Abstract
Margaret of Cortona's arrival in the city that would, within a generation of her death in 1297, celebrate her as its patron saint must have been the talk of the town. Margaret was an unmarried laywoman who, after living for years as the concubine of a Montepulciano nobleman, came to Cortona with her illegitimate son around 1272 seeking protection and forgiveness after the death of her lover left her homeless. Within a few years of her arrival in the city, Margaret had asked the Cortonese Franciscans to allow her to wear their penitential habit, a decision that would not only mark her new dedication to a penitential life but also offer her an association with a religious order on the rise in the city. Although the friars were at first sceptical--Margaret's beauty and youth led them to question her commitment--in 1277 they eventually relented and allowed her to wear a habit that would mark her as a Franciscan lay penitent. Here, Doyno discusses Margaret's difficulties with her Franciscan guardians and argues that the mendicants sometimes hampered rather than fostered lay religion.