MARGHERITA d'UNGHERIA, saint. — Dominican nun, born toward the end of 1242 or at the beginning of 1243 to Bela IV, king of Hungary, and the Greek princess Maria; she died in the monastery on the Isle of Hares in the Danube, near Buda, on 18 January 1270. She emulated the virtues of various members of the Arpád dynasty, including those of her aunt, St. Elisabetta of Turingia.
At only three and a half years of age she was entrusted to the nuns of St. Catherine of Vesprimia for her education, specifically to Sister Olimpiade, a noble widow. Twice she refused her father’s proposals of marriage: the first, at the age of seven, apparently with Prince Boleslao VI Pobozny; the second, in 1260, with Ottocaro, king of Bohemia. In 1252 she was taken, together with other nuns, to the new monastery founded by her parents on the Isle of Hares, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1254 she made her profession into the hands of the Master General of the Dominican Order, Umberto da Romans.
It can be historically demonstrated that M. was favored by God with particular supernatural gifts and that she led an extraordinary life of penance and prayer. As for the stigmata attested by the Italian artistic tradition and mentioned in the Neapolitan legend of St. M. (late fourteenth century), neither the ancient life nor the apostolic process of 1276 makes any mention of them.
Popular devotion to St. M., already flourishing before the apostolic process of 1276, became liturgical beginning in the fifteenth century; after various arduous attempts to raise her to the honors of the altars, she was canonized by equivalent canonization by Pius XII on 19 November 1943 (cf. the decretal letter Maxima inter munera, in AAS, 36 [1944], pp. 33–40). Feast day: 18 January.