Of all the fascinating passages in The Life of St. Margaret, the passage that most gave me pause was Margaret’s interaction with Rufus (the “brother of the devil”) in the form of a dragon. As a student who has had relatively little interaction with hagiography, I had rarely encountered dragons in Christian texts; as such, I decided to dig a little deeper into the tradition of battling dragons within Christian tradition, as well as in Old English literary precedent. That being said, this post will jump around a lot, covering the dragon itself as well as perceptions of evil and other common threads in Christian tradition. For the most part, this analysis will be based on “The Old English Life of Saint Margaret in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III: Sources and Relationships,” written by Claudia Di Sciacca. 1 

In this passage, Margaret is confronted by “a most terrifying dragon (draca) of many different colors.” 2 When confronted with said dragon, Margaret kneels and prays, begging God for help in defending herself against this “wild beast” (wilddeor: wild beast/reindeer lol). Unfortunately, despite her prayers the draca “swallows her up.” 3 However, Margaret makes the “sign of Christ’s cross” (Cristes rodetacen in Old English or sphragís in Greek) from within the draca’s belly. The idea of making the rodetacen/sphragís in order to ward off evil is hardly a phenomenon unique to The Life of St. Margaret—it was through the cross that Jesus himself defeated evil. Still, even within our own class readings, Andreas uses the rodetacen/sphragís to ward off the violence of the cannibal. Furthermore, such a token (tacen) is exemplified against evils in further texts such as Ammon’s battle with a dragon 4 and the Gospel of Nicodemus, in which “Satan entices Christ into hell only to be inevitably vanquished when Christ sets his cross—the sign of victory—in the midst of hell.” 5

In terms of the draca itself, when I first read Theotimus’ account, my immediate memory of a draca in Old English poetry is that of the dragon in the epic poem Beowulf. In the Beowulf narrative, an elderly but spry Beowulf, King of the Danes, confronts a treasure-hoarding dragon 6 in his final battle (with the help of a loyal comrade, Wiglaf). As Beowulf is heavily influenced by Old English pagan tradition, I assumed that Margaret’s battle with the dragon was directly guided by Old English pagan tradition, much like the dragon that Beowulf battled—after all, by the time that Margaret was composed (likely the mid-11th century) pagan influences certainly had not lost their place in Old English poetry. However, upon further investigation, I was surprised by dragons’ persistence in older Greek/Latin hagiography (and New Testament scripture in general). 

At its most basic level, this interaction is one between Satan (or a “relative” of Satan) and saint, a dichotomy that has roots in early Christian tradition. Claudia Di Sciacca argues that this form of interaction is “a defining component of the life of the archetypal Desert Father, St. Antony,” 7 whose trial with the devil is carried out with Satan taking the shape of a dragon. Additionally, in the Apocalypse of Thomas, Christ reveals to Thomas a sign of Judgement Day (domes dæg) in the form of “twelve fiery dragons,” who swallow and spit up souls in turn until they reach the “bottom of hell.” 8 In terms of Biblical scripture itself, in Revelation a dragon appears as well—in opposition to the “pregnant woman” who scholars assume to be giving birth to the Nation of Israel, the Satanic dragon stands “in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.” 9 

While we are focused on a dragon who devours, it is worth noting that the version of Margaret we are studying 10 is the only rendition of Margaret’s story that involves her being swallowed by the draca, 11 which involves the taboo of flesh-consumption. Consumption of human flesh is one of those aspects of violence that elicits an intense emotional response from those who hear about it—whether it be the cannibals in Andreas or the draca in The Life of St. Margaret or Hannibal Lecter’s eerie statement that he “ate liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.” The idea of consuming the human body represents the epitome of chaos and evil for most of “civilized humanity,” and certainly does for both the author of The Life of St. Margaret and Cynewulf. In Margaret, the consumer of flesh is the very brother of the devil himself, and for Cynewulf, the cannibals are goaded and encouraged by Satan. For these writers, eating another human being’s flesh constitutes the divide between good and evil, human and monster.   

Beyond the dragon itself, Theotimus himself is a link to early Christian scripture and tradition. In the Margaret narrative, Theotimus is a sort of witness—his involvement in the story is interesting, ranging from a mere observer of Margaret’s life to one who is “nourishing [Margaret] then with bread and water… ” 12 His observation and seeming involvement in the saint’s life is reminiscent of the role of John in Revelation, who witnesses scenes of apocalypse and horror without being truly able to intervene. Interestingly, John’s narrative also involves the figure of a dragon. Certainly then, the role of semi-autonomous observer has a precedence in New Testament narrative.

As such, the figure of the draca and all its implications have a long history in the various and varying traditions that made the composition of The Life of St. Margaret possible. From the figure of the dragon itself to the sign of the cross to the taboo of consuming flesh, it is clear that this text was not written in a vacuum, nor with one cultural tradition in mind. Texts such as these remind us of the rich religious background in which they were composed, and the fascinating backdrop of cultural and traditional jumble on which Old English poetry was developed.  

 

1. Sciacca, Claudia. “The Old English Life of Saint Margaret in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III: Sources and Relationships.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 118, no. 3 (2019): 354. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.3.0354.
2. The Life of St. Margaret, p. 123
3. Ibid
4. In Historia Monachorum siue De uita Sanctorum Patrum, Ammon defeats the dragon through prayer. 
5. Sciacca, Claudia. “The Old English Life of Saint Margaret in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III: Sources and Relationships.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 118, no. 3 (2019): 354. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.3.0354, p. 368
6. In Beowulf, the words for “dragon” vary, including “draca” but also “wyrm,” meaning “reptile, serpent, snake, or dragon.”
7. “Desert Fathers” were early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks, who practiced in the days of early Christianity mostly in the Egyptian deserts—the standard “Desert Father” is thought to be St. Antony. (Di Scaccia, p. 362)
8. Sciacca, Claudia. “The Old English Life of Saint Margaret in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III: Sources and Relationships.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 118, no. 3 (2019): 354. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.3.0354, p. 371
9. Revelation 12:4
10. That is, Cotton Tiberius A. iii 
11. Sciacca, Claudia. “The Old English Life of Saint Margaret in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. III: Sources and Relationships.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 118, no. 3 (2019): 354. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.3.0354, p. 368 
12. The Life of St. Margaret, p. 123