Saint Margaret of Scotland

Saint Margaret of Scotland was queen of Scotland, the wife of King Malcolm III, and the mother of eight children. She is remembered in the Church for her care for the poor and for the renewal of religious life in her kingdom. The Church commemorates her on November 16.

She was born in Hungary around 1045. The exact date is not known. Her father, the English prince Edward, known as the Exile, a son of King Edmund II, was living there in exile. In 1057 the family returned to England, but her father died soon afterward. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, her mother, Agatha, sought refuge abroad with her children. According to tradition, a storm drove their ship to the coast of Scotland, where King Malcolm III received them.

Around 1070 Margaret married Malcolm at Dunfermline. She bore six sons and two daughters and watched over their upbringing herself. Three of her sons, Edgar, Alexander, and David, reigned in turn on the Scottish throne, and her daughter Matilda became the wife of King Henry I of England. Most of what is known about Margaret comes from her Life, written at Matilda’s request and attributed to the queen’s confessor Turgot, later bishop of St Andrews.

Margaret had great influence on her husband and on the affairs of the kingdom. At her initiative synods were convened at which she herself spoke, while the king served as interpreter. The keeping of Lent was then set in order, the custom of receiving Holy Communion at Easter and the observance of Sunday were restored, and marriages contrary to the law of the Church were forbidden. At Dunfermline she built the church of the Holy Trinity and brought Benedictine monks to it from Canterbury. She also supported the abbey on the island of Iona.

The Life describes her day as filled with prayer and service to the poor. In the morning she fed nine orphans, and before her own meal she waited on twenty-four poor people whom she supported throughout the year. In Advent and in Lent she and the king together served food to three hundred poor people. She ransomed captives. For pilgrims on their way to St Andrews she built shelters on both shores of the Firth of Forth and provided free passage across it.

For the last half year of her life she was gravely ill. Her husband and her eldest son, Edward, were killed near Alnwick on November 13, 1093. Her son Edgar brought her the news when she was already dying. According to the Life, she thanked God for sending her in her last hour a suffering that cleanses from sins, and she passed away with a prayer on her lips, holding a relic of the Holy Cross. She died on November 16, 1093, in Edinburgh Castle. She was buried at Dunfermline, where her husband was also laid to rest.

Pope Innocent IV enrolled her among the saints in 1250, and in 1673 Clement X declared her patroness of Scotland. John Paul II, celebrating Mass in Glasgow in 1982, said that the coming of Queen Margaret opened a new chapter in the history of the Church in Scotland.