further edited by both civil and ecclesiastical offi cials.
Recovering Margaret’s authentic voice and experience
from such a composite text may be impossible, although
feminist scholars have begun to try. What does emerge
clearly from the Legenda and other early sources is the
struggle that went on after her death over the right to
display her relics and claim the benefi ts of her patron-
age. Recent studies have identifi ed three main parties in
this struggle: Franciscan friars; civic leaders of Cortona;
and adherents of San Basilio, the church that became
Margaret’s shrine.
In the Legenda itself, the strongest voice is Francis-
can. Indeed, the text recounts numerous visions in which
Christ expresses special favor toward the Franciscans,
reminds Margaret that he has personally entrusted her
to their keeping, and urges her always to obey them.
The Legenda also holds Margaret up as an example
for other Franciscan teftiaries to follow and portrays
her, in effect, as a testimonial to the virtues that a lay
penitent could acquire under Franciscan guidance:
humility, self-discipline, reverence for the clergy and
the eucharist, perfect orthodoxy (always a key question
about uncloistered women), and even the restoration
of virginity. As Schlager (1998) has suggested, these
emphases may have been chosen partly to overcome
the friars’ own resistance to the papal mandates that
made them responsible for potentially dangerous female
penitents.
Other portions of the Legenda—including practi-
cally all the miracle stories, which were originally
omitted from Fra Giunta’s account and appended in
the last chapter—link Margaret more closely with lo-
cal needs and aspirations in Cortona. And Margaret’s
own reported words and actions sometimes support the
local agendas too. In the decade before her death, she
distanced herself somewhat from the Franciscan friars
by moving to a solitary cell near San Basilio, which was
then just a small secular church in poor condition, and
choosing its priest, ser Badia, as her fi nal confessor. She
supported this church by obtaining an indulgence for
those who helped with its rebuilding, and she founded
a charitable confraternity whose fi rst chaplain was ser
Badia. When she died, it was San Basilio that received
her body for burial, although the Franciscans insisted
for decades that she had made a permanent commitment
to them. Civic leaders asserted the town’s own claim to
her body, arguing that she had chosen to live in Cortona
and had contributed signifi cantly to the general welfare
by founding a hospital for the poor, resolving confl icts
between rival factions, and negotiating an agreement
that persuaded the warlike bishop of Arezzo to cancel
an impending attack.
As Bornstein (1993) has shown, using archival sourc-
es that survive in Cortona, the contest over Margaret’s
relics had economic and political ramifi cations. When
the miracles began around her tomb, San Basilio reaped
the most obvious benefi ts. In the next few decades, this
church acquired an impressive new sanctuary, suitable
for welcoming pilgrims, and a rich endowment based
on bequests. Civic leaders invested generously in the
expansion and adornment of San Basilio (eventu-
ally renamed Santa Margherita) and the promotion of
Margaret’s cult, and the investment evidently paid off
in terms of Cortona’s increasing prestige and political
independence. The Franciscans were shut out until the
end of the fourteenth century, when town leaders invited
them to replace the secular clergy who had hitherto
administered the new church and Margaret’s shrine.
But the town itself retained—and still retains—legal
ownership of Margaret’s body.
An ambitious study by Cannon and Vauchez (1999)
enriches and complicates this picture by reminding us
that the contest over Margaret’s cult was partly about
the right to defi ne the religious and symbolic identity of
Cortona’s patron saint. This issue mattered greatly not
only to the Franciscans, but also to the civic authorities
of Cortona and certain subgroups within the town, in-
cluding the local clergy and the next generation of male
and female terriaries. The different ways in which these
Cortonese groups reconstructed Margaret’s identity, in
the light of their own corporate traditions and priorities,
are barely suggested in the Legenda and other written
sources. But, as Cannon demonstrates, a great deal can
still be learned about them by studying what remains of
the paintings and sculpture that were added to the church
of Santa Margherita in the fourteenth century to honor
this not yet canonized saint. More work will surely be
done with the wealth of fascinating detail that Cannon
and Vauchez have brought to light.Further Reading
Benvenuti Papi, Anna. “In castro poenitentiae”: Santità e
società femminile nell’Italia medievale. Italia Sacra, 45.
Rome: Herder, 1990. (Collection of Benvenuti’s articles that
includes her most detailed and important pieces on Margaret
of Cortona.)
——. “Mendicant Friars and Female Pinzochere in Tuscany:
From Social Marginality to Models of Sanctity.” In Women
and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. Daniel
Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, trans. Margery J. Schneider.
Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 84–103.
(Overview suggesting societal patterns; the original title of
the edited collection was Mistiche e devote nell’Italia tardo-
medievale.)
Bevegnati, Giunta. Leggenda delld vita e dei miracoli di Santa
Margherita da Cortona, trans. and ed. Eliodoro Mariani,
Vicenza: LIEF, 1978. (With historical notes.)
——. Legenda de vita et miraculis beatae Margaritae de Cortona,
ed. Fortunato Iozzelli. Bibliotheca Franciscans Ascetica Medii
Aevi, 13. Grottaferrata: Ediciones Collegii S. Bonaventu-
rae ad Claras Aquas, 1997. (Published in Rome. Critical
edition of the Latin text, with detailed discussions of itsMARGARET OF CORTONA, SAINT