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ABSTRACT The Metamorphosis of Monsters: Christian Identity in Medieval England and the Life of St Margaret by Michael Edward Heyes This dissertation examines several late medieval Lives of St. Margaret written in England to show that the monsters of the Life offer both a synchronic and diachronic perspective on the construction of Christian sexual identity in both professional religious and lay communities in medieval England. St. Margaret was one of the most popular saints in medieval England, and monsters play a key role in her martyrdom. Throughout her narrative, Margaret is accosted by a demonic prefect, hungry dragon, and loquacious black demon. Having defeated each monster in turn, she is taken to the place of her martyrdom where she prays for supernatural boons for her adherents. As a virgin martyr, Margaret’s resistance to these monstrous aggressors (and the suffering which she undergoes as a result) is the most important aspect of her story: not only does it represent Margaret’s raison d’être, but also the source of the virtus that benefits her cult. Previous scholarship has focused on Margaret’s resistance to Olibrius as a means to understand her impact on the identities of her virginal or maternal adherents, and on Margaret’s speech and deeds as important socio-cultural data which can be used to inform the context of Margaret’s medieval readers. This dissertation also treats each version in question as a source for information on Margaret’s medieval audience, but rather than concentrating upon Margaret’s speech and actions as previous research has, this dissertation instead focuses on the monsters that populate Margaret’s Life. This focus allows a new evaluation of Margaret’s simultaneous appeal to virgins and mothers through the polysemous figure of the dragon, the didactic elements of the black demon’s speech, the competing claims of religious identity in the figure of Olibrius, and the importance and content of the prayers at the end of Margaret’s Life for her maternal adherents. Equally important is that the diachronic focus of the dissertation reveals that while Margaret herself seems to change little over time – showing a slow metamorphosis from demonic adversary to maternal advocatrix – the monsters are more volatile, changing character as needed to create a narrative that constantly exists in the reader’s present. Acknowledgments This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Claire Fanger, for her tutelage, patience, and boundless knowledge of medieval studies. My dissertation committee – Jeffrey Kripal, Joseph Campana, and Niki Clements – also receives my heartfelt thanks for their feedback and contributions to the project. Many thanks to Grant Adamson and Benjamin Brochstein, both of whom read chapters of this dissertation and patiently listened to my ramblings regarding them. I am also indebted to the Wagoner Fellowship for its generous funding of my research in the United Kingdom. I would also like to thank my family – my father, Edward Heyes; my mother, Linda Heyes; and my sister, Beth Heyes – for their love and support during the dissertation process. A thank you to my newborn son, Alexander Michael Heyes, who created the necessary sense of immediacy for this project to reach completion. Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Stacey Heyes, for her patience during the length of my graduate career and her willingness to help me in following my dreams: this would have been impossible without her partnership. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .....................................................................................................................1 The Lives of St. Margaret .............................................................................................5 State of the Question ....................................................................................................9 Approach ................................................................................................................... 14 Chapter Synopses ...................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 1: In the Belly of the Beast – Sexual Temptation in the Life of St. Margaret ..... 28 The Life of St. Anthony and Gregory’s Dialogues ....................................................... 31 The Life of St Margaret .............................................................................................. 39 Succumbing to Temptation: The Paris Text................................................................ 46 Resisting Temptation: Seinte Margarete of the Katherine Group................................ 52 Conclusion................................................................................................................. 65 Chapter 2: The Devil Made Me Do It – Audience Partitioning and the Life of St. Margaret ....................................................................................................................... 69 The Mombritius Version ............................................................................................ 72 Seinte Margarete ....................................................................................................... 74 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 303 ..................................................................... 90 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 3 - Circumcising Olibrius: Threatening Sexuality and Religious Alterity in the Life of St. Margaret ..................................................................................................... 106 Demonic Sexuality .................................................................................................. 109 Synthesis ................................................................................................................. 124 Religious Identity .................................................................................................... 126 Suggestions of Jewish Identity ............................................................................. 128 Suggestions of Saracen Identity ........................................................................... 130 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 138 Chapter 4 - Paging Dr. Margaret: Prayers and Pregnancy in the Life of St. Margaret.... 145 Margaret’s Blessings................................................................................................ 147 Gleanings to This Point ............................................................................................ 172 Margaret at the Bedside ........................................................................................... 177 The Life of the Life .................................................................................................. 191 Conclusion: The Metamorphosis of Monsters .............................................................. 194 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 208 1 Introduction BL Harley 2974 is a small codex bound in brown calf-skin with gilt edging on its pages. The codex is a Book of Hours and contains several illustrations, including an image of Margaret bursting from the back of a dragon. In this image, Margaret wears a blue cape covering a red dress. She stares down at the creature that has swallowed her with a look that could be either sadness or disdain. Since most of her lower body is covered by the creature’s outstretched wings, the presence of blood to the right side of Margaret – almost blending in to the dragon’s side – is the only signifier that betrays her bloody, violent exit from the creature. A bit of blue fabric can still be seen in the dragon’s mouth, indicating that the creature was in the middle of devouring her when she so rudely interrupted its dinner with her escape. Over the course of writing this dissertation, I have seen dozens upon dozens of such images. In some, God is present in the form of a dove, in others a comforting hand that reaches from heaven, and sometimes (as in the BL Harley image) not at all. Depictions of the dragon vary from two legs to four, and a myriad colors including gold, red, green, blue, and black have been used to color its scales and wings. Some depictions – like BL Harley 2974 – feature a dragon that looks defeated, perhaps even timid, but others do not shy from depicting a beast full of ferocity and violence. In all, the dragon appears to be stuck between a state of life and death; unaware that the very thing it so recently overcame has overcome it in turn. Indeed, its look of defeat could be one of surprise. Yet, at the same time that Margaret has defeated the dragon, she is also inextricably bound to it in her iconography. How would we identify Margaret without her 2 dragon? Contemplating the image once again, one finds that there are no identifying features to Margaret’s clothing, hair, face, halo, or surroundings with which a viewer – medieval or modern – could tell her apart from another female saint. Rather, it is Margaret bursting from her dragon that allows her to be easily identified. In this bursting, the only thing to indicate that she and the dragon are separate entities is the blood upon the dragon’s back and

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