Saint Margaret of Cortona is one of the great penitents of Christian history: the daughter of Tuscan peasants who lived for nine years as the concubine of a lord, then, after finding the murdered body of her lover, broke her life in two and became a tertiary of Saint Francis and one of the most striking mystics of the 13th century. Franciscan tradition called her la nuova Maddalena, the new Magdalene, and Christ himself, according to the account of her confessor, called her to become the “mirror of sinners”.[1][2]
Born in 1247 at Laviano, in Tuscany, Margaret lost her mother at the age of seven and grew up under a harsh stepmother. Seduced around the age of sixteen or seventeen by a young nobleman from the region of Montepulciano, she followed him to his castle and bore him a son. When her lover was found murdered, around 1273, and his dog led her to the body hidden under leaves, the horror of death threw her into a radical conversion. Driven away, she went to Cortona, placed herself under the guidance of the Friars Minor, embraced public penance and entered the Franciscan Third Order in 1277.[3][4][5]
“As I chose the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of all men, so I have chosen you to be the mirror and mother of sinners.” — Word of Christ to Margaret, Legenda, VII, 20[6]
This article retraces the life of Margaret: her wounded childhood, the nine years at Montepulciano, the founding drama of the corpse, conversion and the long ascetic life at Cortona; the birth of her Legenda under the pen of her confessor fra Giunta Bevegnati; her spiritual doctrine (joyful penance, the three names Christ gives her, the mirror of sinners, mystical marriage); her work of charity (the hospital and the Poverette); finally her death, her incorrupt body and her canonization by Benedict XIII in 1728. It does not retell the history of the city of Cortona or of the Franciscan movement, which belong to their own dossiers.
A broken youth: from Laviano to the castle of Montepulciano (1247-1273)
Birth at Laviano and wounded childhood
Margaret was born in 1247 at Laviano, a modest Tuscan village near Lake Trasimeno, then in the diocese of Chiusi.[7][8] She was the daughter of peasants, a humble origin her later holiness would never deny. Her mother died when the child was about seven.[9] Her father remarried, and according to the sources the stepmother treated Margaret with coldness and severity. Deprived very early of maternal tenderness and unloved at home, the child grew up with an emotional wound that ancient biographers saw, without psychological naivety, as one of the wounds through which evil would enter.[10][11]
The nine years at Montepulciano
Around sixteen or seventeen, Margaret, beautiful and neglected, was seduced by a young nobleman from the Montepulciano region. Tradition often names him Arsenio; other sources present him as the son of Guglielmo di Pecora, lord of Valiano.[12] He promised marriage and took her to his castle. She lived there for nine years as his concubine, without the promise ever being fulfilled, known in the district as “the lady of Montepulciano”. A son was born from this union.[13][14]
Margaret was therefore not a great sinner from a dark romance, but a young woman caught in a lasting and public liaison, settled in sin by habit and comfort, half-reassured by the endlessly deferred promise of marriage. It was precisely this false peace that the drama would shatter.
The dog, the corpse and the awakening of conscience
One day, around 1273, the lord left for one of his estates and did not return.[15] His little dog came back alone to the castle, pulled Margaret by her dress and led her through the woods to a pit where the murdered body of her lover lay, hidden under leaves and already decomposing.[16][17]
The shock was total. Before this corpse that had been her lover, Margaret did not only see a crime: she saw where her life was leading, and what would become of the body she had loved so much. The medieval meditation on death, the memento mori, became here a burning experience. This was the hour of her conversion: not a passing emotion, but a break.[18][19]
“What do you want, poor little one?” — “I seek and desire nothing but you, my Lord Jesus.” — Margaret's first dialogue with Christ, Legenda, I, 1[20]
Conversion and entry into penance (1273-1277)
The rejected return and the road to Cortona
Driven from the castle and stripped of everything, Margaret first tried to return to her father. But her stepmother rejected her again: there was no place in the paternal house for the sinner who returned with a child.[21][22] Tempted for a moment to fall back into the old way, since her beauty could have won her other protectors, she instead chose the harsher path. On the advice, it is said, of an interior inspiration, she took the road to Cortona, a Franciscan city, with her son by the hand.[23][24]
The Moscari ladies and the Friars Minor
At Cortona, two pious women, Marinaria and Raneria of the Moscari family, welcomed the young woman and her child, gave her shelter and put her in contact with the city's Friars Minor.[25] They became her guides: first fra Giovanni da Castiglione, then above all fra Giunta Bevegnati, who would be her confessor for many years and the writer of her life.[26] The friars also cared for her son, who was raised among them and later became a Franciscan himself, at Arezzo.[27]
Public penance
Margaret's conversion was anything but discreet. She wanted to repair publicly a sin that had been public. She went to church, asked forgiveness aloud, and even thought of walking through Laviano and Montepulciano with a rope around her neck to proclaim her repentance where she had given scandal.[28] Above all, she conceived a hatred of her own beauty, which she considered responsible for her fall, to the point of wanting to disfigure her face with a knife; her confessor forbade her to do so in obedience.[29]
“See, my daughter Margaret, with what strength I have clothed you, since it has been sweet for you to keep silence before those who afflicted you.” — Word of Christ to Margaret, Legenda, II, 7[30]
This penance was not a morbid self-hatred. It included severe fasts, the hair shirt and sleeping on the bare earth, but also a growing peace: in dispossession, Margaret discovered a joy that her years of false security had never given her.[31]
The Third Order of Saint Francis (1277)
After a probation of three years, judged necessary by the friars to test the solidity of her conversion, Margaret was received in 1277 into the Third Order of Penance of Saint Francis.[32][33] Like Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint Angela of Foligno and Saint Rose of Viterbo, she did not leave the world for a cloister: she lived evangelical radicality in the heart of the city, in the habit of a penitent, in voluntary poverty, prayer and service of the poorest.
Fra Giunta Bevegnati and the Legenda
The confessor and the scribe
Almost everything we know about Margaret comes from one man: fra Giunta Bevegnati, Friar Minor of Cortona, her confessor, witness of her ecstasies and author of the Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona (“Legend of the life and miracles of blessed Margaret of Cortona”).[34][35] Written in Latin, completed shortly after the saint's death and approved as early as 1308 by the minister general and the cardinal protector of the Order, the Legenda is one of the richest hagiographical sources of the 13th century: Giunta reports, often in the first person, the interior dialogues Margaret entrusted to him, her battles, tears and joys.[36]
An exceptional primary source, to be read with discernment
The value of the Legenda lies in its proximity: Giunta does not write a life reconstructed a century later, but the testimony of a spiritual director about his penitent, almost day by day. This is also its limit: everything passes through the filter of the confessor, who interprets, orders and emphasizes what edifies. The historian therefore reads in it both a first-hand biography and a spiritual work directed toward the edification of the Third Order to which it is dedicated.[37] In the 19th century, the Legenda was translated into French by Mgr Jean-François Luquet, which helped Margaret to be rediscovered in the French-speaking world.[38]
| Element | Data |
|---|---|
| Author | Fra Giunta Bevegnati, Friar Minor, Margaret's confessor |
| Title | Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona |
| Original language | Latin |
| Composition | Late 13th to early 14th century, completed shortly after 1297 |
| Approval | 1308 (minister general and cardinal protector of the Order) |
| Content | Life, mystical dialogues, ecstasies, miracles, spiritual counsels |
| French translation | Mgr J.-F. Luquet, Légende de la vie et des miracles de sainte Marguerite de Cortone (19th c.) |
The mystical itinerary: from the poverella to the bride
One of the most striking features of the Legenda is the way it describes Margaret's spiritual ascent as a progression marked by the names Christ gives her. Tradition has retained three stages: he first calls her poor little one (poverella), then my daughter (figlia), and finally raises her to spousal union.[39]
“What do you want, poor little one?”
In the first period of her conversion, when Margaret was still a penitent crushed by the memory of her faults, Christ called her poverella, “poor little one”. To the interior question, “What do you want, poor little one?”, she answered with what would remain the motto of her whole life: “I seek and desire nothing but you, my Lord Jesus.”[40] This first name expresses recognized indigence, the spiritual nakedness of one who has nothing left but God.
“My daughter”: purification and trust
As penance purified her heart, Christ changed tone and called her “my daughter” (figlia). The relationship was no longer only that of the sinner before the Judge, but that of the child before the Father: Margaret entered into filial trust, without ceasing to weep for her sins. It is in this period that the words of comfort and mission collected by Giunta are situated, especially the promise that she would become useful for the salvation of others.[41][42]
“You shall be the mirror of sinners”
The summit of Margaret's vocation was not a solitary privilege, but a mission for sinners. Christ revealed to her that he had chosen her, the converted woman, to be a sign of hope offered to all who despair of their conversion:
“I have set you as a mirror for sinners, so that the most hardened may learn from you how readily I show them mercy, in order to save them.” — Word of Christ to Margaret, Legenda, V, 3-4[43]
Margaret thus became the living proof that no one has fallen too far to be raised. This is the whole meaning of the title “new Magdalene” that tradition would give her: like Mary Magdalene, she embodies forgiveness offered to the great sinner, and the passage from the tears of sin to the tears of love.[44]
Ecstasies, compassion in the Passion and mystical marriage
Margaret's last years were filled with ecstasies, sometimes public, in the church of San Francesco in Cortona. She participated mystically in the Passion of Christ, especially on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, to the point of remaining as though absent from the world, insensitive to everything around her.[45] The Legenda finally reports a mystical marriage: Christ is said to have placed a ring on her finger, granting to the former penitent the spousal union reserved for the purest souls.[46]
This elevation never abolished penance: to the end, Margaret remained the poor little one of tears. Her mysticism is not a flight away from acknowledged sin, but its transfiguration into love.
Charity in action: the hospital and the Poverette
Margaret's spirituality was not disembodied interiority. As with all the great Franciscans, love for the poor Christ became service of real poor people. Around 1286, with the support of the bishop and the authorities of Cortona, she founded a hospital, Santa Maria della Misericordia, to receive the sick, the homeless and the destitute.[47][48]
To sustain this work, she gathered around her women of the Third Order, the Poverette (“the little poor women”), who devoted themselves to the care of the sick, and she brought into being a confraternity of laypeople devoted to Our Lady of Mercy, whose members committed themselves to supporting the poorest financially and practically.[49] Thus the converted sinner became a mother for the poor of an entire city, accomplishing in the flesh the title “mother of sinners” Christ had given her.
Death, incorrupt body and cult (1297-1728)
The death of February 22, 1297
After twenty-three years of penance and hidden life at Cortona, Margaret died on February 22, 1297, at about fifty years old.[50][51] Tradition reports that she had foretold the day of her death, and that she died in peace, at the end of a life wholly turned back toward God. The city, which had seen her arrive as a despised penitent, immediately surrounded her with popular veneration.[52]
The incorrupt body and the basilica of Santa Margherita
Margaret's body was found incorrupt, and has remained so: dressed in the Franciscan habit, it rests today in a silver and glass shrine placed on the high altar of the basilica of Santa Margherita in Cortona, the sanctuary raised in her honor on the hill above the city.[53][54] From the 14th century, Margaret's tomb became a place of pilgrimage, adorned soon after her death with a sculpted funerary monument, and the city made her one of its patron saints.
Popular beatification and canonization (1728)
The cult of Margaret, born spontaneously among the people from the moment of her death, was confirmed by the Church over the centuries. Pontifical briefs of 1515 (Leo X) and 1623 (Urban VIII) authorized or extended her feast.[55] But her solemn canonization came much later: Pope Benedict XIII inscribed her in the catalogue of saints on May 16, 1728, more than four centuries after her death.[56] Her feast is fixed on February 22, the day of her death.
Patronages and the “new Magdalene”
Margaret is honored as patron saint of penitents and of all those whom the world rejects: converted women, single mothers, the homeless, the falsely accused, the mentally ill, orphans, all the wounded humanity to which her own story made her so close.[57] Franciscan tradition has placed her, together with Saint Francis and Saint Anthony of Padua, among the “lights” of the Order, sometimes calling her its “third light”.[58]
The spirituality of Saint Margaret of Cortona
Penance as a path of joy
Margaret's central lesson is that penance is not a punishment but a liberation. What looks from the outside like a life of tears and fasts is lived from within as the exit from a prison. The false peace of the nine years at Montepulciano had never given Margaret the joy that consented dispossession gave her. Her life illustrates the Gospel word: there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons.[59]
Mirror of sinners and hope
Against every temptation to despair, Margaret is the saint of hope for sinners. Her mission, as the Legenda formulates it, is to prove by her life that divine mercy reaches even the most hardened. She does not hide her past: she lets it shine as a mirror in which sinners recognize that, if they turn to Christ, they too will be raised up.[60] In this, she prolongs the great Gospel figure of the forgiven sinner, and anticipates the whole spirituality of trust that Catholic tradition would develop down to Saint Therese of Lisieux.
A Franciscan mysticism of the Passion
Finally, Margaret is fully Franciscan: her mysticism is centered on the poor and crucified Christ. Her compassion in the Passion, her ecstasies on Good Friday, and her love of poverty link her directly to the experience of Saint Francis and bring her close to her contemporaries Angela of Foligno and Clare of Assisi. In her, the way of penance and the way of mystical love are one: it is by weeping for her sins that she enters union, and it is in union that she learns the true measure of sin.
Further reading
Saint Margaret of Cortona belongs to the great Franciscan and feminine flowering of the 13th century. To situate her figure, the following articles are useful:
- Saint Francis of Assisi — the source of the ideal of poverty and the cross by which Margaret lives.
- Saint Clare of Assisi — founder of the Poor Ladies, the other great feminine face of the first Franciscan generation.
- Saint Angela of Foligno — another great tertiary mystic of Umbria, Margaret's contemporary, also converted late.
- Saint Elizabeth of Hungary — a princess who became a Franciscan tertiary and servant of the poor in hospitals.
- Saint Rose of Viterbo — a young Franciscan penitent of the same century, whose body is also incorrupt.
- Saint Anthony of Padua — the great Franciscan preacher of the previous generation, another “light” of the Order.
Principal sources: Fra Giunta Bevegnati, Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona (late 13th c., primary source; French trans. Mgr J.-F. Luquet); critical notices: French Wikipedia “Marguerite de Cortone” and English Wikipedia “Margaret of Cortona”; Nominis (French Bishops' Conference); university thesis “La Legenda de Marguerite de Cortone (†1297)” (UQAM). On the cult and canonization: briefs of 1515 (Leo X) and 1623 (Urban VIII), canonization bull of Benedict XIII (1728).
Notes and References
Fra Giunta Bevegnati, Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona (late 13th to early 14th c.): fundamental primary source, written by Margaret's confessor and direct witness. It reports the saint's life (birth at Laviano c. 1247, loss of her mother, harsh stepmother, nine-year liaison, conversion after the discovery of the lover's body, penance at Cortona, Third Order 1277, ecstasies, miracles, death on February 22, 1297) and many interior dialogues with Christ. Critical Latin edition by F. Iozzelli, Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona (Grottaferrata, 1997). French translation: Mgr J.-F. Luquet. English translation with book/chapter references: Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., A Tuscan Penitent: The Life and Legend of St. Margaret of Cortona (London, Burns & Oates, 1907; full text on Internet Archive) — the book/chapter locations of Christ's words quoted in this article (I, 1; II, 7; V, 3-4; VII, 20) follow the internal division of the Legenda, common to these editions.
1 10 18 23 31 34Marguerite de Cortone, French Wikipedia: biographical elements (birth in 1247 at Laviano, mother's death at age seven, seduction by a nobleman of Montepulciano, nine years of common life, one son, murder of the lover c. 1273, the dog leading to the corpse, conversion, Cortona, welcome by the Moscari family, confessor Giunta Bevegnati, Franciscan Third Order, hospital of Santa Maria della Misericordia, death on February 22, 1297, incorrupt body, canonization in 1728 by Benedict XIII, feast on February 22, patroness of penitents and Cortona). To be checked against the primary source.
2 3 7 13 17 24 50Margaret of Cortona, English Wikipedia: complementary details (mother died when Margaret was seven; hostile stepmother; seduced at 17 by a young knight, presented as son of Guglielmo di Pecora, lord of Valiano; lived as mistress for nine years; one son, future Friar Minor; dog leading to the murdered body; refuge at Cortona with Marinaria and Raneria; received into the Third Order in 1277 after three years of probation; hospital for the sick, homeless and poor; congregation of the Poverelle; Confraternity of Our Lady of Mercy; dialogue “What is your wish, poverella?”; death on February 22, 1297 at about 49-50 years old; incorrupt body in a silver shrine; basilica of Santa Margherita; canonization on May 16, 1728 by Benedict XIII; multiple patronages).
4 9 11 14 15 21 25 32 48 51Sainte Marguerite de Cortone, Nominis (French Bishops' Conference): liturgical notice. Margaret, Italian lay penitent who died in 1297; mother of a child; her lover (presented as a lord of Montepulciano) found murdered at the foot of a tree; return to her peasant father; refusal of a convent; public penance; life in the Franciscan Third Order for twenty-three years, filled with mystical favors. The Roman Martyrology evokes the saint who “washed away the faults of her youth by salutary penance”.
5 8 19 22 52Word of Christ — “mirror and mother of sinners”, Legenda, Book VII, ch. 20: colloquy received on a feast day of the Purification (Candlemas) — “As I chose the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of all men, so I have chosen you to be the mirror and mother of sinners.” English verbatim of Cuthbert's translation: “As the most blessed Virgin was chosen to be My Mother according to the flesh for the sake of all mankind, so art thou chosen to be in thine own fashion a mirror for sinners and their mother” (Fr. Cuthbert, A Tuscan Penitent, London, Burns & Oates, 1907, pp. 242-243; full text on Internet Archive). In the same colloquy, Christ adds that he has placed her in the world as a “ladder” by which sinners ascend to him. English translation in the body; the Latin original is in the Legenda (Iozzelli ed., 1997).
6Identity of Margaret's lover: the sources diverge. Devotional tradition often names Arsenio, a young nobleman of Montepulciano; the English notice presents him as the son of Guglielmo di Pecora, lord of Valiano, a locality near Montepulciano. The exact name is not certain; what is constant is that he was a young lord from the Montepulciano region, that Margaret lived nine years at his castle as concubine, and that he was murdered around 1273.
12The episode of the dog, Legenda (Giunta Bevegnati): the lord not returning, his dog comes back alone, pulls Margaret and leads her into the forest to the murdered body of the lover, hidden under leaves or branches and already decomposing. This episode, which became the saint's iconographic attribute (the little dog at her feet), marks the trigger of her conversion. Traditionally dated 1273-1274.
16First dialogue with Christ, Legenda, Book I, ch. 1: in 1277, shortly after her entry into the Third Order, Margaret prays before the crucifix of the Friars Minor church and hears Christ call her poverella (“poor little one”) — “What do you want, poor little one?”; she replies: “I seek and desire nothing but you, my Lord Jesus”. English verbatim of Cuthbert's translation: “What is thy wish, poverella?” — “I neither seek nor wish for aught but only Thee, my Lord Jesus” (Fr. Cuthbert, A Tuscan Penitent, London, Burns & Oates, 1907, p. 73; full text on Internet Archive). English translation in the body; the Latin original is in the Legenda (Iozzelli ed., 1997).
20 40Fra Giunta Bevegnati (Giunta of Cortona), Friar Minor, Margaret's confessor for many years, witness of her ecstasies and author of the Legenda. Before him, fra Giovanni da Castiglione had been one of her first guides at Cortona. Giunta writes in Latin what Margaret confides to him; he recognizes the spiritual authority of his penitent while keeping his role as director, notably when he forbids her to disfigure herself.
26 35Margaret's son: born from her liaison with the lord of Montepulciano, the child was raised at Cortona, cared for by the Friars Minor, and himself became a Friar Minor. Tradition locates him at the convent of Arezzo. Margaret addresses to him, according to the sources, spiritual counsels on humility, obedience and custody of the senses. No reliable source attests to a daughter who became a Poor Clare; this article keeps to the Franciscan son, well attested.
27Public penance, Legenda: Margaret, wanting to repair a public sin by a public reparation, asks forgiveness in the church of Cortona and considers returning to Laviano and Montepulciano with a rope around her neck, to accuse herself where she had given scandal. Her confessor tempers some of these impulses. Penance includes fasting, the hair shirt and sleeping on the bare earth.
28The desire to disfigure herself, Legenda: Margaret, judging her beauty responsible for her fall, wants to mutilate her face with a knife in order to make herself ugly. Fra Giunta Bevegnati, her confessor, forbids this in the name of obedience. The episode, reported by Franciscan tradition and the notices, illustrates both the radicality of her penance and the moderating role of the spiritual director.
29Word of Christ on silence, Legenda, Book II, ch. 7: after Margaret kept silence before the mockery (notably from her son's schoolmaster) and the insistence of the Friars who pressed her to speak — “See, my daughter Margaret, with what strength I have clothed you, since it has been sweet for you to keep silence before those who afflicted you”. English verbatim of Cuthbert's translation: “See, Margaret, My child, with what fortitude I have endowed thee and what constancy of soul I have given thee, that thou shouldst find sweetness in silence, whilst bitter tongues were reviling thee!” (Fr. Cuthbert, A Tuscan Penitent, London, Burns & Oates, 1907, p. 109; full text on Internet Archive). English translation in the body; the Latin original is in the Legenda (Iozzelli ed., 1997).
30 42Third Order of Saint Francis (Order of Penance, Tertius Ordo): form of evangelical life for laypeople living in the world, without monastic enclosure, under the Franciscan rule of penance. Margaret was received into it in 1277, after three years of probation imposed by the friars to test her conversion. Like Saint Elizabeth of Hungary and Saint Angela of Foligno, she illustrates Franciscan lay holiness. Cf. the article on the Franciscan order.
33Approval of the Legenda: the life composed by Giunta Bevegnati was approved around 1308 by the minister general of the Order of Friars Minor and by the cardinal protector, a guarantee of its authority within the Franciscan family. Its dedication “to the brothers and sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis” shows its edifying aim as well as its documentary character.
36“La Legenda de Marguerite de Cortone (†1297)”, university thesis (Université du Québec à Montréal): critical study of the source, emphasizing that it is both a first-hand testimony (the confessor writing about his penitent) and a hagiographical work oriented toward the edification of the Third Order. The historian must therefore distinguish the biographical core from spiritual amplifications, while recognizing the rare proximity of the source to its subject.
37Mgr Jean-François Luquet (1810-1858), bishop of Hesebon, French translator of the Legenda: Légende de la vie et des miracles de sainte Marguerite de Cortone, dédiée aux frères et sœurs du Tiers-Ordre de Saint-François-d'Assise, écrite en langue latine par son confesseur Fr. Giunta Bevegnati de l'Ordre des Mineurs (edition available on Internet Archive). This translation helped make Margaret known again in the French-speaking world in the 19th century.
38The three names of Christ, Legenda: spiritual tradition recognizes in Giunta's account a progression marked by the names Christ gives Margaret: first poverella (“poor little one”), in the time of penance; then figlia (“my daughter”), in the time of purification and filial trust; finally elevation to spousal union (the bride). This gradation structures the saint's mystical ascent, from compunction of tears to mystical marriage.
39 41Word of Christ — “mirror for sinners”, Legenda, Book V, ch. 3-4: “I have set you as a mirror for sinners, so that the most hardened may learn from you how readily I show them mercy, in order to save them”. English verbatim of Cuthbert's translation: “I have made thee to be a mirror for sinners, even the most obstinate, that through thee they may learn how freely My Mercy is opened out to them that they may be saved” (Fr. Cuthbert, A Tuscan Penitent, London, Burns & Oates, 1907, pp. 180-181; full text on Internet Archive). English translation in the body; the Latin original is in the Legenda (Iozzelli ed., 1997).
43 60“The new Magdalene”: traditional nickname of Margaret, which brings her close to Saint Mary Magdalene, the Gospel figure of the great forgiven sinner. Like Magdalene, Margaret embodies the passage from the tears of sin to the tears of love and the sinner's trust in mercy. The parallel is ancient and frequent in Franciscan iconography and preaching.
44Ecstasies and compassion in the Passion, Legenda: Margaret experiences frequent ecstasies, notably in the church of San Francesco in Cortona, and an intense mystical participation in the Passion of Christ, especially on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, to the point of remaining absent to the world. This compassion brings her mysticism close to that of Saint Angela of Foligno and to the Franciscan experience of the cross.
45Mystical marriage, Legenda: tradition reports that Christ placed a ring on Margaret's finger as a sign of spousal union, granting to the former sinner the highest gifts of contemplation. A classic mystical theme (cf. Saint Catherine of Siena), received here with the prudence due to private revelations.
46Hospital of Santa Maria della Misericordia: founded by Margaret around 1286 at Cortona, with the support of the bishop and the city, to receive the sick, the homeless and the poor. A concrete work of charity that prolongs her spirituality of mercy and inscribes her in the Franciscan tradition of service to the least.
47The Poverette and the confraternity: Margaret gathered around the hospital women of the Third Order, the Poverette (“the little poor women”), devoted to the care of the sick, and brought into being a confraternity of laypeople devoted to Our Lady of Mercy, whose members committed themselves to supporting the poor by gifts and service. The converted sinner thus became the organizer of a lasting charity.
49Incorrupt body: at her death, Margaret's body was found incorrupt, and it has remained so. Dressed in the Franciscan habit, it rests in a silver and glass shrine on the high altar of the basilica of Santa Margherita of Cortona, where it is venerated. The tomb very early became a place of pilgrimage and received a sculpted funerary monument from the beginning of the 14th century.
53Basilica of Santa Margherita of Cortona: shrine raised in honor of the saint on the hill dominating Cortona, which preserves her incorrupt body. The primitive church, dating back to the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, was enlarged and rebuilt over the centuries. The shrine remains one of the great places of Franciscan devotion in Tuscany.
54Confirmation of the cult: popular devotion to Margaret, born immediately after her death, was recognized and extended by ecclesiastical authority before solemn canonization, notably by briefs of Leo X (1515) and Urban VIII (1623) authorizing or confirming her feast. Margaret thus belongs among saints of immemorial cult gradually made official.
55Canonization: Pope Benedict XIII inscribed Margaret of Cortona in the catalogue of saints on May 16, 1728, more than four centuries after her death. The length of the delay is explained by the antiquity of the cult, confirmed in stages, rather than by any doubt about her holiness, recognized by the people from 1297.
56Patronages: Saint Margaret of Cortona is invoked as patroness of penitents, converted women and repentant former prostitutes, single mothers, the homeless, the falsely accused, orphans, the mentally ill and midwives, as well as the city of Cortona. These patronages reflect the very wounds of her life, which she transfigured.
57“The third light of the Order”: traditional devotional epithet placing Margaret of Cortona among the great “lights” of the Franciscan family, after Saint Francis and Saint Anthony of Padua (lists vary by source, some including Saint Clare). It should be received as a title of piety, not as a magisterial definition.
58The joy of the converted sinner: Margaret's life illustrates the word of Jesus in Luke 15:7: “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Her spirituality of joyful penance anticipates the Catholic tradition of trust and the little way of Saint Therese of Lisieux.
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