ST. MARGARET SURNAMED OF ENGLAND, V.

HER body is preserved entire, and resorted to with great devotion, in the church of the Cistercian nuns of Seauve Benoite,* in the diocese of Puy, in Velay, eight leagues from that city toward Lyons. The brothers of Sainte Marthe, in the old edition of Gallia Christiana,1 and Dom Beaunier, the Maurist monk,2 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,† where she happily ended her mortal course in the twelfth century. See Gallia Christ. Nova in Diœc. Aniciensi seu Podiensi, t. 2, p. 777.