Stanzaic Life of Margaret

Stanzaic Life of Margaret. Middle English Legends of Women Saints. Ed. Sherry Reames. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003. Print.

As with many virgin martyrs, the Stanzaic Life of Margaret deals with a saint who powerful men attempt to marry through threat of force and, when this fails, torture. Eventually the virgin martyr represents too much of a threat to the authority of the powerful man in question and must be put to death. Much of this is familiar territory, and this text in particular bears great similarity to Cynewulf's Juliana (which I will discuss in more detail below). As with the other hagiography I've been reading, I'll focus on how this text differs. 

When Olibrus, the lord of Antioch, sees Margaret, he decides that she must become his "lemman." Yet, rather than simply taking her, Olibrus sends his men to make his offer for him, emphasizing that such a union would afford her rich clothes, foods, and goods. Margaret of course refuses, and Olibrus sends his men to simply take her by force. Again, Olibrus emphasizes what he has to offer, pointing to the goods and wealth she would be afforded. Despite his continued offers, Margaret sees his offers as worth "not a hawe" (73). Even through the torture, Olibrus sees this is a negotiation of exchange, with Margaret continuously refusing his offers. This ties to Olibrus' perception of Margaret as a sexual commodity he is attempting to purchase; he does, after all, emphasize that if she is someone's thrall he will simply buy out her contract. Interestingly, Margaret's refusal to negotiate would seem to work against her role as a sexual commodity, but I wonder how this works with her role as the patron saint of childbirth, which she vows to protect at two major points in the text. 

The other way in which this text stands out is in how it so similarly resembles Cynewulf's Juliana. Both texts are virgin martyr tales, have a negotiation of sort over the proposed union (although Juliana is the active negotiator while Margaret refuses to negotiate), involve very similar types of torture including being hung by the hair and scourged, see the martyr imprisoned and then involved in a physical scuffle with a devil, have the prosecutor of the martyr attempt to boil the martyr alive (Juliana in led, Margaret in water), and finally both texts have their martyrs finally taken outside of the residential area to a liminal space to be finally executed. To some extent, saints lives tend to follow set formulas with only some changes to their primary plot, yet the specificity with which these texts resemble each other is interesting. In the Stanzaic Life of Margaret we do get a clear discussion between the saint and the devil about how the latter corrupts childbirths, which Margaret pronounces to oppose, yet the section where Juliana speaks to her devil is missing a large chunk of text in the MSS of the Exeter Book. It would be very interesting to have that missing text and compare the similarities between these texts.