Late Middle Ages (13th century)
Feast: February 22
A woman who lived as a nobleman’s mistress for nine years, found his murdered body in the woods, and rebuilt her life from nothing.
Margaret ran away from her stepmother’s house as a teenager and became the mistress of a young nobleman near Montepulciano. They lived together for nine years and had a son. Then one day his dog came home alone, whimpering, and led Margaret into the forest to his master’s murdered body. She was twenty-five, unmarried, with a child, and the man who had supported her was dead. She went home to her father, who turned her away. She walked to Cortona and begged the Franciscan friars there to accept her as a penitent. They were suspicious at first — they made her wait three years. She spent those years doing penance so severe that her confessor eventually told her to stop. She founded a hospital, organized a group of women to nurse the sick, and established a confraternity to support the poor. She also experienced mystical visions, though she never fully trusted them and constantly worried she was deceiving herself. She died in 1297. The people of Cortona, who had watched her transformation up close, venerated her immediately. Her incorrupt body is still displayed in the church there.