Margaret was alarmed when Arsenio of Montepulciano did not come home from his visit to one of his estates. Her anxiety worsened when his dog arrived the next day, alone, and tugged her to follow.
The dog led her to a forest, scratched leaves at the foot of an oak tree. The assassinated body of her lover was found, narrated by Joan Carroll Cruz in Secular Saints.
Her life of 23 years of penance commenced in fulfilment of Jesus’ message: “I have made you to be a mirror for sinners, you are the way for those in despair; the most hardened will learn from you how willing I always am to show mercy and save them,” said A.J.M. Mausolfe and J.K. Mausolfe in Saint Companions for Each Day.
New life
The death of Arsenio sparked Margaret sudden feelings of guilt and fear on the state of his soul. Immediately, she surrendered all worldly possessions to his lover’s relatives.
With her little son, she left the castle of her lover. It was a determined goodbye, too, to her beautiful horse and the luxuries she flaunted as the mistress of the one who gave her love and luxury, but never marriage, in nine years of togetherness.
Dressed in the robe of a penitent, she returned to Laviano in Salerno, Italy, but was rejected because of her stepmother’s influence on her father.
Two noble ladies, Marinana and Raneria, took pity on her and introduced her to friar minors, Frs. Giovanni de Castiglione and Giunta Bevegnati, who guided her spiritually because of her experiences of despair and exaltation, and of her desire to do penance for nine years of scandal.
One Sunday, she went to Laviano to hear Mass, with a cord around her neck, she asked pardon to the congregation for the scandal she caused. She wanted as well to do the same in Montepulciano, but Bevegnati forbade it and called it spiritual pride.
She left the home of Marinana and Raniera, and lived on alms which she shared with the needy. When her son left to join the Franciscan Order in Arezzo, she joined the Third Order of Saint Francis.
Converted hardened sinners
In 1286 the bishop granted approval for her to work permanently with sick people. Her friends in the Franciscan Tertiary Order helped in the chores.
The City Council built the hospital Spedale de Santa Maria della Miserecordia. She organized Our Lady of Mercy to help support the apostolate.
Eventually, Poverelle Congregation was recognized with the tertiaries of the Franciscan Order as members.
Margaret was the model for others. She barely slept to care for the patients. She fasted with little bread and a few herbs. She mortified, with the bare ground as her bed and a block of stone for her pillow. Her life was described in one word—penance.
Despite her life of austere simplicity and sacrifice, false rumors spread doubting her “sincerity and validity of conversion.” She was maligned because of her association with Franciscan friars, especially with Bevegnati.
By “divine command” she retired in a house far from the Friars. Labelled as “mad and hypocrite,” she bore the trials meekly and lived a life of prayer.
But during the last years of her life, she was commanded by the Lord to lead an active life converting sinners.
“Show now that you are converted. Cry out and call others to repentance. The graces I have bestowed on you were not meant for you alone.”
In Life of Margaret, Bevegnati wrote that her eagerness to bring sinners to repentance spread. Hardened sinners in Italy, France and Spain listened, were converted and healed. The priest described some of her healings, and ecstasies in Legend, the Saints Vita.
She died after receiving the sacraments from Bevegnati on February 22, 1297, at the age of 50. The people of Cortona in Tuscani, Italy, publicly acclaimed her a saint on the day of her death. A church was built to honor her, and a yearly festival was held even before she was declared a saint.
Canonized by Pope Benedict XIII in 1728, her incorrupt body is enshrined in the Basilica of Saint Margaret in Cortona.
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Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education-National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.