She is the patroness saint of reformed prostitutes; the falsely accused, hoboes, homeless, insane, orphaned, mentally ill, midwives, penitents, single mothers, stepchildren, and tramps.

Margaret was born of farming parents in Laviano, a small village nestled in the rolling hills of Castiglione del Lago, in the diocese of Chiusi, and about halfway between Montepulciano and Cortona.

Soon Margaret found herself installed in the castle (integral to the present town),[3] not as wife but as mistress; less defiant of convention.

Horrified by her former life, she undertook extraordinary mortifications, including prolonged self-starvation, or "holy anorexia",[7] and self-mutilation.

To attract nurses for the hospital, and to help look after those imprisoned, she instituted a congregation of Tertiary Sisters, known as Le poverelle (Little poor ones in Italian).

One gathers Margaret took to sleeping on a wooden trellis in a cell at the church of San Francesco; then, as now, under the custodial care of the local Franciscan convent.

Once, on a Sunday morning, she reappeared at the Eucharist at Laviano's church,[8] whereupon she made a public confession with a full account of her past, and begged pardon from the community of her childhood.

Claiming divine command, she twice challenged him publicly because of his living, and going about war, as if not a cleric but a prince in the secular world.

In a wall of the small adjacent chapel of San Basilio was laid her body when she died on 22 February 1297, not yet 50 years old.

By 1330, from a design by Giovanni Pisano, Cortona's citizens had constructed a larger basilica, Santa Margerita, as seen today.

Located roughly at the 3rd altar to the left of the nave is the spot where Margaret had died; a room behind the old church where she had dwelt for the last years of her life.

[12][13] Often evident in illustrations of Margaret's life is a dog, her guide in the story of her coming across the body of her son's murdered father.

In 1938, the Italian composer Licinio Refice wrote his second opera, Margherita da Cortona based on the life of the Margaret, with libretto by Emidio Mucci.