St. Margaret of Antioch

Margaret of Antioch — known in the Eastern tradition as Marina — is one of the most explicitly legendary of the early martyrs, and this is not concealed. The passio that tells her story belongs to a category of martyr literature where the historical kernel, if one exists, is so completely overwhelmed by legendary accretion that biography is not the right word for what remains. Margaret the virgin martyr: the daughter of a pagan priest of Antioch who becomes Christian, who is persecuted for refusing the advances of the governor Olybrius, who is thrown into prison, swallowed by Satan in the form of a dragon, and escapes unharmed when the cross she carries bursts the dragon open from within.

This narrative is not credible as history, and accounts of this kind appear to have been questioned even in antiquity — Gelasius I placed certain passiones of the martyrs among books not recommended for public reading precisely because their legendary character was so pronounced. The cult is not dismissed on this account, because it is too old and too widespread to be dismissed. Margaret was venerated from an early date, was included among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and her name was one of the three — with Michael and Catherine of Alexandria — that Joan of Arc claimed to hear during her trial at Rouen.

The persistence of the cult is read not as evidence that the dragon story is history but as evidence that it expressed something the popular imagination found true: the virgin who would not yield, who descended into the place of absolute danger and emerged uncorrupted. The dragon is the world's power to consume, and Margaret's escape is the faith that cannot be swallowed. This is theology in the only form available to a tradition that communicated such things in story rather than proposition. Legend functions here not as biography but as a different kind of truth.