MARGHERITA DA CORTONA, saint. — B. in 1247 at Laviano, then in the diocese of Chiusi, d. at Cortona on 22 February 1297, and therefore called da C. Left
Having lost her parents, she consecrated herself to God by a vow of perpetual virginity (1524) and devoted herself entirely to the service of the poor and those stricken by plague, assisted by Our Lady and by s. Rocco, to whom she was also deeply devoted. At Our Lady’s command and with the support of the faithful, convinced by extraordinary miracles, she built at Cabera a church dedicated to the Annunciation in 1535, and beside the church a monastery, in which she enclosed herself with other virgins.
In 1599 the “Margheritine” were transferred to Compiano and placed under the Rule of s. Augustine. The monastery flourished until the Napoleonic upheaval. The memory of the Devota remains ever alive among her people. The process for her beatification was begun in the 16th century.
orphaned by her mother, misunderstood by her stepmother, attractive and highly sensitive, she was deceived by a young nobleman from Montepulciano named Arsenio who, with the hope of an imminent marriage, persuaded her to follow him to Montepulciano, where she gave birth to a son. After Arsenio was tragically killed, she was struck by divine Grace and, having repaired the scandals she had caused, settled in Cortona, where she was lovingly received by several noblewomen.
Having chosen the Friars Minor of the Convent of S. Francesco as directors of her conscience, after a three-year probation she was admitted to the Third Order of St. Francis. Meanwhile she devoted herself to educating her son, who later became a Friar Minor, and especially to practicing charity toward the sick; she also founded a hospital and associated with herself several pious women to care for them, known as the Poverelle, who were swept away in the Napoleonic suppression. In the meantime the Lord was filling her with special graces, ecstasies, visions, and revelations, which out of obedience she disclosed to her confessor, Friar Giunta Bevegnati of the Friars Minor, who preserved them in the Legenda beatae Margaritae. This is the principal and most reliable source for the life of the Saint. Wadding, in his Annales (v. BIBLICA), and the liturgy made M., before her conversion, a public woman who later became the seraphic Magdalene. This is historically false. M. was merely irregularly united with a man. Leo X in 1515 permitted the feast at Cortona and in the diocese; Urban VIII extended it in 1623 to the Franciscan Order; she was entered in the Roman Martyrology by a decree of Clement XI dated 13 July 1715; she was canonized by Benedict XIII on 16 May 1728. Her body is venerated as incorrupt in the church of the Friars Minor, now called that of S. M., raised to the dignity of a minor basilica in
1927. The feast is celebrated on 22 February
Vedi tav. VI.FOLKLORE. – The Saint, patroness of her hospitable Cortona and of penitents, inspired a popular-style “history” in 53 stanzas of a “canzone alla corsa,” disseminated through chapbooks from the first half of the nineteenth century.
Her story has also been brought to the stage several times: a verse performance, La conversione di s. M. da C., by Aci Drepaneo, the pseudonym of the Trapani man of letters Bernardo Bonaiuto (1714–84), enjoyed immense popularity. This sacred drama, which also contains a section in the Sicilian dialect, continued to be performed for two centuries and went through many reprints.
The feast of s. M. falls on 22 February. In French folklore the Saint is often mistakenly confused with s. Margherita di Antiochia, whose feast is instead celebrated on 20 July and who, in popular devotion, seems to have supplanted the ancient goddess Lucina, since women in labor invoke her with special prayers and forms of devotion.