St. Margaret of Cortona

Margaret was born in 1247 in Laviano, a small village in the diocese of Chiusi, in what is today the Tuscany region of Italy. The year of her birth is not recorded in contemporary documents, and even later biographers gave varying accounts of her early years, so much about her childhood remains uncertain. What the early sources do agree on is that her mother died when Margaret was still young, and that her father, who was a farmer, soon remarried. By her own later testimony, she struggled with the strained family situation that followed, and by her late teens she had left her father's home to live with a young nobleman from the nearby town of Montepulciano, a relationship outside of marriage that lasted roughly nine years and produced a son.

The decisive turn in Margaret's life came in 1291, when her partner was murdered. According to the account she later gave to her confessor, she was drawn by her pet dog into the woods near their home, where she discovered his body. The trauma of the discovery, combined with what she described as an interior conviction of sin, prompted a profound conversion. She brought her young son to the Franciscan friars at Cortona, entrusted him to their care, and presented herself before the local bishop to make a public act of penance, reportedly walking barefoot into the church with a rope around her neck in a gesture of repentance.

After this act of public contrition, Margaret was received into the Third Order of Saint Francis, the secular branch of the Franciscan movement open to laypeople living in the world. She settled in Cortona, where for the next twenty-three years she lived a life of austere prayer, fasting, and active charity. She took in the sick and destitute, and over time her small household grew into a community of like-minded women, both Tertiaries and widows, who shared in her work of caring for the poor. She also became known for her counsel, and people began to seek her out not only for material help but for spiritual guidance. In 1295 she was instrumental in founding the hospital of Santa Maria della Misericordia, often called the Ospedale del Ceppo, on the outskirts of Cortona, where the poor and sick could be received and cared for.

Margaret's final years were marked by intense mystical experiences, including prolonged periods of prayer and reported visions of the Passion of Christ. She also endured a long illness, during which she reportedly offered her suffering for the conversion of sinners. She died on February 22, 1297, in Cortona, and was buried there in the church of San Basilio, a former hospital chapel that had become associated with her community. Her cult was recognized locally soon after her death; the process leading to her formal canonization was opened by Pope Clement VI in 1346, and she was eventually inscribed in the Roman calendar in 1728 by Pope Benedict XIII. Her body, said to be incorrupt, still rests in the church now known as the Basilica of Santa Margherita in Cortona.

Today, Margaret is honored as the patron saint of penitents, the mentally ill, and single mothers, titles that reflect both her own life story and the devotion that grew up around her. Her feast day is February 22. Pilgrims continue to visit Cortona to venerate her relics, and the Franciscan Third Order, of which she was a member, still looks to her as one of its most striking examples of conversion. Her story, in its rawness and its resolution, has been told and retold for more than seven hundred years as a witness to the possibility of beginning again.