16 November
Margaret, Queen of Scotland, Philanthropist, Reformer of the Church, 1093

Margaret (born c. 1045) was the grand-daughter of Edmmund Ironside, King of the English, but was probably born in exile in Hungary, and brought to England in 1057. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, she sought refuge in Scotland, where about 1070 she married the King, Malcolm III. She and her husband rebuilt the monastery of Iona and founded the Benedictine Abbey at Dunfermline. Margaret undertook to impose on the Scottish the ecclesiastical customs she had been accustomed to in England, customs that were also prevalent in France and Italy. But Margaret was not concerned only with ceremonial considerations. She encouraged the founding of schools, hospitals, and orphanages. She argued in favour of the practice of receiving the Holy Communion frequently. She was less successful in preventing feuding among Highland Clans, and when her huspand was treacherously killed in 1093, she herself died a few days later (of grief, it is said).

[REPORT]

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