Margaret of Antioch

While there is no positive evidence of her existence, she was probably a martyr under Diocletian (303). Ambrose and John Chrysostom knew a Margaret, or Pelagia, who at fifteen preserved her chastity from violation by jumping off a building; others so named have suffered fabulous afflictions. Margaret became the subject of a medieval cult (she was one of the voices heard by Joan of Arc), though she was honored even earlier in the East. More recently she has been included among the fourteen auxiliary saints as a patron of childbearing. In art she is usually represented as a shepherdess or with a dragon.