HER body is preserved entire, and resorted to with great devotion, in
the church of the Cistercian nuns of Seauve Benoite,[1] in the diocese
of Puy, is Velay, eight leagues from that city toward Lyons. The
brothers of Sainte Marthe, in the old edition of Gallia Christiana,[2]
and Dom Besunier, the Maurist monk,[3] confirm the tradition of the
place, that she was an English woman, and that her shrine is famous for
miracles. Yet her life in old French, (a manuscript copy of which is
preserved by the Jesuits of Clermont college, in Paris, with remarks of
F. Peter Francis Chifflet,) tells us that she was by birth a noble
Hungarian. Her mother, probably at least of English extraction, after
the death of her husband, took her with her on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem; and both led a very penitential religious life, first in that
city, and afterwards at Bethlehem. St. Margaret having buried her mother
in that country, made a pilgrimage to Montserrat, in Spain, and
afterwards to our Lady's, at Puy in Velay. Then she retired to the
Cistercian nunnery of Seauve Benoite,[4] where she happily ended her
mortal course in the twelfth century. See Gallia Christ. Nova in Dioec.
Aniciensi seu Podiensi, t. 2, p. 777.
Footnotes:
1. Sylva Benedicta.
2. Gallia Christ. vetus, t. 4, p. 828.
3. Recueil Hist. des Abbayes de France, t. 1, p. 314.
4. This St. Margarey perhaps never professed the Cistercian order. At
least Henriquez, in the annals of that order, speak only of one
Margaret, and English woman, whose brother Thomas was banished by
Henry II. among the friends and relations of St. Thomas of
Canterbury. By this brother's advice she made her profession in the
Cistercian nunnery at Laon, where she died in odor of sanctity in
1192. See Henriquez ad eum annum.
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