Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 5003
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  • Title: Who is the Master of This Narrative? Maternal Patronage of the Cult of St. Margaret [The author argues that the needs of women in childbirth prevailed in the texts and images of Saint Margaret. The surviving artifacts emphasize her miraculous deliverance from the dragon although learned clerics tried to excise this doubtful incident from the tradition. Title note supplied by Feminae.]
  • Source: Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages.  Edited by Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski.  Cornell University Press, 2003.  Pages 94 - 104.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Childbirth Devotional Objects Hagiography Lay Piety Margaret of Antioch, Saint Margaret of Antioch, Saint in Art Patronage, Ecclesiastical Popular Culture Women in Religion
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  • Geographic Area: General
  • Century: General
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  • Illustrations: Two Figures. Figure One Metal amulet holder in the form of a silver box decorated with Saint Margaret and the dragon holding part of her dress in its mouth, Northern Europe, mid-fourteenth century (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Accession number 46, 1249, Arthur Mason Knapp Fund). Figure Two Manuscript illumination of a newborn presented to its mother by a midwife, Italian, fifteenth century. Above the illumination is a prayer in Latin that asks for a safe childbirth (British Library, Egerton MSS 877, fol. 12v.).
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  • Year of Publication: 2003.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0801441129