(urth) Witches

[David Stockhoff]

It occurred to me that the Witches' patron saint might shed light on 
them. It's a stretch, because such connections usually serve to confirm 
a theory rather than suggest a new one, but here goes (from the Wiki and 
Catholic Saints Index).

(1) Mag/Maggie/Margaret is one of the Three Holy Maids who are the most 
important of the 14 Holy Helpers, all virgin martyrs. All three appear 
in BNS: Barbara, who lived in a tower, is the patroness of 
matrosses/artillerymen, Mag is the saint of the witches, and we know 
about Katherine. All three are spurious saints with fantastic 
backstories. All were beheaded. I'm pretty sure BNS began as an 
abandoned short story about Katherine (as detailed elsewhere by others), 
so it makes sense that Wolfe put these three at the center of BNS.

Other important beheaded virgin martyrs are Valeria of Limoges 
(beheaded), Agnes (beheaded), and Lucy (blinded before executed). All 
their stories have fantastic elements.

/Sankt Margaretha mit dem Wurm,/
/Sankt Barbara mit dem Turm,/
/Sankt Catharina mit dem Radl,/
/das sind die heiligen drei Madl./^[2] 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Holy_Helpers#cite_note-1>

/Saint Margaret with the dragon 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_dragon>/
/Saint Barbara with the tower/
/Saint Catherine with the wheel/
/those are the three holy maids.
/


(2) Saint Margaret is the patron of women in childbirth because she 
prayed at her death that women in childbirth would, upon calling on her, 
be safely delivered of the child as she had been delivered from the 
belly of the dragon.

[The witches get all girls who are delivered by women to be tortured.]

(3) Margaret was born in Antioch, the daughter of a pagan priest named 
Aedesius. Antioch was a Roman province under the rule of the Roman 
Emperor Diocletian (r.284-305). Emperor Diocletian mounted some of the 
fiercest persecutions of the early Church especially in the East of the 
Empire. Margaret converted to the Christian faith and became a devout 
Christian and had taken vows of chastity. The Governor of Antioch had 
Margaret arrested and she was thrown into a dungeon. According to legend 
whilst she was in the dungeon, the devil came and tempted her in the 
form of a dragon, but as she made the sign of the Cross the dragon at 
first fled. He then returned and swallowed her up but she was able to 
burst out. When Margaret was led out to be beheaded, she thanked God 
that the end of her travail had come, and prayed that in memory of her 
miraculous deliverance out of the womb of the dragon, women in labour 
who invoked her might find help through her sufferings.

(4) Saint Margaret is represented in Christian art with a dragon at her 
feet, with the end of a cross thrust between his teeth. The garland of 
pearls generally worn round her neck is in allusion to her name, which 
among Oriental nations signifies a pearl.

[The Cumaean, who appears as a snake to Severian, swallows a rod that 
appears to extend into other dimensions or into time. She is thus linked 
with Satan, but I don't argue that this should be taken literally.]

(5) Her historical existence has been questioned; she was declared 
apocryphal by Pope Gelasius I in 494, but devotion to her revived in the 
West with the Crusades. ....

(6) The Eastern Orthodox Church knows Margaret as Saint Marina, and 
celebrates her feast day on July 17. She has been identified with Saint 
Pelagia – "Marina" being the Latin equivalent of the Greek name 
"Pelagia" – who, according to a legend, was also called Margarita. We 
possess no historical documents on St Margaret as distinct from St 
Pelagia. The Greek Marina came from Antioch, Pisidia (as opposed to 
Antioch of Syria), but this distinction was lost in the West.

[Any associations with the sea are worth noting....]

(7) An attempt has been made, but without success, to prove that the 
group of legends with which that of Saint Margaret is connected is 
derived from a transformation of the pagan divinity Aphrodite into a 
Christian saint. The problem of her identity is a purely literary question.

[Any associations with classical gods are worth noting as well.]


Has anyone considered Valeria as a candidate to be the beautiful maid 
who is beheaded annually at the Feast of St Katherine? This would 
require that Severian suppress any recognition of her, but then we 
already know he suppressed any conscious desire to see her again, let 
alone marry her, through four books.