St. Margaret of Cortona, Rich Man’s Mistress

[1247–1297] FEAST DAY: February 22

In his biography of St. Margaret, Francois Mauriac, the French author and Nobel laureate, tells us that as a child Margaret possessed a sweet, loving temperament—as long as she got her way. She was so beautiful, so precocious, that her mother and father couldn’t help spoiling her. But when Margaret was seven years old her happy little world collapsed. Her mother died, and very soon after her father remarried. Almost from the moment they met, Margaret and her stepmother hated each other.

The stepmother recognized Margaret for what she was: a pampered and willful child whom no adult had ever tried to curb. And so every day saw a battle of the wills between the girl and her stepmother. Margaret’s father didn’t help matters: one day he would side with his daughter, the next day he would side with his new wife. As she grew older, to escape the tension and quarrels at home, Margaret began to spend more and more time away from the house.

In the village the adolescent Margaret’s good looks and quick wit attracted attention, especially the attention of older boys. Margaret, who would not let anyone tell her what to do, discovered that with a little skillful flirting she could get boys to do almost anything she wanted them to do. Whether Margaret had any sexual experiences with the village boys, we do not know. This much is certain, however: when Arsenio, the sixteen-year-old son of a baron, invited thirteen-year-old Margaret to live with him as his mistress, she accepted, apparently without thinking twice about it.

For Margaret her new life was idyllic. A rich young man said he loved her. He took her away to live in his castle. She had escaped the harsh life of a peasant and the scolding of her stepmother to live in ease and comfort, with servants who did everything for her. The only thing that marred Margaret’s happiness was Arsenio’s candid avowal that he would never marry her. Nonetheless, Margaret believed she could change his mind.

When she gave birth to Arsenio’s son, she thought the baby would persuade him to marry her. It never happened. Poor Margaret never understood—or perhaps she could never bring herself to admit—that a nobleman might live with a peasant girl, but he would only marry a woman from his own social class.

Margaret had lived as Arsenio’s mistress for nine years when he left the castle for a few days to tend to some business at one of his family’s estates. He did not return on the day he was expected. Nor the day after. Nor the day after that. Now Margaret’s anxiety level was rising, and she only felt worse when Arsenio’s dog arrived back at the castle alone. The dog’s behavior made Margaret nervous. It cowered in corners and whined. It walked in circles around Margaret, whimpering. Suddenly it took her skirt in its mouth and, backing up, pulled her toward the door. As Margaret followed the dog outside she felt a terrible sense of dread. The dog led her deep into the woods, then stopped at a pile of dead branches and dry brush where once again it began to whimper. Margaret’s hands trembled as she cleared away the dead wood. Beneath the pile, lying in a shallow pit, she found Arsenio, dead and decaying.

Who killed Arsenio? No one knows. Perhaps bandits—the woods at the time were full of them. Perhaps the henchmen of a rival family—such vendettas were commonplace in Italy during the Middle Ages. But Margaret’s mind was not on the culprits: for the first time in a long time she was thinking about the state of her soul. She and Arsenio had lived in sin together for nine years and had never been sorry about what they were doing. Now she wondered if at the last moment Arsenio had had time to repent. And she wondered, if death took her suddenly, would she have time, would she have the sense to beg God for his mercy and forgiveness?

Determined to make a fresh start, Margaret took her little boy, left Arsenio’s castle, and headed for her father’s house. Like the prodigal daughter that she was, she knelt at her father’s feet and begged him to forgive her. The good man lifted up his daughter and with tears welcomed her home.

Margaret’s stepmother did not offer any welcome, but she didn’t start a family brawl, either. Her husband was delighted to have his daughter and grandson in the house, but the stepmother had a fair appreciation of Margaret’s character: soon enough the penitent would do something new to alienate her father. Sad to say, the stepmother was right.

Entirely caught up as she was in her conversion, Margaret felt that it was not enough to go to confession and perform her penance. Since her sinfulness had been public, she felt that her repentance should be public, too. To start, she began to wear sacklike dresses made of rough material. On Sundays she put a noose around her neck and knelt outside the church door where all her neighbors could see her. Margaret’s flamboyance irritated her father, but he wrote it off as a phase that would pass. Then one Sunday Margaret went too far. Before Mass began, Margaret walked to the front of her village church, where she told the entire congregation all the sins she had committed during the nine years she had lived with Arsenio. That was too much for Margaret’s father. He told her she had humiliated him before the entire town; she would have to leave.

Standing in the road outside her father’s house Margaret faced two choices: she could continue her new life, or she could go back to her friends from her days as Arsenio’s mistress. They would take her in, and in time she would probably drift back into the pleasure-seeking world she had known as a rich man’s mistress. It was a tough decision for a young woman who liked to be pampered, but in the end Margaret turned her back on the castle and headed for the hilltop town of Cortona, where, she had heard, the Franciscan fathers helped repentant sinners.

The Franciscans of Cortona were kinder than Margaret had imagined. They found a home for her and her son with two sisters, Marinana and Raneria Moscari. They assigned two Franciscan priests, Father Giunta Bevegnati and Father John da Castiglione, to be her spiritual directors. When Margaret’s son was old enough to go to school, the Franciscans arranged for him to live at a private academy in the nearby town of Arezzo.

If Fathers Bevegnati and da Castiglione thought Margaret was a run-of-the-mill bad girl, they were in for a surprise. The Moscari sisters reported that she slept on the floor, that she survived on a starvation diet, that she beat herself. What the Moscaris did not know was that Margaret was wrestling with powerful sexual temptations. She thought if she practiced strict discipline she could conquer her lascivious desires. The priests tried to get Margaret to modify her regimen of prayer and penance, but she argued back. “Do not ask me to come to terms with this body of mine,” she said, “because I cannot afford it. Between me and my body there will be a struggle until death.” In fact, she struggled against her sexual impulses until the end of her life.

Three years after her arrival in Cortona Margaret joined the Franciscan Third Order, which permitted her to take the vows of a nun and wear the habit of a nun, but live outside the convent. To make herself useful she founded a hospital for the poor in Cortona, then established two organizations, one for women, one for men. The women worked as nurses and administrators in the hospital. The men also assisted in the hospital, but their primary role was to get jobs to support it.

Spurred by Arsenio’s sudden death, Margaret became especially devoted to the poor souls in Purgatory. For the rest of her life she prayed earnestly every day for the dead. When Margaret herself was dying, she had a vision of a vast company of souls streaming out of Heaven: they were the souls she had ransomed from Purgatory with her prayers.