritional, to lifestyle.

While the symptoms of blindness and paralysis lent themselves to fraudulent accounts of miraculous healing, the appearance of saints could be fabricated with ease. It was difficult to make a distinction between vision, which ‘was usually accepted as a ‘real’ message from the other world’, and dream, which ‘was less significant, perhaps—as some medieval writers claimed—only a result of overeating before retiring.’ Another reason is that unlike other miracles consisting of physical evidence, a vision could not be seen or experienced by others. The relatively high proportion of Margaret’s miracles involving vision possibly resulted from the preparation of a request for St Margaret’s canonisation, which was conveyed to the pope in 1245 and approved in 1249. In other words, since visions could not be traced, they could be exaggerated or even fabricated by collectors less scrupulous than Benedict. The high proportion of Margaret’s miracles associated with vision was perhaps the result of an intentional choice made by the monks of Dunfermline to support their request for canonisation of the saint.

Such motivation would also explain why 89% of St Margaret’s recorded miracles occurred in the abbey. As mentioned above, visions were more easily faked than miracles with observable evidence. Therefore, to meet the requirement of investigation in the canonisation process, in particular given the stricter standards for candidates of canonisation in the thirteenth century, the monks of Dunfermline would have required the verification of some miracles which did not rely on visions. Miracles which reportedly occurred before many witnesses in the church might have convinced the investigators in the canonisation process more readily, though another possible explanation must be admitted too: that the high proportion of miracles involving a vision of St Margaret resulted from the combination of intensive prayer and extensive visual imagery of the saint on altar and wall paintings, seals, ampullae, stained glass and badges.

All five of the miracles, meanwhile, which happened outside Dunfermline abbey would have been regarded as relatively reliable. Four happened at the recipients’ homes: those of a knight; a clerk, the son of a knight, who later became a monk of Dunfermline; a priest; and a boy, the son of nobleman. The testimony of men of such standing was probably convincing. A fifth miracle occurred at sea. Stories of sailors who escaped the turmoil of the sea were also perceived to be reliable.

At first glance, then, St Margaret’s Miracula indicate that most who invoked the saint were men from the Dunfermline area. However, when the monks of Dunfermline, and priests, are excluded from the list of miracle recipients, the cult turns out to have been both slightly female-oriented and more widely spread throughout Scotland and England. Margaret’s role in defending the kingdom suggests the nationwide expansion of her cult, indicating its wide popularity. Margaret’s cult could only have been built up and sustained with the determined effort of the monks of Dunfermline abbey. The pattern of Miracula collected and edited by the monks shows a relatively high proportion of miracles relating to vision, sidestepping the issue of their reliability, and an even more staggering percentage occurring in the abbey at Dunfermline. These unusual patterns presumably served to encourage pilgrims to undertake pilgrimage to Dunfermline and so to promote the cult of St Margaret. In the same context, it can be argued that as none of Margaret’s miracle stories reference relic objects such as her shirt, gospel book or the holy cross which subsequently bore her name (presumably royal possessions and known of from later sources) these omissions were probably intended to focus attention and veneration on the saint’s shrine(s), dust and well in order to encourage pilgrims to visit Dunfermline. Similar motivations can be inferred from the strategic date chosen for the saint’s translation on 19 June 1250, just before mid-summer. This was an ideal season for the laity to visit Dunfermline, splitting too Margaret’s year in two since her death was marked on 16 November. Likewise the translation of 1180 served to highlight the prosperity of the cult and to provide an opportunity for enlarging and facilitating pilgrim access to the shrine. It can, therefore, be concluded that although the cult of St Margaret had spread widely among the Scots, this was because the monks of Dunfermline had undertaken significant efforts to broaden interest in the cult of St Margaret.