Feb 19h, 2018
WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE?
"What...Do You Think Your A Saint Or Something??
As I was growing up, I remember our mom used to ask me this question when I denied doing something wrong....even though she (and everyone else) knew I did do something I wasn't supposed to....
What is a Saint?
According to this definition in Wikipedia:
A saint (also historically known as a hallow) is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness or likeness or closeness to God.Depending on the context and denomination, the term also retains its original Christian meaning, as any believer who is "in Christ" and in whom Christ dwells, whether in Heaven or on Earth. In Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Oriental Orthodox doctrine, all of their faithful deceased in Heaven are considered to be saints, but some are considered worthy of greater honor or emulation;official ecclesiastical recognition, and consequently veneration, is given to some saints through the process of canonization in the Catholic Church or glorification in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
While I am not a "Saint" or even close to it, I have made a few family discoveries in the past few months that have my mother and myself and my siblings and their children the descendants of a few of these folks.
I cried when I discovered one of my ancestral Great Grandmother's was "grouped" in this realm of human beings.
So much so that even as I write this post, my brain is having a very difficult time grasping this find. To think that a person who is venerated by scores of people to this very day and that I share her blood, is probably one of the most profound things that I have discovered while researching my family's ancestral roots and history.
A few days ago, on another lark I decided to query some of the other saints through history and though I am still doing some pretty in depth research, I can now proudly say that I and my siblings and their children, through our mother, Marlene Grace Dietz Repinski, descend from some very neat people from history who were canonized as Saints in one of the many world faiths.
Today I would like to introduce everyone to the first of these "Saints".
Margaret Etheling Canmore
Saint Margaret of Scotland
28th Great Grandmother
(c. 1045 – 16 November 1093),
also known as Margaret of Wessex
was an English princess and a Scottish queen
Saint Margaret, Queen of Scots
28th great grandmother.
My Pedigree to Saint Margaret
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(Queen of Scotland-28th Great Grandmother)
Life Sketch of my 28th Great Grandmother
Born as Princess Margaret Etheling of Wessex, England
Birth: September 8, 1045
Castle Reka, Mecseknádasd, Pécsváradi, Baranya, Hungary
Death: November 16, 1093 (48)
Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland
Place of Burial: Dunfermline Abbey, Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland
Family
Margaret's Father, King Edward Etheling (The Exile)
(My 29th Great Grandfather)
St Margaret and her children
Immediate Family: Daughter of Edward 'the Exile', Ætheling of England and Agatha
Mother of Edward mac Máel Coluim; Edmund mac Máel Column, Prince of Cumbria; Étgar, King of Scots; Ethelred, Lay Abbot of Dunkeld; Alexander I, King of Scots and 3 others
Sister of Christina, Nun at Romsey and Edgar, Uncrowned King of England
Early Life and her Father's Exile from England
*She was the granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside.
*After the Danish conquest of England in 1016, King Canute the Great had the infant Edward exiled to the continent.
*He was taken first to the court of the Swedish king, Olof Skötkonung, and then to Kiev.
*As an adult, he travelled to Hungary, where in 1046 he supported the successful bid of King Andrew I for the Hungarian crown.
*King Andrew I was then also known as "Andrew the Catholic" for his extreme aversion to pagans and great loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.
*The provenance of Margaret's mother, Agatha, is disputed, but Margaret was born in Hungary c. 1045.
*Her brother Edgar the Ætheling and sister Cristina were also born in Hungary around this time.
*Margaret grew up in a very religious environment in the Hungarian court.
The Return to England
*Still a child, she came to England with the rest of her family when her father, Edward the Exile, was recalled in 1057 as a possible successor to her great-uncle, the childless King Edward the Confessor.
*Whether from natural or sinister causes, her father died immediately after landing, and Margaret continued to reside at the English court where her brother, Edgar Ætheling, was considered a possible successor to the English throne.
*When Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, Harold Godwinson was selected as king, possibly because Edgar was considered too young.
*After Harold's defeat at the Battle of Hastings later that year, Edgar was proclaimed King of England, but when the Normans advanced on London, the Witenagemot presented Edgar to William the Conqueror, who took him to Normandy before returning him to England in 1068, when Edgar, Margaret, Cristina, and their mother Agatha fled north to Northumbria, England.
The Journey to Scotland and Marrying a King
Malcolm greeting Margaret at her arrival in Scotland
*According to tradition, the widowed Agatha decided to leave Northumbria, England with her children and return to the continent. However, a storm drove their ship north to the Kingdom of Scotland in 1068, where they sought the protection of King Malcolm III. The location where it is believed that they landed is known today as St Margaret's Hope, near the village of North Queensferry, Fife, Scotland.
*Margaret's arrival in Scotland, after the failed revolt of the Northumbrian earls, has been heavily romanticized, though Symeon of Durham implied that her first meeting of Malcolm III may not have been until 1070, after William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North.
*King Malcolm III was a widower with two sons, Donald and Duncan. He would have been attracted to marrying one of the few remaining members of the Anglo-Saxon royal family.
*The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret occurred in 1070 at Dunfermline Abbey (See photo below).
*Subsequently, Malcolm executed several invasions of Northumberland to support the claim of his new brother-in-law Edgar and to increase his own power. These, however, had little effect save the devastation of the County.
The Marriage of King Malcom and Queen Margaret of Scotland
(My 28th Great Grandparents)
Dunfermline Abbey
(The Church where Margaret and Malcom were married)
King Malcom and Queen Margaret of Scotland
(28th Great Grandparents)
Life as the Queen of Scotland and her Religious Works
Margaret holding her prayer book
(This book survives in a museum in England)
My 28th Great Grandmother's Gospel Book preserved in the Bodleian Library Oxford
Margaret washing the feet of the poor
*The chroniclers all agree in depicting Queen Margaret as a strong, pure, noble character, who had very great influence over her husband, and through him over Scottish history, especially in its ecclesiastical aspects.
*Her religion, which was genuine and intense, was of the newest Roman style; and to her are attributed a number of reforms by which the Church [in] Scotland was considerably modified from the insular and primitive type which down to her time it had exhibited.
*Among those expressly mentioned are a change in the manner of observing Lent, which thenceforward began as elsewhere on Ash Wednesday and not as previously on the following Monday, and the abolition of the old practice of observing Saturday (Sabbath), not Sunday, as the day of rest from labour.
*She attended to charitable works, serving orphans and the poor every day before she ate and washing the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ.
*She rose at midnight every night to attend the liturgy.
*She successfully invited the Benedictine Order to establish a monastery in Dunfermline, Fife.
*In 1072, and established ferries at Queensferry and North Berwick to assist pilgrims journeying from south of the Firth of Forth to St. Andrew's in Fife. (see photo above)
*She used a cave on the banks of the Tower Burn in Dunfermline as a place of devotion and prayer. now covered beneath a municipal car park, is open to the St. Margaret's Cave, public. (see photo above)
*Among other deeds, Margaret also instigated the restoration of Iona Abbey in Scotland.
* She is also known to have interceded for the release of fellow English exiles who had been forced into serfdom by the Norman conquest of England.
*She rose at midnight every night to attend the liturgy.
*She successfully invited the Benedictine Order to establish a monastery in Dunfermline, Fife.
*In 1072, and established ferries at Queensferry and North Berwick to assist pilgrims journeying from south of the Firth of Forth to St. Andrew's in Fife. (see photo above)
*She used a cave on the banks of the Tower Burn in Dunfermline as a place of devotion and prayer. now covered beneath a municipal car park, is open to the St. Margaret's Cave, public. (see photo above)
*Among other deeds, Margaret also instigated the restoration of Iona Abbey in Scotland.
* She is also known to have interceded for the release of fellow English exiles who had been forced into serfdom by the Norman conquest of England.
*Margaret was as pious privately as she was publicly. She spent much of her time in prayer, devotional reading, and ecclesiastical embroidery. This apparently had considerable effect on the more uncouth Malcolm, who was illiterate: he so admired her piety that he had her books decorated in gold and silver.
One of these, a pocket gospel book with portraits of the Evangelists, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. (see photo above)
One of these, a pocket gospel book with portraits of the Evangelists, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. (see photo above)
*She founded several churches, including the Abbey of Dunfermline,
This church was built to enshrine her greatest treasure, a relic of the true Cross.
She is said to have brought the "Holy Rood", a fragment of Christ's cross, from Hungary or England to Scotland with her. It was known as the Black Rood of Scotland.
The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that Saint Margaret brought the cross from Waltham Abbey, after which it was kept in Holyrood Abbey, which her son erected in Edinburgh.
The relic was removed from Scotland by Edward I of England in 1296, along with the Stone of Scone and other treasures, but the Black Rood was returned in 1328. It was lost to the English again following the battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, after which it was held in Durham Cathedral until the Reformation of 1540, when it was presumably destroyed.
An inventory made in England described the cross and its case in Latin soon after it was taken from Edinburgh Castle in 1296 as; "Unum scrinium argenteum deauratum in quo reponitur crux que vocatur le blake rode", which can be translated as "A silver-gilt casket in which lies the cross called the Black Rood". (See photo above)
*She foretold the day of her death, which took place at Edinburgh on 16 Nov., 1093, her body being buried before the high altar at Dunfermline.
The Deaths of a King and then a Queen
Death of Malcolm:
Malcolm engaged the English near Alnwick on 13 November, 1093.
He was killed in battle along with Edward, his son and heir. Margaret, already weakened due to illness, was not told of her husband’s and her son’s death for fear of worsening her condition.
The Death of King Malcom
Death of Margaret:
On her death bed, Margaret clasped in her hands a black cross which she held in deep veneration. This was thought to be part of the True Cross. Eventually Margaret learned of the death of her husband and son. Whether due to illness or the news of her loss, she died four days after Malcolm. Margaret had lived an austere life spending many hours in prayer and frequently fasting. She was not yet 50 when she died on 16 November 1093.
The Death of Queen Margaret
The Path to Sainthood
At the Reformationher head passed into the possession of Mary Queen of Scots, and later was secured by the Jesuits at Douai, where it is believed to have perished during the French Revolution.
According to George Conn, "De duplici statu religionis apud Scots" (Rome, 1628), the rest of the relics, together with those of Malcolm, were acquired by Philip II of Spain, and placed in two urns in the Escorial.
When, however, Bishop Gillies of Edinburgh applied through Pius IX for their restoration to Scotland, they could not be found.
The feast of my 28th Great Grandmother, St. Margaret is now observed by the Church on 10 June.
Warm Regards,
My Family Historian,
John
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