Margaret's Monsters by Heyes Michael E.;

Author:Heyes, Michael E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

4 Circumcising Olibrius

Threatening sexuality and religious alterity in the Life of St. Margaret

In the first three chapters, I addressed monsters in Margaret’s narrative that were overtly inhuman. The dragon of the Mombritius version – though sporting certain human characteristics such as a beard – has iron teeth, pants fire, and is large enough to swallow Margaret in one gulp. The demon – though less obviously physically monstrous – bears the black skin used as a marker of lust in the writings of the desert fathers and speaks of being enclosed in glass jars and moving invisibly among people to tempt them to sin.

I now turn my attention to Margaret’s most human opponent: the prefect who persecutes her, Olibrius. Next to Margaret, Olibrius is arguably the most frequently analyzed character in studies of the various Lives of St. Margaret. Considering that Olibrius’ purpose within the narrative framework of the Lives is to contest Margaret’s claim to virginity and her commitment to Christianity, it is not surprising that many scholars write about Olibrius in light of his reaction to Margaret. Maud Burnett McInerney argues in “Rhetoric, Power, Integrity and the Passion of the Virgin Martyr” that the attempts by the Olibrius of the Katherine Group version to convert Margaret to paganism are indistinguishable from his assaults on her chastity, and that Olibrius’ increasing use of force throughout the narrative is an attempt to silence the increasing power of Margaret’s words.1 Regarding the Olibrius of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, Elaine Treharne claims that he is “utterly inactive,”2 a passivity that is reflected in the gods he worships and which makes room for the active and efficacious speech and prayer in which Margaret engages. In Flesh Made Word, Aviad Kleinberg asserts that the Golden Legend Olibrius’ reaction to Margaret’s beauty “combines the sexual and the political, the physical body and the body politic,” and that Margaret’s rejection of Olibrius’ sexual advances converts this body from “a source of pleasure to a battleground of wills.”3 Tracy-Anne Cooper argues for another manifestation of the body politic acting upon the character, claiming that the Olibrius of BL Cotton Tiberius A.iii is constrained in his lust by the negative legal ramifications of having sex with a Christian while in his position as a Roman prefect.4

Cooper’s piece also begins to explore elements of Olibrius’ identity that do not wholly depend upon his reaction to Margaret, namely his ethnic/religious identity. In doing so, Cooper joins several other scholars who reflexively label Olibrius as a “Roman”5 or “pagan.”6 While this is certainly a historically and narratively appropriate assumption,7 it can obscure the presence of different forms of religious alterity that other scholars have pointed to. For instance, Siobhain Bly Calkin notes that the Auchinleck Manuscript refers to Olibrius and Margaret’s persecutors as Saracens,8 which allowed readers to “imaginatively revise late 13th-century crusading setbacks, and envision an overwhelming Christian triumph that would have gladdened the hearts of English proponents of crusade in the early 14th century.”9 Similarly, Ruth Evans has made note

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