I’ve have a keen interest in iconography and imagery. Regular readers will know I often write about these things. Sometimes I spot something I haven’t before and, curiosity piqued, I look into it. Which is how I got to know about St Margaret and the dragon.
Who was St Margaret?
Margaret lived in Antioch, modern-day Turkey1 in the early days of Christianity. She was the daughter of a pagan priest who gave her to a nurse to raise her as a Christian1.
When she turned 15, a Roman official called Olybrius1 or Olibrius2, wanted her to renounce her faith and marry him1, or he wanted to ravish her2. All sources go to great lengths to describe her beauty2. She refused so he imprisoned her where she was tortured1 2 3. In prison, the Devil appeared to St Margaret in the form of a dragon1 2 3. She fought the dragon who still managed to swallow her whole1 3. She escaped either because she made the sign of the cross, or because she had a cross in her hand1 3 2. Whichever one worked, the dragon’s belly ripped apart and she walked out1 3.
Hagiography
The church canonised Margaret and she is now the patron saint of childbirth1. (This is the same line of thinking that has St Lawrence the patron saint of cooks because they killed him by grilling him over a fire. Ironic, weird or wacky? You be the judge.)
Jacobus da Voragine wrote about her in The Golden Legend in the 13th century1.
Da Voragine also wrote the legend of St Christopher, whose statue is on Prague’s Charles Bridge.
An earlier writer, Rabanus Maurus, describes her2 but doesn’t mention the whole swallowed-by-a-dragon bit. Da Voragine’s book was a collection of many hagiographies and he casts doubt on this phantasmagorical part of the story1. Even Pope Gelasius declared this part apocryphal in 4942, which is the earliest reference to her I could find.
Imagery
Without discussing the veracity of the above story, it is the legend which the Church has.
In medieval times, paintings were one of the main ways a church could communicate with the people. Most people were illiterate but everyone could remember biblical stories or religious mythology.
It’s why you can immediately spot, for example, St Peter in these paintings. He’s the one holding keys because he’s at the gates of heaven.
This is why St Margaret is always portrayed with a dragon. It doesn’t matter whether the story was true or not, it became an easy way to represent her in an image.
Sometimes she’s holding the dragon on a leash showing how she mastered the devil himself. Sometimes the dragon still has her skirts trailing out of her mouth.
It’s interesting that various painters interpret her beauty in different ways. Each painter represented the ideal of beauty from his time and his own tastes. The images of St Margaret are a reflection of how taste varied over time in different regions.
This was the image I saw at Prague’s National Gallery which piqued my interest:
And it explains why an image of St Margaret seems to have a human-looking dragon as a pet beside her.
- The Remarkable Story of St. Margaret of Antioch; Wu Mingren; Ancient Origins; 2017-04-24[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- Saint Margaret of Antioch: The Iconography; Christian Iconography; Richard Stracke; 2014-07-20[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
- St Margaret of Antioch and the Devil; Margaret Frazer; Margaret Frazer; 2012-09-18[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]