The Miracles of St Æbba of Coldingham and St Margaret of Scotland

The Miracles of St Æbba of Coldingham and St Margaret of Scotland Synopsis

The two texts edited here are previously unprinted accounts of the miracles of St Æbba of Coldingham and St Margaret of Scotland. Both saints were Anglo-Saxon royal ladies and both were buried in what was, by the eleventh century, the southern part of the Kingdom of Scots, at Coldingham and Dunfermline respectively. The texts tell of the miracles performed at or in the vicinity of their shrines in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and illuminate the religious and social life of southern Scotland in a period for which the narrative sources are not very rich. Although there are several Lives of Scottish saints in print (including a famous one of St Margaret), hitherto no collection of accounts of their miracles has been published and these unexplored sources reveal many new details, not only about the geographical and social profile of the two cults, but also about everyday life. They provide a reference to a Scottish fiddler; mention what is probably the earliest named Scottish artist; and give a great deal of information on illness, madness, demons, and visions.