Margaret of Ypres, Blessed (MARGHERITA D'YPRES, BEATA) - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p. 68

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

MARGHERITA d'YPRES, blessed. - Mystic, born in Ypres (Flanders) in 1216 to a bourgeois family, died there on July 20, 1237; she belongs to the Beguine movement

Article illustration — MARGARET OF HUNGARY, saint. - Color woodcut from the end of the 15th century. At the feet of the Saint is the coat of arms of the Árpáds. Esztergom, Primate's Museum.
(courtesy of the Postulation of the Dominican Fathers, Rome)

of the 13th century. After her father's death, she received a careful education in a monastery. She obtained permission to receive communion from the age of 5.

At the age of 18 she embraced, in her parental home, the life of the "Sisters of Penance," under the direction of the Dominican preacher Siger of Lille. M. made a vow of chastity and led a life of austerity and extreme poverty in great recollection. Her prayer was unceasing. Filled with mystical graces, she ascended to the heights of divine love. Her spirituality, like that of the Beguine movement, was entirely Christocentric and was nourished by a special devotion to the Passion and the Eucharist. However, one does not note in M. the precursor element of devotion to the Sacred Heart that appears in various other representatives of the mystical movement of the 13th century in the Netherlands.

BIBL.: The Vita of M. was written by Thomas of Cantimpré, ed. H. Choquet, in Sancti Belgii O. P., Douai 1618, p. 144, republished from 3 manuscripts, without Choquet's arbitrary corrections, by G. Meersseman, in Archivum Ord. Fr. Praed., 18 (1948), p. 106 ff.; G. Meersseman, ibid., p. 69 ff.

Leonizio Reypens