Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara of Nicomedia, and Margaret of Antioch were three of the most popular ancient and medieval saints, and they even attracted widespread devotion among Anglicans after the Reformation. In the mid-twentieth century, however, their popularity waned significantly as doubts about this historicity grew. The lives of all three virgin martyrs contain many elements that are indisputably either legendary or metaphorical. In recent decades, however, martyrdom accounts written in such a style have attracted increased scholarly attention as we have started to ponder the particular ways in which communities choose to remember trauma. It is striking, for example, that virtually no female martyrdom accounts include sexual violence, even though we know from other genres of writing that it was historically very common. Whatever is happening in these accounts, it is clearly not a straightforward description of the facts, but seems to be rather a recasting of trauma into something that one might actually want to remember and feel inspired by, and the kind of stories that one could pass on to one’s children. In the world of historical facts, we all know that instruments of torture do not spontaneously shatter and that dragons do not explode. (For that matter, we know that there are no dragons to begin with!) But if the purpose of such narratives is not to convey the literal truth of what happened, but rather to portray the unvanquished spirits of these early Christian martyrs in the face of trauma, then perhaps there may be a kind of truth behind the legends after all.

According to the life of Catherine of Alexandria, she was a young scholar and the daughter of an Egyptian government official who converted to Christianity as a teenager. When she rebuked the emperor for his cruelty in inciting persecution against the Christians, he summoned 50 of his best philosophers and orators to debate with her, but she won every single argument and many of them were converted to Christianity. The emperor then condemned her to be tortured to death on a spiked wheel, but it shattered at her touch. Finally, he had her beheaded.

Barbara’s life states that because of her beauty, her father locked her up in a tower where only her pagan tutors were granted access to her. From them she became highly educated and began to consider the nature of the physical and metaphysical world, and eventually decided that there was only one true God, and that it might be the God of the Christians. She had a third window added to her prison, and thus created place of personal prayer where she could contemplate the Trinity as the light moved across the three windows. When her father questioned this action, she professed her Christian faith to him and was executed.

The life of Margaret of Antioch recounts that she was the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother died in childbirth, and so she was given to a Christian woman to nurse, and as she grew up she embraced the Christian religion. When her religion became known, she was subjected to severe persecutions, the most famous trial included being swallowed by Satan in the form of a dragon. The cross that she was holding in her hand irritated the dragon’s stomach, however, and caused it to immediately explode. Eventually, after prevailing through many trials, she was executed. Margaret was one of the most popular English saints, both before and after the Reformation. Many Anglican parishes have been dedicated to her, as has the women’s religious community the Society of Saint Margaret.